Using personality insights to become a more effective leader

How Hogan Assessments can help law firm partners advance their leadership — without needing a 360 review

While 360° feedback often provides valuable insights to help leaders identify blind spots, it isn’t always available or feasible—and, in my view, it’s not always necessary for intentional leadership development.
You don’t always need a 360 review to understand how others likely perceive your leadership.

Hogan personality assessments do it solo.
They measure your reputation as a leader — how others are likely to perceive and describe you — without requiring you to ask a single colleague.

After conducting over 100 Hogan assessments with law firm partners, here’s what makes them so valuable for advancing leadership in law firms:

Leader personality shapes behavior, culture, and firm performance

A leader’s personality influences their behavior, decisions, and the culture they create.
And culture directly impacts firm performance, reputation, and employee attitudes (O’Reilly III et al., 2014, Group & Organization Management, Vol. 39(6), pp. 595–625).

In times of frequent transformation, personality matters even more.
Leading through significant change requires leaders to evolve their approach—to lead by example, often in ways they haven’t before.

Leveraging personality insights benefits your firm

Effectively using personality insights can help drive:

• higher performance
• improved productivity
• reduced turnover
• greater employee engagement
• increased client satisfaction

Why Hogan Assessments stand out

1. They measure reputation—not just identity

Hogan assessments reveal how others likely perceive you. That’s your reputation—and this shapes how others respond to your leadership.

Only when you understand how others perceive you can you consciously adapt your behavior to lead more effectively.
This contrasts with many personality questionnaires that only measure your identity—how you see yourself.

2. They leverage a multi-perspective approach

Hogan uniquely combines three personality perspectives across 28 dimensions and 125 subscales.
It’s complex—and powerful—because it provides a deep understanding of your personality’s different dimensions.

The three lenses are:

• Strengths: How others perceive the characteristics you possess to do your job well
• Risks: How others perceive potential derailers that may impact performance—especially under pressure
• Values: What drives your behavior and what kind of work environment you strive to create

While strengths and risks reveal your reputation, the values perspective helps you understand your identity.

3. Insights without asking for feedback

Hogan assessments deliver powerful insights into how others likely perceive you—without requiring direct feedback from colleagues, peers, or clients.

This is a major advantage in law firms, where feedback can be sensitive and 360° processes time-consuming.
Hogan offers a confidential space to explore leadership strengths and blind spots safely and independently.

4. Scientifically validated

Hogan assessments are backed by 30+ years of independent research.
They comply with international standards and are grounded in robust psychological models like the Five-Factor Model (FFM).

5. Globally trusted

Hogan is used for talent acquisition and development worldwide, available in 45+ languages, and trusted by over 75% of Fortune 500 companies.

High impact for individual partners and leadership teams

Individual Assessments

I work with:

• senior and managing partners
• newly appointed partners
• future partners preparing for transition

Team Assessments

More recently, law firms increasingly use Hogan assessments to support leadership teams — both newly formed teams and those seeking to resolve barriers to performance.

Could law firms use Hogan assessments for selection too?

Hogan assessments were designed for both selection and development.

They can be applied across the entire talent management life cycle:

Many companies leverage personality assessments to identify future leaders that will perform and fit the organization.

However, from my experience, most law firms use personality assessments for leadership development — not selection.

But that could change.

With declining leverage and rising performance demands, law firms are increasingly under pressure to ensure new partners deliver earlier.

Those once able to “live” with “underperforming” partners now realize how important effective partner selection is. Data-driven insights — like Hogan — could play a larger role in partner selection in the near future.

What partners value most

Here’s what law firm partners consistently appreciate about working with Hogan:

• Confidential insights into leadership reputation Only the individual partner sees their own results.But of course, if a partner wants to share their own results and insights with others in their firm, they are free to do so. In trusted teams, sometimes partners leverage the opportunity to share their results with others, which is an excellent way to strengthen relationships with colleagues and agree on concrete actions that advance their leadership.
• Dedicated space for reflection We debrief each assessment in detail in a confidential conversation. Partners often tell me, “It’s very rare to gain insights this deep in such a short amount of time”. Indeed, while it’s common sense that self-reflection can help you learn from past experiences and set the compass for how you want to lead in the future, it’s often the first thing people skip when time pressure rises.
• Concrete, actionable steps to advance leadership In our conversation, we typically identify a number of specific behaviors that can significantly enhance a partner’s leadership effectiveness.

Personality isn’t fixed—overcoming “the end of history illusion”

Across six studies of more than 19,000 participants, Quoidbach, Gilbert, and Wilson (2013) found that people underestimate how much they will change in the future in personality, core values, and preferences.

The authors stated:

“Time is a powerful force that transforms people’s preferences, reshapes their values, and alters their personalities, and we suspect that people generally underestimate the magnitude of those changes.” (Quoidbach et al, 2013, SCIENCE, Vol. 339, pp. 96-98, 96).

Personality isn’t as fixed as we believe it to be.

You can decide and choose how you want to show up to be the best leader you can be.

Every day. Every moment. Every interaction.

Want to explore this more deeply?

Here are two great starting points:

• Hogan Resources — White papers, case studies, validity studies: www.hoganassessments.com
• Independent reviews Buros Center for Testing & SIOP: buros.org + siop.org

If you have any questions or would like to continue the conversation, feel free to reach out.