Demystifying Derailers

Demystifying
Derailers
How to Help Leaders Manage
their Personal Derailers
a presentation brought to you by:

Karen Harty

Karen Harty
Karen is Regional Vice President of Enterprise Solutions for
Profiles International. She has over twenty-five years
experience in talent management and has worked both as a
practitioner and provider to organizations as diverse as Cisco
Systems, BNSF, and Providence Health and Services. What she's
found is that while each organization has its unique culture and
challenges, all organizations share the same goal: to
understand and leverage talent. And therein lies her passion –
working with clients to improve business results through a
better utilization of their people. Ms. Harty's experience
Regional Vice President includes regional leadership positions with DDI, MOHR
Enterprise Solutions Development, and Age Wave, Inc. She also owned and operated
her own sales training and marketing consulting company for
eight years. She has an MA in English from SFSU and is author
of Fifty and Starting Over. Karen lives in Portland, OR, and
works with clients throughout the West Coast and Mid-West.

®
imagine great people

www.profilesinternational.com
©2012 Profiles International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Who We Are

• Founded 1991
• Over 45,000 clients served worldwide
• Offices in nearly 130 countries
• Founding member of the Association of
Test Publishers
• Microsoft Certified Partner


Creating Value for Clients
We support our clients through the full employee
life-cycle, helping them identify the best people for their
jobs and then developing them to their fullest potential.


Diverse Base of Marquee Clients

Financial Services Retail & Consumer Travel & Hospitality Education & Government

Technology Healthcare Energy & Utilities Business Services

Client Highlights
• 11,000 + active clients
• Client base includes 152 Fortune 2000 companies
• Represented in nearly 130 countries

Clients We’ve Served


That Moment in Time

1

You See It Coming….

2

And then it happens…

3

Demystifying
Derailers
How to Help Leaders Manage
their Personal Derailers
a presentation brought to you by:

Karen Harty
4

What We’ll Cover
1. Derailers
– 11 most commonly accepted derailers
– What triggers the derailing behavior

2. Helping leaders understand their derailing
behaviors

3. From self-awareness to self-management

5

Derailers – A Literature Review
• Hogan, J., & Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2009) Management
Derailment. Personality Assessment and Mitigation, APA Handbook of
Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
• Smart, G., & Street, R. (2008). Who. Ballantine Books.
• Martin, J., & Schmidt, C. (2010, May). How to Keep Your Top Talent.
Harvard Business Review.
• Kaiser, R. B., & Hogan, R. (2010, December). How to (and How not to)
Assess the Integrity of Managers. Consulting Psychology Journal:
Practice and Research, 216-234.
• V. Irwin, T. (2009). Derailed: Five Lessons from Catastrophic Failures
of Leadership. Thomas Nelson
• Dotlich, D, & Cairo, P. (2003) Why CEOs Fail – The 11 Behaviors that
Can Derail Your Climb to the Top and How to Manage Them, Jossey-
Bass

6

Our Perspective on Derailers -
• Leadership failure is a behavioral phenomenon
• While there are visible C-Suite failures, in fact, the
vast majority of leaders will fail
• They will be demoted, fired or sidelined

7

Our Perspective on Derailers -
• Leaders fail because of who they are and how they
act in certain situations
• Stress ups the ante
• They respond with a pattern of behavior that can
sabotage
– their jobs
– their careers
– and even their organizations

8

It doesn’t
have to happen

9

How does your company help leaders who
exhibit derailing behaviors?
1. We don’t, we hope they go away.

2. It gets addressed in performance reviews.

3. Their direct supervisor provides immediate feedback.

4. We hire an external coach.

5. Person gets fired or sidelined.

10

So What are Derailers?
Strengths Overplayed
Fall back behaviors that worked in the past

Surface Under Stress
They kick in when the stakes are the highest

11

Arrogance

Confidence Gone Awry
– Blind belief in own opinions
– Lack of openness to others’ perspective
– Relies on self
– Previous formula worked; therefore, keep repeating

12

Melodrama
Crying Wolf Syndrome
– Center of Attention
– Charisma
– Speaks in extremes
– Elevated Expectations

13

Volatility
Excitability Turns Ugly
- Unpredictable
- Jekyll and Hyde
- Extreme mood swings

14

Excessive Caution

Prudence Becomes Paralysis
– Fears mistakes, procrastinates,
& over-analyzes
– Obsesses
– Seeks others approval in
decision making

15

Habitual Distrust

Vigilance Becomes Witch Hunting
– Focuses on the negatives
– Sees disaster around every corner
– Looks for confirmation that people
are acting out of self-interest or
political interests.

16

Aloofness

Cool Headedness Freezes Others Out
– Disengages and disconnects
– Isolation
– Retreats from people who need guidance
– Stoic
– Prefers closed doors

17

Mischievousness

Spontaneity Turns Into Chaos
– Rules are meant to be broken
– Spontaneous and creative by
nature
– Under stress, destructively impulsive

18

Eccentricity
Flair Becomes Weird
– Highly stylized
– One time flash of brilliance
– Launches too many initiatives

19

Passive Resistance
Public Persona vs. Hidden Agenda
– Subtle derailer – in public, neutral posture;
in private works own agenda
– Says one thing and does another
– Creates a distrusting work culture

20

Perfectionism
Detail Orientation Goes Overboard
– Gets the little things right
– Structure solves every problem
– Dislikes uncertainty & ambiguity

21

Eagerness to Please
Need for Approval Becomes the End Game
– Doesn’t deal with performance issues
– Looks the other way
– Wants to be liked at all costs

22

Which of these have you seen?
1. Arrogance
2. Melodrama
3. Volatility
4. Excessive Caution
5. Habitual Mistrust
6. Aloofness
7. Mischievousness
8. Eccentricity
9. Passive Resistance
10. Perfectionism
11. Eagerness to Please
23

What Triggers Derailers
Situation or Context Based Stressors
• New Job
• New Boss
• Added Responsibilities
• Downsizing
• Poor Performance

Internal Triggers
• Insecurities
• Replaying the Same Old Tape

24

For Example

25

Stress Reaches a Boiling Point

26

We React
• Overwhelming need to get rid of the stress
we’re experiencing
• Revert back to who we are at the deepest level
• Deploy behaviors that have worked in the past

And in our deluded state, we increase the volume
of that particular behavior

27

Examples Abound

• There are very visible
examples of public
figures who have
derailed.
• Some have rebounded.
• Others have not.
• Examples?

28

“And….How’s that
working for you?”

29
Dr. Phil Attribute: Oldmaison (Charles LeBlanc) at Flickr.com

OK, That’s the Problem…
what’s the Solution?
• Get their attention
• Have the leader take two types of assessments
– One that provides 360 feedback
– Another that looks at who they are at the deepest level
• Share assessment results
• Engage in candid discussion

30

Two Assessments

• The ProfileXT Assessment
• A 360 Tool – the Checkpoint
• Individually the results are powerful
• Together they tell a complete story on who the
individual is, how he is being perceived and what he
can do to manage his behaviors to avoid a
derailment

31

The ProfileXT®

ProfileXT®
– Twenty Factors that Define an
Individual
• Cognitive Capacity
• Inherent Personality Traits
• Motivational Interests
– Evergreen in Nature

32

The ProfileXT® Assessment

Uncovers and Codifies a
Person’s Unique Set of
Personal Attributes

33

The ProfileXT® Assessment

Why It Works:
– Self assessment
– PERFORMANCE BENCHMARKS
– Easy to see fit and challenges
– The “Ah Ha” Moment
– Self-Management

34

Benchmark = The Rails

35

What does
this tell us
about Mike?

36

Remember Mike

• High Learning Index
• High Assertive
• Low Manageability
• High Decisive
• Low Objective Judgment
• High Independence

37

Benchmark – Mike sees the Behavioral
DNA of Others at his Level or Role

• Provides context for struggles or success in
current role
• Allows for Discussion on self-management
• Best Case Outcome: Mike realizes that he
is “responsible for his own success”
• Mike becomes interested in managing his
derailing tendencies

38

“We measure our self by
our intentions;
others measure us by our
behaviors/actions”

39

Checkpoint 360
• Taxonomy
– 8 Leadership Competencies
– 18 Skill Sets
– 70 Items

• Perceptual Feedback and Comments from
– Boss, Boss’ Boss
– Peers
– Direct Reports
– Others

40

Heightening Self Awareness

• For a leader to understand the need
to manage their behaviors, it is
essential to understand how others
perceive them.

• We help our clients do this through
our Checkpoint 360 multi-rater
feedback system. Using the 70
specific leadership behaviors, leaders
are rated by four audiences in their
organizations, offering a complete
picture of the perception of the
leaders’ skills.

41

CheckPoint360º™
Feedback Self-Awareness

42

Self Awareness Self-Management

• Dialing In

• Dialing Up

• Dialing Down

43

Mike now has Two Data Points

• A deeper grasp his behavioral tendencies
• Appreciation of the qualities of successful leaders at
his level or in his role
• Insight into how others perceive his leadership
behaviors

• Self Understanding leads to Self-Management

44

Contact Us

Profiles Assessment Asia (Pte.) Limited
An Authorized Strategic Business Partner of Profiles International

14 , Robinson Road, #08-01A, Far East Finance,
Singapore 048545
Email: info@profiles.com.sg
Telephone: 65717031
Fax: 63334636

Website: http://www.profiles.com.sg

Share , Connect and Follow Us

Know your people..Grow your business

Demystifying Derailers

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (20)

Similar to Demystifying Derailers

Similar to Demystifying Derailers (20)

More from Profiles Asia

More from Profiles Asia (18)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Demystifying Derailers