Why did you go to work today? To wield more influence, to help others, to earn money, or simply because you enjoy what you do? Behind these motivations usually sit deeply held values. And organisations have values of their own too, whether explicitly claimed or implicitly conveyed by how their leaders behave.
Understanding these values is essential when a company hires an executive, prepares a succession or wants to shift its culture. Executive personality assessment, particularly through motives and values, makes it possible to understand the alignment between a person, their role and the organisational culture.
In this article you will find why values are decisive in executive success, how assessing senior leaders can reveal an organisation's real culture, and how talent management professionals can draw on this data to support cultural change over the long term.
Why did you turn up at work today? Whether it was to gain more authority, to help others, to earn money or to have fun, the answer is very probably tied to your values.
Organisations have values too, whether officially declared or simply implicit. Organisational culture is built in large part from the values of its leaders, and those can be revealed by assessing senior executives.
In episode 128 of the podcast The Science of Personality, co-hosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp explained why values play such a decisive part in executive selection.
"Values are our main drivers, our philosophy of life," Ryne Sherman explains. "They motivate us in ways we are often not even aware of."
This article therefore looks at values and at the notion of fit. Fit, here, means the alignment between a person's values and the demands of their role, their team and their organisational culture.
That is the perspective from which to approach executive assessment and its link with company culture.
When they assess candidates for executive roles, decision-makers generally look at skills, leadership experience, strategic vision or industry knowledge.
Values are often overlooked.
And this is precisely where executive assessment can add decisive value.
"Ultimately, the aim is to make sure the leaders' values are consistent with those of the organisation," Ryne Sherman explains. "It is about assembling the right set of values for the organisation to thrive."
When that alignment is badly judged, the consequences can be considerable.
AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner is one illustration. AT&T's culture was largely engineering-oriented, while Time Warner's rested more on creating content.
When an organisation that values process and control tries to merge with one that places a high premium on imagination and innovation, conflict between leaders can appear quickly.
After just four years, AT&T ended up selling Time Warner at a loss.
The example is a reminder that a hiring or succession decision cannot rest solely on technical skill or past experience. Leadership potential also has to be analysed in its cultural context.
Hogan describes values through the ten dimensions of the Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI).
What the inventory measures is what people want and what they are trying to obtain: visibility, relationships with others, structure or quality, for example.
These correspond respectively to the MVPI dimensions Recognition, Affiliation, Security and Aesthetics.
To understand an organisation's values, then, assessing those of its senior leaders is particularly instructive.
Hogan Assessments' own leadership team, for instance, shares a strong orientation towards the MVPI dimension Science, which reflects a preference for analytical, data-driven decision-making.
Ryne Sherman gives several other examples illustrating how leaders' values can shape organisational culture:
These examples also show that two companies in the same sector do not necessarily share the same values, as the two clothing brands illustrate.
"Within a succession plan, the candidates considered for one of those companies would be very different from those considered for the other," Ryne Sherman points out.
For professionals working in HR strategy and talent management, the distinction is essential: the point is not merely to find a capable executive, but one whose drivers match the organisation's present and future challenges.
Once an organisation has a sound understanding of its internal leaders' capabilities, and of external candidates' where relevant, the central question shifts.
It is no longer simply about whether someone will be a good leader in general terms.
The real question becomes: will this leader be effective in this particular role, in this organisation, at this point in its history?
The company then has to work out whether the candidate's values match the needs of its culture: either the culture as it stands, or the one it wants to build.
"This is one of the most important questions an organisation has to ask itself during a leadership transition or within a succession plan," Ryne Sherman explains.
"Do we want our future leader to change certain aspects of our culture? Are we satisfied with the culture as it is, or do we need to make some strategic shifts?"
Leaders exert considerable influence over organisational culture. Yet they cannot transform that culture without the rest of the organisation coming along.
A leader whose values were radically different from those of the existing culture would run a serious risk of rejection.
Heads of talent management and decision-makers involved in succession planning therefore face a complex challenge: identifying someone able to share the organisation's core values while bringing enough difference to support its evolution.
This is where personality assessment, combined with coaching and executive support, can become a genuine lever for team transformation and sustainable management.
To build a fair succession strategy, organisations have to use an objective, scientifically validated approach to assessing candidates.
Executive assessments centred on values make it possible to anticipate how candidates are likely to fit into the culture.
Ryne Sherman nonetheless draws attention to how often the concept of "fit" is misused:
"Far too often, organisations say they are hiring for cultural fit, when the notion sometimes serves to mask personal bias."
These unconscious biases may concern age, sex, gender, ethnic origin or affinity.
Affinity bias, also called similarity bias, means favouring people who seem like us on arbitrary grounds: having attended the same university, dressing in a similar way or supporting the same sports team, for example.
"Fit can be assessed scientifically and objectively," Ryne Sherman continues. "You simply assess a candidate's values, compare them with the organisation's, then determine empirically how that person might fit into the company."
This approach moves assessment and development from an intuitive logic towards a more structured, fairer and more data-driven practice.
Executive search professionals play an important part in building the future culture of the organisations they work with.
Ryne Sherman uses the idea of cultural stewardship to describe the way HR leaders and executive search consultants help steer an organisation's culture.
This stewardship means helping the company shift its culture by consciously selecting the values it wants to strengthen at leadership level.
What culture does it want to build for tomorrow?
In what direction do certain values need to move?
Which executive assessments and which selection criteria will produce the most desirable outcomes?
Organisations also sometimes need support in letting go of values that no longer suit their challenges.
"Cultural stewardship amounts to saying: 'Here is the culture you need to develop. Let us identify the leaders capable of moving your culture on while staying true to what you fundamentally are'," Ryne Sherman explains.
Assessing leaders with the MVPI, alongside a comparison between leadership values and the results of organisational culture assessments, can reveal areas of alignment as well as any gaps.
To take the analysis further, executive assessment results can be compared with the findings of culture surveys.
"Start with those leaders, identify their values and analyse what that combination of values means for the kind of culture they are creating," Ryne Sherman recommends.
Executive assessment is not only about measuring skills or identifying leadership strengths. It also reveals the motives and values that shape decisions, behaviour and, gradually, the whole organisational culture.
Within a succession, an executive hire or a transformation, that understanding becomes strategic. It separates a merely high-performing executive from one genuinely suited to the organisation's context, ambitions and intended direction.
Personality assessment, resting on scientifically validated tools such as the Hogan inventories, thus strengthens talent management decisions, limits the influence of bias and supports skills development and leadership potential more effectively.
By aligning selection, leadership development and HR strategy around an objective understanding of values, organisations can build more coherent cultures, encourage lasting team transformation and create the conditions for enduring performance.
At Authentic Talent, we believe that objective assessment of talent and potential within organisations is a decisive factor in their future success. If you would like to discuss it with us, let's talk!
This article draws on an article published on the Hogan Assessments website: How Executive Assessment Reveals Organizational Culture
.png)