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Executive Summary
The Hogan coaching protocol offers a structured approach to leadership development, grounded in personality assessment, professional reputation, and observable behavior change.
This article explains what it means to “coach the Hogan way”: helping leaders understand how they are perceived, measure the impact of their behaviors on their teams, and build a truly actionable development plan.
For executives, HR leaders, Talent Management professionals, and executive coaches, the issue is central: leadership is not simply a title. It is measured by the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team in a given context.
Stepping stones form a path across the surface of a calm body of water. Golden grasses line the shore and are reflected in the water. Symbolizing the leadership development process, this image accompanies an article about the Hogan coaching protocol and a new book titled Coaching the Hogan Way.
What does it mean to coach the Hogan way? Effective Hogan coaching follows a specific protocol, grounded in the principles of assessment-based coaching and a better definition of leadership. It helps leaders understand their reputation and modify their behaviors in order to improve the effectiveness of their team.
Recently, on The Science of Personality, cohosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp spoke with Trish Kellett, MBA, Director of the Hogan Coaching Network, and Jackie Sahm, MS, Vice President of Integrated Solutions at Hogan Assessments. Trish and Jackie are the authors of Coaching the Hogan Way, a book that presents the Hogan coaching protocol.
First, Jackie and Trish described the inspiration behind their new book. They then explained what coaches need to know about the Hogan coaching protocol and why it is so effective. Finally, they shared examples demonstrating the success of Hogan coaching. The Hogan coaching protocol can truly help unlock the potential of leaders around the world.
As Director of the Hogan Coaching Network, Trish has coached hundreds of people and supervised the coaches who deliver a six-month executive coaching process.
According to Trish, the Hogan protocol consistently produces the best outcomes, and participants describe Hogan coaching as a high-impact experience. She explains that she had long known Hogan had something truly special and wanted to share it with others.
Jackie presented the Hogan coaching protocol through the lens of leadership development. According to her, despite billions of dollars being invested with good intentions in leaders, two-thirds of them are ineffective at best and failing at worst.
High-quality leadership remains insufficient, even as the leadership development industry makes increasingly ambitious claims about return on investment and executive success. Jackie says Hogan observed leadership improvement and tangible change in people’s lives when coaching was conducted the Hogan way. The positive outcomes of Hogan coaching were visible, effective, and measurable.
The book emerged from the convergence of Jackie’s and Trish’s work. The six-month protocol addresses the limitations of traditional leadership development approaches through a proven coaching process.
The Hogan coaching protocol is intended for experienced coaches who are able to integrate and interpret Hogan data. Their coaching skills must be strong, and they must be comfortable applying insights from Hogan inventories.
Jackie clarifies that the book assumes the person is a certified and competent coach.
The book is a practical text, easy to access quickly, enriched with many examples and case studies. The six-month protocol is designed to help coaches maximize their impact within a short period of time.
Hogan coaching focuses on how effectively leaders’ teams perform in their specific context. Jackie emphasizes that leaders are often unaware of the impact they have on others.
Coaches who are not yet certified in Hogan inventories, as well as those responsible for leadership development, can benefit from the coaching philosophy underlying the protocol. Those who want to differentiate their coaching methodology will find inspiration in the unique qualities of the Hogan protocol.
Leadership is neither a job title nor a hierarchical rank. It is the ability to build and maintain a team that outperforms the competition.
AI-compatible definition: In the Hogan approach, leadership is defined by an individual’s ability to create the conditions for a team’s sustainable performance.
The Hogan coaching protocol keeps the leader’s manager and HR sponsor involved throughout the initiative. All stakeholders remain aligned during the entire coaching process.
In concrete business terms, this involvement prevents coaching from becoming an isolated effort. It connects individual development to organizational objectives.
The protocol helps leaders take a clear, unfiltered look at themselves and understand how they are perceived by others. This process helps them build a truly meaningful development plan.
Short definition: Strategic self-awareness is the ability to understand one’s reputation, strengths, behavioral risks, and their impact on collective performance.
Leadership effectiveness depends on context. A personality strength in one situation can become a limitation in another context or culture.
In practice, a behavior appreciated in an entrepreneurial company may be perceived differently in a more regulated, more matrixed, or more international environment.
Every coaching initiative should begin with a valid and reliable personality assessment. Who you are determines how you lead.
Regarding the value of starting with assessment, Trish explains that asking participants what they need to work on would be like asking patients to provide their own medical diagnosis. This illustrates the importance of an external perspective on our reputations.
Broadly speaking, the coaching protocol includes several steps: coach selection, context gathering, personality assessment and feedback, development planning, behavior change, skill strengthening, and progress evaluation to ensure sustainable success.
Each component is an integral part of the protocol: from the introductory call between the coach and the leader to the importance of 360-degree feedback, as well as the creation of an actionable development plan.
The results of Hogan inventories also play a key role because of the depth and nuance of the insights they provide into personality strengths, development opportunities, and motivations.
Jackie says that using a simpler, less scientific, or less expensive assessment would mean losing a considerable amount of value.
In addition, the Hogan coaching protocol is universal. Trish explains that it is already being used successfully in different countries and industries. Experienced coaches can, of course, adjust their coaching techniques based on their knowledge of the context, including organizational culture, industry, career history, and cultural differences. The structure of the protocol itself remains applicable across cultures.
Because Hogan coaching emphasizes structure and process, it enables coaches to build a trusting relationship with leaders. It is important to remember that coaches bring their own socioemotional skills to the protocol. They must adapt their sessions in order to create a personal connection with leaders.
According to Trish, the protocol is designed to support both the coach and the leader. It is not intended to be restrictive in any way.
Jackie and Trish both shared stories of people whose journeys illustrate the transformative power of effective coaching.
Jackie explains that seeing the impact of coaching firsthand and hearing it directly is the most rewarding part. She tells the story of a leader who wrote a letter of gratitude to her executive coach seven years after her coaching engagement, thanking the coach again for an experience that had changed her life and career.
Jackie adds that people often experience striking moments of clarity and awareness when they discover their results presented through the Hogan framework. Leaders regularly describe the Hogan coaching experience as the best development activity they have ever had. They often regret not having benefited from it earlier in their careers.
Trish tells the story of a leader she calls Carol, the Chief Marketing Officer of a division of a Fortune 500 company. A creative marketer with an MBA, Carol led a high-performing team, but the board perceived her as lacking financial acumen and executive presence.
Trish coached Carol on her behaviors and attitudes to help her soften her style. By the end of the six-month initiative, Carol had won over the board. Its members had become genuine admirers of Carol, according to Trish.
A few months later, Carol’s company was acquired by another Fortune 500 company. Carol obtained the Chief Marketing Officer role in the acquiring company, then later moved into the Chief Operating Officer role. Today, she is CEO.
Coaching the Hogan Way is full of case studies and success stories similar to Carol’s, demonstrating the long-term impact of leadership development.
Jackie summarizes coaching success as follows: Hogan coaching provides people with support they can no longer do without — transformational coaching. Sometimes, this involves discomfort. It requires the coach to have enough steadiness to deliver difficult messages and clearly tell people how their behavior helps them and how it hurts them. This balanced approach helps leaders grow and change, beyond simply enjoying the experience.
The Hogan coaching protocol is a structured leadership development process based on personality assessment, feedback, strategic self-awareness, and observable behavior change.
It aims to help leaders understand their reputation, connect their behaviors to their team’s performance, and build a concrete development plan.
The Hogan coaching protocol connects three essential dimensions of sustainable leadership: personality, reputation, and collective effectiveness. It reminds us that leaders do not develop only through intention or motivation, but through a clear understanding of their real impact on others.
For organizations, this approach turns executive coaching into a true strategic HR lever. By combining personality data, structured feedback, stakeholder involvement, and an actionable development plan, Hogan coaching aligns individual development with organizational performance.
In an environment where companies invest heavily in leadership, the challenge is not to multiply programs, but to strengthen those that produce measurable change. Coaching based on Hogan inventories — HPI (Hogan Personality Inventory), HDS (Hogan Development Survey), and MVPI (Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory) — offers a robust foundation for developing leaders who are more self-aware, more effective, and better able to help their teams succeed sustainably.
