What actually separates executive coaching capable of producing lasting change from the rest? For Hogan Assessments, effectiveness rests on a structured protocol, grounded in personality assessment, in strategic self-awareness and in a demanding definition of leadership.
The Hogan coaching protocol sets out to help leaders understand their reputation, meaning how others see them, then to shift their behaviour so as to improve the effectiveness of their teams. It combines data from the Hogan inventories with an understanding of context, feedback, a development plan and behavioural support running over several months.
In this article you will find the principles that structure this approach, the reasons it works, and how it can contribute to developing leadership potential, transforming teams and building a more sustainable talent management strategy.
What does "coaching the Hogan way" mean?
Effective Hogan coaching follows a precise protocol, grounded in the principles of coaching based on personality assessment and in a more useful definition of leadership. Its purpose is to help leaders understand their reputation and change their behaviour so as to improve their team's effectiveness.
Recently, on the podcast The Science of Personality, co-hosts Ryne Sherman, PhD, and Blake Loepp welcomed two guests:
Trish Kellett and Jackie Sahm are the authors of Coaching the Hogan Way, a book setting out the Hogan coaching protocol in detail.
They began by explaining what had led them to write it. They then set out what coaches need to know about the Hogan protocol and why the methodology works so well. Finally, they shared several examples illustrating the results the approach produces.
The Hogan coaching protocol can thus make a very concrete contribution to unlocking leaders' potential, whatever their environment or sector.
As director of the Hogan Coaching Network, Trish has supported several hundred people and supervised the coaches running a six-month executive coaching process.
On her view, the Hogan protocol consistently produces the best results. Participants themselves describe Hogan coaching as an experience with significant impact.
Trish explains that she had long known Hogan held a genuinely distinctive approach, and that she wanted to share it more widely.
Jackie, for her part, placed the Hogan coaching protocol in the wider context of leadership development.
She points out that, despite the billions of dollars invested with good intentions in developing leaders, close to two thirds of those efforts are at best ineffective and at worst outright failures.
The quality of leadership therefore remains insufficient, even as the leadership development industry advances ever more ambitious promises of return on investment for executive success.
Jackie explains that she had seen coaching the Hogan way genuinely improve leadership and transform careers, and even lives. The positive results obtained were visible, effective and measurable.
The book thus grew out of the meeting of Jackie's and Trish's fields of expertise. The six-month protocol sets out to answer the limits of traditional approaches to leadership development through a proven coaching process.
The Hogan coaching protocol is aimed first at experienced coaches, able to integrate and interpret data from the Hogan inventories with subtlety.
Their coaching skills need to be solid already, and they need to be at ease using the insight from Hogan results. As Jackie says, the protocol assumes that the professional using it is a certified and competent coach.
The book is deliberately practical and accessible. It contains numerous examples along with case studies.
The protocol, designed to run over six months, aims to let coaches maximise their impact within a relatively short span. Hogan coaching focuses in particular on whether a leader's teams can perform in the context that is theirs.
As Jackie points out, leaders are often not fully aware of the impact they have on others.
Coaches not yet certified in the Hogan inventories, along with professionals responsible for leadership development and talent management, can also draw on the coaching philosophy underpinning the protocol.
Professionals wanting to differentiate their methodology will find several distinctive principles in the Hogan approach.
Leadership is neither a job title nor a level in the hierarchy.
It is a leader's ability to build and sustain a team capable of outperforming the competition.
This definition shifts attention from the person of the leader to their capacity to create the conditions for collective performance.
The Hogan coaching protocol keeps the coached leader's own manager and the HR sponsor involved throughout.
The aim is for all stakeholders to stay aligned for the duration of the coaching.
This approach embeds individual development within HR strategy, organisational culture and the concrete challenges facing the business.
The Hogan protocol helps leaders take a clear-eyed, unflattering look at themselves, and also understand how others see them.
This strategic self-awareness is the foundation of a genuinely relevant development plan.
The point is not only how a person describes themselves. What matters is understanding their reputation and the real impact of their behaviour on those around them.
Leadership effectiveness depends on context.
A personality characteristic that is a strength in one situation can become a limitation in another environment, another organisation or another culture.
Leadership development therefore cannot be separated from what the role demands, from organisational culture and from the reality the leader operates in.
On Hogan's view, any coaching engagement should begin with a valid and reliable personality assessment.
The reason is simple: personality profoundly shapes how a person leads.
Trish sums up the issue through a particularly telling comparison: asking participants what they think they should work on would be, for a doctor, like asking patients to diagnose themselves.
The comparison highlights the importance of an outside view of a leader's reputation.
Personality assessment supplies precisely that perspective. It moves past self-perception alone to identify behavioural tendencies liable to support, or conversely to limit, leadership effectiveness.
In broad terms, the coaching protocol covers several complementary dimensions: selecting the coach, analysing the context, personality assessment and feedback, building a development plan, changing behaviour and developing new skills, then assessing progress so as to encourage lasting success.
Each stage is an essential component of the protocol.
It starts with the initial meeting that lets coach and leader gauge the quality of their relationship and their fit. The process also incorporates the importance of 360-degree feedback and the construction of a development plan concrete enough to be implemented.
The results of the Hogan inventories also play a central part, thanks to the richness and subtlety of the information they supply about personality-related strengths, development opportunities and individual motives.
Jackie points out that using a simpler assessment, less scientific or chosen mainly because it costs less, would mean giving up a considerable share of the value a genuine assessment and development process can bring.
The quality of the initial assessment largely determines the quality of the coaching work that can follow.
The Hogan protocol is also meant to be universal.
Trish reports that it is already used successfully in various countries and across many sectors.
Experienced coaches can naturally adapt their techniques according to their reading of the context: organisational culture, sector, the leader's career history or cultural differences.
The fundamental structure of the protocol nonetheless carries across from one culture to another.
Because Hogan coaching supplies a clear structure and process, it also lets coaches devote more attention to building a trusting relationship with leaders.
The coach naturally brings their own social and emotional skills to the protocol.
They have to adapt their sessions so as to create a genuine personal connection with the leader they are supporting.
As Trish explains, the protocol is designed to support the coach, not to confine them. It is in no way intended to make the engagement rigid or restrictive.
The methodology supplies a frame; the coach's talent remains essential to bringing that frame to life and supporting the person effectively.
Jackie and Trish both shared stories of people whose journeys illustrate the transformative power of effective coaching.
For Jackie, seeing coaching's impact directly is one of the most rewarding aspects of the work.
She recounts the story of a leader who, seven years after his engagement, wrote a letter of thanks to his former executive coach. He wanted to thank him once more for a coaching experience that had profoundly changed his life and his career.
Jackie explains that participants often experience genuine moments of clarity and realisation on discovering their results through the Hogan interpretive framework.
Leaders regularly describe Hogan coaching as the best professional development experience they have had.
Many even regret not having had access to this kind of support earlier in their careers.
These reactions underline the importance of self-knowledge that is not purely introspective, but connected to how behaviour is actually perceived by colleagues.
Trish also shares the story of a leader she calls Carol.
Carol was marketing director of a division belonging to a Fortune 500 company. A creative marketer with an MBA, she led a high-performing team.
The board nonetheless considered that she lacked both a grip on financial matters and executive presence.
Trish therefore worked with Carol on her behaviour and on how she presented herself to others, so as to help her soften and adapt her style.
By the end of the six months, the board's perception had completely shifted. On Trish's account, its members had become genuine supporters of Carol.
Some months on, another Fortune 500 business acquired Carol's company.
Carol then secured the role of chief marketing officer within the acquiring company. She went on to become chief operating officer.
Today, she holds the role of CEO.
Her journey illustrates how coaching grounded in personality, context and reputation can have repercussions well beyond the engagement itself.
Coaching the Hogan Way gathers numerous case studies and success stories comparable to Carol's. They illustrate the long-term impact thorough leadership development work can have.
Jackie sums up the success of Hogan coaching as the capacity to offer support powerful enough to become indispensable to the person receiving it: genuinely transformative coaching.
That transformation is not always comfortable, however.
A coach sometimes needs enough steadiness and professional courage to convey information that is hard to hear, and to speak frankly with a leader about how their behaviour helps them succeed, but also about how some of that behaviour can work against them.
It is this balance that helps leaders genuinely grow and change, rather than simply giving them a pleasant experience.
The Hogan coaching protocol is a reminder of an essential reality in developing leaders: lasting change does not rest solely on new skills or new knowledge.
It begins with a thorough understanding of personality, of reputation and of the impact of behaviour in a given context.
Personality assessment then supplies a structured, objective starting point. Combined with coaching, feedback, an analysis of context and a concrete development plan, it can become a powerful lever for transformation.
For organisations, this approach reaches well beyond individual development. It strengthens talent management, identifies and develops leadership potential, supports team transformation and aligns managerial behaviour with organisational culture and HR strategy.
It is precisely this articulation between self-knowledge, collective effectiveness and organisational context that can help build more sustainable leadership and support long-term 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: The Hogan Coaching Protocol
