Zsolt Feher on Personality, People Decisions, and Building Smarter Small Businesses

By Kekeletso Nkele, small.news Assistant

Q: How do you think you can know if you should have a business or have a job in a way that is more truthful to who you are, as opposed to as a reaction to what you don’t like?

A: This has always been an issue, not just now or in the last decade, but throughout.

Even when societal changes cause job losses and many turn to entrepreneurship, that’s not the right approach. The question remains: how can you determine whether being an entrepreneur is your path?

Q: What’s your assessment, and how do you use that to make your own decisions about what you will do, what you won’t do, and what you’ll take on?

A: Yeah. We have many skills. If I went through the entire thing, the three layers of personality, it would be overwhelming.

For sure, I’m a very commerce-driven person. I like to be recognized. I have high recognition, which means I enjoy being in the limelight and on the stage. I enjoy being in the crowd, but rather in front of it, not within it, if that makes sense.

High ambition, which means you are a driven person. You want to go ahead. You have goals.

Q: So, can you change your personality, do you think? I mean, I know you just touched on it

A: In the long run, it depends on the scale. If someone is extremely low-adjusted, like a one-digit person who is very anxious, always thinks about past mistakes, and probably has not had a good relationship with authority, they will never be super high.

I would say there is a certain segment of coachability in the middle. Coachability isn’t for everyone. A coachable person who is ready to be coached needs both interest and willingness.

If they have none of these, they will never be coached; it will be camouflaged. So don’t invest time and energy, as a coach or coachee, in the process. Even if you are coachable, the range of coachability is relatively small.

Q: What is different about Hogan Assessments?

A: Yeah, I think the most important thing that you mentioned about any of these tools, what anyone out there is using, is that you need to look at what we call reliability and validity. Actually, how valid and how reliable the tool is that you use, and how much it gets to, you know, giving you a data point to make better people-related decisions. Many of the other tools you mentioned are nice team-building games or a good introduction to the business.

When it comes to the real deal, having a data point that helps you make better people-related decisions is key. Many focus on ease, candidate experience, or pricing, but they forget that the most important thing is making better decisions. For example, if you interview 100 people and want to find the top 10, many tools might find you one of those top 10. I can give you six.

Q: Do you think the assessments you guys use are best for, like, identifying the right fit?

A: t’s really just to understand from every organization what their needs are. As an entrepreneur, if you start your journey, assess yourself to understand that this is really for you. If it’s set and done, yes, this is for me, cool, fantastic, we actually find our way to go forward, cool.

But maybe three months from now, I’m hiring my first person. Who do I hire? Again, this is not a sales pitch, but for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, it’s much more important to make better hires than for big corporations.

For small and medium-sized companies, it’s much more important who they hire. In larger ones with thousands of people, if you screw up 10 times, it doesn’t matter.

It’s collateral damage. But if you hire one person who does not fit your organization, lacks the necessary skills, or lacks motivation to fit the culture or industry, it will fail. Then you’ve wasted a lot of energy.

Q: Through the lens of thinking about small businesses specifically, what are you most worried about right now?

A: Yeah, I would say there’s, interestingly, nothing different than whatever we have seen before in terms of changes available. And as we know, the only thing that is fixed is change. There’s nothing else, really.

I think there is a huge opportunity right now, especially for small businesses with an established clientele. For new ones, it will be a hard situation to enter. I believe not everyone needs to develop an AI product in the age of AI.

I see an opportunity for established businesses to market themselves more effectively, make their processes more accessible, and better understand their customers. Once they understand their customers and have an existing pool, they can communicate more personally using AI or better organize data. This means they can utilize their clientele longer. I think this is an opportunity right now.

Q: If you had a Magic Silver Wand and could wave it right now to make one thing true for every small business owner instantly, what would it be?

A: Yeah, I was thinking about this one because you gave it to me earlier. I think it would be one thing: Creating a reputable system for every small and medium-sized organization, starting with HR. In any business, you have to make two important decisions: one related to money, the other to people. And we have a lot to say about the second one.

If you are in a small or medium-sized organization, it’s not, you know, a waste of time to do ad hoc things; it’s actually about investing time in creating a system. When it comes to people-related matters, it’s worth your time. So, creating that single system and giving that to every entrepreneur out there, that this is how you’re going to hire people from now on, or develop people, that’s going to be half of your success, and consider that.

Q: How do we support you in connecting with you and buying from you?

A: Hogan Assessments is available.

We have thousands of partners and distributors around the world, including here in the U.S.; many may direct clientele, typically working with larger organizations. But as I said, I believe that our impact can be way bigger in smaller organizations. So don’t hesitate to reach out if we can help in any way. If you hire and develop individuals in your organization.

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