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Adam Kreek

Founder Built for Hard

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Hogan vs. Leadership Circle vs. Predictive Index

posted in Leadership

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Adam Kreek

Three leadership assessments. Three angles. One goal: better leadership.

Leaders ask me some version of this all the time:

“Which assessment should I do?”

That question is a bit like asking:
“Should I use a tape measure, a level, or an MRI?”

All useful.
All different.
All mildly annoying if you use the wrong one for the job.

In my work coaching leaders across engineering, tech, finance, and scientific/health organizations (examples in the case studies section), three tools consistently earn their keep:

  • The Predictive Index (PI)
  • The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP)
  • Hogan (Leadership Forecast + Hogan 360, depending on the engagement)

Disclosure (because transparency is a leadership competency): I’m certified in LCP and PI, and I debrief leaders in Hogan.

This post is a practical compare/contrast: strengths, sweet spots, gaps, and the “gains” you can expect from each—plus a few real-world (composite) stories from the trenches.

The fastest way to choose: start with the question

Here are the three questions I hear most often:

  1. “How do I naturally lead, and where am I bending myself to fit the role?”
    → Predictive Index (PI) is your best first stop.
  2. “How am I experienced by other people… really?”
    → Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) (and/or a 360 like Hogan 360) is the mirror.
  3. “What will make me successful long-term—and what might derail me under stress?”
    → Hogan is built for that conversation (bright side, dark side, inside drivers).

Quick comparison (plain English)

1) Predictive Index

Six minutes to a conversation that usually matters

What I like about PI is simple:

In about six minutes, you have a high-quality conversation starter for leadership development.

PI’s Behavioural Assessment is designed to measure natural behavioural drives and needs using four primary factors (often referred to as A, B, C, D): Dominance, Extraversion, Patience, and Formality. (It also references Factor E as a modifier related to subjectivity/objectivity in decision-making.)

The PI feature that opens the door

PI gives you:

  • Self = your natural style
  • Self-Concept = how you believe you’re expected to behave in your current role
  • Synthesis = the blended “day-to-day at work” pattern

And this is the gold:

Comparing Self to Self-Concept shows where you’re adapting—and where you may be spending energy to “perform the role” instead of inhabiting it.

When Self and Self-Concept are close, leaders often feel steady.
When they’re far apart, leaders often feel… tired, even if they’re “doing fine.”

Strengths (PI)

  • Speed + clarity (you can’t coach what you can’t name, and PI names things quickly).
  • Natural vs adaptive insight (where emotional labour shows up).
  • Practical management strategies baked into reporting.
  • Easy team language using Reference Profiles.

Sweet spots (PI)

  • New leader transitions (first 90 days)
  • Role clarity + expectation resets
  • Team friction (“why do we keep annoying each other in the same predictable way?”)
  • Leadership development kick-offs when you need momentum quickly

Gaps (PI)

  • PI doesn’t tell you how you land on others. It tells you your drives and your adaptation, not your reputation.
  • It’s a map, not a verdict. Without a debrief, people can over-identify with it (“I’m just like this”). That’s not development; that’s a label-maker.

Bottom line: PI is the quickest way I know to start a serious leadership conversation without needing a three-week runway.

2) Leadership Circle Profile

The 360 that shows both behaviour and the “why” underneath it

The Leadership Circle Profile (LCP) is a 360-degree assessment that measures Creative Competencies and Reactive Tendencies—and connects them to the beliefs and assumptions that drive behaviour.

It’s built to answer a blunt question:

How are my behaviours and mindset helping (or constraining) my intended leadership impact?

The LCP structure (what you’re actually looking at)

LCP layers two kinds of information:

  • Leadership competencies (what you do)
  • Internal assumptions (the habitual thinking that fuels what you do)

The circle itself is the key:

  • Top half: Creative Competencies (what effective leadership looks like)
  • Bottom half: Reactive Tendencies (self-limiting patterns—often fear-based)

Why I’m such a fan of LCP (in one sentence)

It doesn’t just tell you what you’re doing.
It points to why you keep doing it—especially under pressure.

The science / validation angle (the part finance leaders want)

Leadership Circle has published research connecting LCP dimensions with Leadership Effectiveness and a Business Performance Index, in a study of thousands of managers and executives.

Strengths (LCP)

  • It’s a reputation mirror (self vs others, clearly visible).
  • It maps development direction: grow Creative, reduce Reactive.
  • It links inner assumptions to outer behaviour, which is where durable change comes from.
  • Business relevance backed by published correlation studies.

Sweet spots (LCP)

  • Leaders who are “getting results” but paying a relational or cultural cost
  • High potentials moving into larger scope (strategy, influence, culture)
  • Teams and exec groups trying to shift behaviour norms, not just goals
  • Any leader ready for truth that comes with receipts

Gaps (LCP)

  • It takes coordination: raters, timing, trust.
  • It can be emotionally intense if someone isn’t prepared to hear how they’re experienced.
  • Like any 360, it’s only as good as the process: rater selection, anonymity, and debrief skill matter.

Bottom line: LCP is a development accelerant. It’s not gentle, but it is fair—when done well.

3) Hogan

The structured “leadership risk and reputation” lens

When people say “Hogan,” they often mean one of two things:

  1. Hogan’s personality assessment suite (often delivered as the Leadership Forecast Series)
  2. Hogan 360 (multi-rater feedback)

Both are useful. They answer slightly different questions.

Hogan Leadership Forecast Series (personality + derailers + values)

Hogan’s Leadership Forecast Series is often used to understand:

  • performance capabilities (day-to-day)
  • challenges / derailers
  • core drivers (values and motivators)

In plain terms, it gives you three lenses:

1) Bright side: How you show up when you’re at your best

That’s the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI): the “bright side” lens.

2) Dark side: How your strengths get weird under stress

That’s the Hogan Development Survey (HDS): derailment risk.

3) Inside: What drives you and what kind of culture you create

That’s MVPI: values, drivers, and interests.

This is where Hogan can be uniquely powerful:
It doesn’t just ask “Can you do the job?”
It asks “Will you enjoy the job—and will the job enjoy you back?”

Hogan 360 (reputation feedback with a benchmark backbone)

Hogan 360 compares:

  • a leader’s self-evaluation
  • with input from others
  • plus benchmark comparisons (depending on the program setup)

It’s structured, clear, and benchmark-heavy—which many leaders secretly love because it feels like a scoreboard.

About that “standardized profile” feeling

Hogan can feel like it’s pointing toward an “ideal self” because it often sits inside benchmark norms and development framing.

My take:

  • Hogan isn’t trying to turn you into a leadership clone.
  • It’s trying to show you how you’re likely to be experienced, what will be rewarded, and what will cost you—especially as pressure rises.

Strengths (Hogan)

  • Predictive structure: day-to-day strengths, stress risks, and values in one ecosystem.
  • Strong psychometric foundation across long-standing instruments.
  • Reputation focus: what others see, reward, and remember.
  • Hogan 360 adds benchmarked, structured multi-rater feedback.

Sweet spots (Hogan)

  • Succession planning and high-stakes roles (where derailment is expensive)
  • Leaders moving into more complex influence environments
  • Development work where values-fit and culture impact matter
  • Leaders who want a structured model and don’t mind data

Gaps (Hogan)

  • Without a skilled debrief, leaders can get defensive (“So you’re saying I’m doomed?” No. I’m saying you’re human.)
  • Some leaders find it abstract until you translate it into “Tuesday at 9:00am with your team.” That translation is the coaching work.

Bottom line: Hogan is exceptional for seeing capability, risk, and drivers—and for making development specific instead of vague.

Where they overlap (and why that’s useful)

All three tools, in different ways, help answer:

  • What are your patterns?
  • What’s working?
  • What’s costing you?
  • What will you do differently next week?

But here’s the key distinction:

  • PI gives you a fast look at drive + adaptation (internal experience).
  • LCP gives you a deep look at behaviour + impact + assumptions (reputation + inner operating system).
  • Hogan gives you a structured look at strengths, derailers, and values (and optionally a benchmarked 360).

Used together, they triangulate.
Used alone, they still work—if you choose the right one for the right question.

How I tend to sequence them (in real life)

No one needs all three just to feel productive.

A common, effective sequence is:

  1. PI first
    Quick insight. Immediate language. Natural vs adaptive tension shows up fast.
  2. LCP next (when reputation and impact matter)
    Because leaders don’t operate in isolation. Your leadership is a user experience. The users get a vote.
  3. Hogan when stakes are high or stress patterns keep repeating
    Especially when you need to understand derailers and values/culture fit at a deeper level.

Sometimes we reverse 2 and 3 depending on the organization’s needs (succession vs development vs team culture).

Four composite client stories

Engineering, tech, finance, and scientific organizations

These are composites from patterns I’ve seen across many leaders and engagements (details changed, no one is being publicly diagnosed on the internet).

1) Engineering / industrial leadership: “The standard is high. So is the blood pressure.”

In engineering-heavy environments, leaders often carry the weight of safety, compliance, uptime, and cost control.

In one composite case:

  • PI showed a leader with strong drive for control and structure.
  • Their Self-Concept looked different—reflecting pressure to be more outwardly “people-first” while still keeping standards rigid. That gap became a clean coaching entry point: Where are you adapting, and what’s the cost?
  • LCP then surfaced a classic pattern: high achievement focus, paired with reactive tendencies that showed up as over-control when stress spiked.
  • The gain wasn’t “be nicer.” It was: delegate scope properly, build trust routines, and reduce reactivity so standards stayed high without crushing the humans.

Translation: same results, less friction.

2) Tech leadership: “Fast is good… until it becomes frantic.”

In tech (especially scaling organizations), leaders can be brilliant and still create chaos—usually by accident.

In a composite story:

  • PI revealed a “high-pace, high-change” preference, with adaptation showing up as forced patience. That’s where burnout hides: not in workload alone, but in sustained behavioural stretching.
  • LCP made the impact visible: strong getting-things-done energy, but the team experience was inconsistent, with listening and a tendency to “solve” people instead of leading them.
  • Hogan (when used) often helps tech leaders see the risk pattern: under pressure, strengths can become sharp—certainty becomes dismissiveness, speed becomes impulsiveness, confidence becomes… a TED Talk nobody asked for.

The gain: slower leadership moves at the right moments—the kind that prevents rework, prevents churn, and keeps smart people from quietly updating their LinkedIn.

3) Finance leadership: “Trust is the product.”

In finance, leadership isn’t just about performance. It’s about credibility.

In a composite story:

  • PI often highlights strong structure and precision needs (which finance rewards), plus adaptation into more assertiveness when growth targets rise.
  • LCP frequently reveals the “nice leader” trap: a leader who avoids conflict to preserve harmony—until performance issues simmer and become resentment.
  • Hogan MVPI can be particularly useful because it clarifies what actually drives a leader, which shapes culture and decision tradeoffs.

The gain: leaders learn to pair trust + standards.
High care, high clarity.
Because finance punishes vagueness.

4) Scientific / health organizations: “Mission-driven leaders can still be reactive.”

Scientific and health organizations often attract leaders with high purpose and high standards.

In a composite story:

  • PI surfaced a leader with strong drive for precision and stability, paired with an adaptive push toward higher assertiveness because the environment demanded fast decisions.
  • LCP showed what many mission-driven leaders don’t love hearing: when stress rises, “high standards” can become emotional distance, control, or avoidance.
  • Hogan HDS language is useful here: stress can amplify certain tendencies that damage trust if unmanaged.

The gain: psychological safety + clear decision pathways, so the mission doesn’t get sabotaged by the leader’s nervous system.

So… which one should you pick?

If you want a direct answer:

  • Pick PI when you want speed, clarity, and a powerful “where am I adapting?” conversation.
  • Pick LCP when you want deep feedback on your leadership brand and a clear growth pathway from reactive to creative leadership.
  • Pick Hogan when you want structured insight into strengths, derailers, and values—especially for high-stakes roles and long-term performance.

And if you’re thinking, “I want all three,” that’s not wrong.
It just means you’re ready to do the work—and not just collect PDFs like leadership Pokémon.

Links and references

Related ViDA posts

External references (high quality)

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Adam Kreek and his team are on a mission to positively impact organizational cultures and leaders who make things happen.

He authored the bestselling business book, The Responsibility Ethic: 12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen. 

Want to increase your leadership achievement? Learn more about Kreek’s coaching here.

Want to book a keynote that leaves a lasting impact? Learn more about Kreek’s live event service here.

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