Chapter 5: Personalities & Values

Handout 01- Personalities

Personality:
 A dynamic concept describing the growth and development of a person’s whole psychological system.
 The sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to, and interacts with, others –described in terms of
measurable traits.
 Personality encompasses a person’s relatively stable feelings, thoughts, and behavioral patterns.
 Each of us has a unique personality that differentiates us from other people, and understanding someone’s personality
gives us clues about how that person is likely to act and feel in a variety of situations.
 To lead effectively, it is helpful to understand the personalities of different employees. Having this knowledge is also
useful for placing people into jobs and organizations.
Measuring Personality.
The ability to measure personality traits to help managers to select appropriate employees and better match workers to jobs. The
most common means of measuring personality is using:
 Self-report surveys: Individuals evaluate themselves on a series of factors.
 Potentially inaccurate due to falsehoods, impression management, or the momentary emotional state of the candidate.
 Observer-ratings surveys provide an independent assessment of personality, coworker or another observer does the rating.
Personality Determinants.
Personality appears to be development of both hereditary and environmental factors. Of the two, heredity seems to have the most
impact.
 Heredity: Factors determined at pregnancy period; one’s biological, physiological, and inherent psychological makeup.
 These are factors determined at conception such as physical stature, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle
composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms.
 The heredity approach argues that personality is determined at the chromosome level.
Personality traits
 Personality traits are characteristics that describe an individual’s behavior that including shy, aggressive, submissive, lazy,
ambitious, loyal, and timid? Are exhibited in a large number of situations.
 The more consistent the characteristic over time, and the more frequently it occurs in diverse situations, the more
important the trait is in describing the individual.
 Two of the dominant frameworks for describing relevant personality traits are the MBTI and the Big Five Model. The
Myers-Briggs Type B. Indicator (MBTI). Both describe a person’s total personality through exploration of the facets of
personality.

Strengths and Weaknesses of (MBTI) personality framework & Big Five model
Personality framework
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
 A personality test that taps four characteristic sand classifies people into one of 16 personality types.
 Respondents are asked a series of situational questions and their answers are categorized on four scales to determine
personality type.

a. Four Classification Scales:

 Extraverted vs Introverted (E or I). People scoring higher on the extraverted sideof the scale are more outgoing, social,
and assertive while those on the introvert side are quiet and shy.
 Sensing vs Intuitive (S or N). Sensing individuals are practical, enjoy order, and are detail oriented. Intuitive people are
more “big picture” oriented and rely on “gut” feelings.
 Thinking vs Feeling (T or F). This scale is important in decision making: thinkers use reason and logic while feelers use
emotions and their own personal values to make decisions.
 Judging vs Perceiving (J or P). Judgers are control-oriented and enjoy structure and order. Perceivers are more flexible
and spontaneous.

b. Sixteen Personality Types

These classifications together describe 16 personality types, with every person identified with one of the items in each of
the four pairs. Let’s explore several examples.
 INTJs are visionaries: They usually have original minds and great drive for their own ideas and purposes.
They are skeptical, critical, independent, determined, and often stubborn.
  ESTJs are organizers. They are realistic, logical, analytical, and decisive and have a natural head or business or
mechanics. They like to organize and run activities.
 ENTPs are conceptualizer. They are innovative, individualistic, versatile, and attracted to entrepreneurial ideas.
This person tends to be resourceful in solving challenging problems but may neglect routine assignments.
 In spite of its popularity, evidence is mixed about the MBTI’s validity as a measure of personality—with most of the
evidence suggesting it isn’t.
 The best we can say is that the MBTI can be a valuable tool for increasing self-awareness and providing career guidance.

Weakness of the MBTI

 One problem is that it forces a person into either one type or another (that is, you’re either introverted or extraverted). There
is no in-between, though people can be both extraverted and introverted to some degree.
 Another problem is with the reliability of the measure: When people retake the assessment, they often receive different
results.
 An additional problem is in the difficulty of interpretation
 Finally, results from the MBTI tend to be unrelated to job performance.

The Big Five Model.

An impressive body of research supports that five basic dimensions underlie all other personality dimensions.
The model (particularly one factor, conscientiousness) appears to be positively related to job performance and can be used
as an employment selection or screening tool.
Five Factors
a) Extraversion.is a comfort level with relationships. Extroverts tend to be expressive, assertive, and sociable.
 Scoring high in this factor means the respondent is more gregarious, assertive, and sociable.
 Introverts tend to be reserved, timid, and quiet.
 Extraverts tend to be happy in their jobs but may be impulsive and absent themselves from work to take on
some other, more sensational tasks.
b) Agreeableness.
 It’s an Individual’s propensity to defer to others.
 People who are high on agreeableness are cooperative, warm, and trusting. Low agreeableness is indicated by
people who are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
 High scorers are cooperative, warm, and trusting while low scorers are cold, disagreeable, and antagonistic.
 Agreeable workers are less likely to be involved in drugs and excessive drinking.
c) Conscientiousness.
 It is a measure of reliability. A highly conscientious person is responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent.
 Those who score low on this dimension are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
 High scorers are responsible, organized, dependable, and persistent.
 Low scorers are easily distracted, disorganized, and unreliable.
 Not surprisingly, this is the key determinant of job performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) on
the Big Five. However, conscientious people also tend not to take risks and may find organizational change
difficult to handle.
d) Emotional Stability.
 Describes a person’s ability to withstand stress. People with positive emotional stability tend to be calm, self-
confident, and secure.
 Those with high negative scores tend to be nervous, anxious, depressed, and insecure.
 The more stable a person, the better he (or she) can handle stress.
 People with high emotional stability tend to become self-confident and secure.
 8) They often have higher life and job satisfaction. Low emotional stability scorers tend to be nervous, anxious,
depressed, and insecure.
 Yet, surprisingly, low-scoring people make better and faster decisions when in a bad mood than do stable people.
 e) . Openness to Experience.
 It suggests the range of interests and fascination with novelty. Extremely open people are creative, curious,
and artistically sensitive.
 Those at the other end of the openness category are conventional and find comfort in the familiar.
a. People who score low on this factor tend to be conventional and enjoyfamiliar circumstances.
b. High scorers tend to be creative, curious, and artistically sensitive.
c. People high in this factor deal better with organizational change and are more adaptable.
How do the Big Five traits predict behavior at work?
There are many relationships between the Big Five personality dimensions and job performance
1) Conscientiousness at Work.
i. Conscientiousness is important to overall organizational success
ii. Conscientiousness is the best predictor of job performance. However, the other Big Five traits are also related to aspects of
performance and have other implications for work and for life
iii. “Personal attributes related to conscientiousness and agreeableness are important for success across many jobs, spanning
across low to high levels of job complexity, training, and experience.”
iv. Employees who score higher in conscientiousness develop higher levels of job knowledge, probably because highly
conscientious people learn more (conscientiousness may be related to GPA), and these levels correspond with higher levels
of job performance.
v. Conscientious people are also more able to maintain their job performance when faced with abusive supervision, according
to a recent study in India.
2) All five traits also have other implications for OB.
1) People who score high on are emotional stability happier than those who score low.
a) People with high emotional stability can adapt to unexpected or changing demands in the workplace.
b) Of the Big Five traits, emotional stability is most strongly related to life satisfaction, job satisfaction, and low stress levels.
c) This is probably true because high scorers are more likely to be positive and optimistic in their thinking and experience
fewer negative emotions.
2) People low on emotional stability are hyper-vigilant (looking for problems or impending signs of danger) and are especially
vulnerable to the physical and psychological effects of stress.
3) Extraverts tend to be happier in their jobs and in their lives as a whole.
a) They experience more positive emotions than do introverts, and they more freely express these feelings.
b) They also tend to perform better in jobs that require significant inter-personal interaction, perhaps because they have more
social skills— they usually have more friends and spend more time in social situations than introverts.
c) Finally, extraversion is a relatively strong predictor of leadership emergence in groups; extraverts are more socially
dominant, “take charge” sorts of people, and they are generally more assertive than introverts.
d) One downside of extraversion is that extraverts are more impulsive than introverts; they are more likely to be absent from
work and engage in risky behavior such as unprotected sex, drinking, and other impulsive or sensation-seeking acts.
4) Individuals who score high on to experience openness are morecreative in science and art than those who score low.
a) Because creativity is important to leadership, open people are more likely to be effective leaders.
b) They also are more comfortable with ambiguity and change than those who score lower on this trait.
c) As a result, open people cope better with organizational change and are more adaptable in changing contexts. Recent
evidence also suggests, however, that they are especially susceptible to workplace accidents.
5) You might expect agreeable people to be happier than disagreeable people.
a) When people choose romantic partners, friends, or organizational team members, agreeable individuals are usually their
first choice.
 b) Agreeable individuals are better liked than disagreeable people, which explains why they tend to do better in interpersonally
oriented jobs such as customer service.
c) They also are more compliant and rule abiding and less likely to get into accidents as a result.
d) Agreeable children do better in school and as adults are less likely to get involved in drugs or excessive drinking.
e) They are also less likely to engage in organizational deviance. One downside of agreeableness is that it is associated with
lower levels of career success (especially earnings).
f) Agreeable individuals may be poorer negotiators; they are so concerned with pleasing others that they often don’t negotiate
as much for themselves as they might.
Interestingly, people live longer because they take better conscientious care of themselves (they eat better and exercise more) and
engage in fewer risky behaviors like smoking, drinking and drugs, and risky sexual or driving behavior.
a) Still, probably because they’re so organized and structured, conscientious people don’t adapt as well to changing
contexts.
b) They are generally performance oriented and have more trouble learning complex skills early in the training
process because their focus is on performing well rather than on learning.
c) Finally, they are often less creative than less conscientious people, especially artistically.
The Dark Triad
The Dark is a group of negative personality traits including Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy – all three of which
have relevance for organizational behavior.
a) Machiavellianism: the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends
can justify means.
 A considerable amount of research has related high- and low-Mach personalities to behavioral outcomes.
 High Machs manipulate more, win more, are persuaded less, and persuade others more than do low Machs.
 Yet high-Mach outcomes are moderated by situational factors.
 High Machs flourish: when they interact face to face with others rather than indirectly; when the situation has a minimal
number of rules and regulations, allowing latitude for improvisation; and when emotional involvement with details
irrelevant to winning distracts low Machs.
 Thus, whether high Machs make good employees depends on the type of job.
 In jobs that require bargaining skills (such as labor negotiation) or that offer substantial rewards for winning (such as
commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive.
 But if ends can’t justify the means, there are absolute standards of behavior, or the three situational factors we noted are not
in evidence, our ability to predict a high Mach’s performance will be severely curtailed.

b) Narcissism: refers to the tendency to be arrogant, have a grandiose sense one self-importance, require excessive
admiration, and have a sense of entitlement.
 The term is from the Greek myth of Narcissus, a man so vain and proud he fell in love with his own image.
 In psychology, narcissism describes a person who has a grandiose sense ofself-importance, requires excessive admiration,
has a sense of entitlement,and is arrogant.
 Narcissism can have pretty toxic consequences.
 A study found that although narcissists thought they were better leaders than their colleagues, their supervisors actually
rated them as worse.
 For example, an Oracle executive described that company’s CEO Larry Ellison as follows: “The difference between God
and Larry is that God does not believe he is Larry.”
 Because narcissists often want to gain the admiration of others and receive affirmation of their superiority, they tend to
“talk down” to those who threaten them, treating others as if they were inferior.
 Narcissists also tend to be selfish and exploitive and believe others exist for their benefit.
 Their bosses rate them as less effective at their jobs than others, particularly when it comes to helping other people.

c) Psychopathy: is the tendency for a lack of concern for others and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions cause harm.
  In the IB context, psychopathy is defined as a lack of concern for others, and a lack of guilt or remorse when their actions
cause harm.
 Measures of psychopathy attempt to assess the person’s motivation tocomply with social norms; willingness to use deceit to
obtain desired ends and the effectiveness of those efforts; impulsivity; and disregard,that is, lack of empathic concern for
others.
 The literature is not consistent about whether psychopathy or other aberrant personality traits are important to work
behavior.
 Organizations wishing to assess psychopathy or other traits need to exercise caution.
 The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits discrimination against individuals with “a physical or mental
impairment.”
 This does not mean organizations must hire every mentally ill person who applies, or that they cannot consider mental
illness in hiring decisions.
Other Personality Traits Relevant to OB.
1. Core Self-Evaluation .This is a measure of the degree to which a person likes or dislikes him- (or her-) self.

 Positive core self-evaluators like themselves and see themselves as being effective, capable, and in charge of their
environment. They tend to perform better because they set ambitious goals and persist at achieving them.
 Negative evaluators tend to dislike themselves, question their capabilities, and view themselves as powerless over
their environment.
2. Self- Monitoring- Describes the ability of people to adjust their behaviors to fit external, situational factors.

 High self-monitors are very adaptable and sensitive to external cues. People with low self-monitoring tend to have
high behavioral consistency while high self-monitors can appear chameleon-like to their co-workers.
 High self-monitors tend to get better performance ratings, take leadership positions, are more mobile, and take up
central positions in their organizations, even though they have less commitment to their organization.
3. Proactive Personality - People who identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful
change occurs.
 Individuals with this type of personality tend to identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere
until meaningful change occurs.
 People with this personality attribute are highly prized by organizations for obvious reasons.
 They are often leaders or change agents and will challenge the status quo.
 Proactive people tend to have successful careers but may not be a good match for organizations who do not value
change.
Personality and Situations
Situation Strength Theory.
 Situation strength theory proposes that the way personality translates into behavior depends on the strength of the situation.
By situation strength, we mean the degree to which norms, cues, or standards dictate appropriate behavior.
 Strong situations pressure us to exhibit the right behavior, clearly show us what that behavior is, and discourage the wrong
behavior.
 In weak situation, “anything goes,” and thus we are freer to express our personality in our behaviors.
 Thus, research suggests that personality traits better predict behavior in weak situations than in strong ones.
 Thus, personality traits better predict behavior in weak situations than in strong one.

Researchers have analyzed situation strength in organizations in terms of four elements.

1. Clarity: the degree to which cues about work duties and responsibilities are available and clear. Jobs high in clarity produce
strong situations because individuals can readily determine what to do.
2. Consistency: the extent to which cues regarding work duties and responsibilities are compatible with one another. Jobs
with high consistency represent strong situations because all the cues point toward the same desired behavior.
3. Constraints: the extent to which individuals’ freedom to decide or act is limited by forces outside their control. Jobs with
many constraints represent strong situations because an individual has limited individual discretion
 4. Consequences: the degree to which decisions or actions have important implications for the organization or its members,
clients, supplies, and so on. Jobs with important consequences represent strong situations because the environment is
probably heavily structured to guard against mistakes.

Trait Activation Theory (TAT).

TAT predicts that some situations, events, or interventions “activate” a trait morethan others.
 Research shows that in a supportive environment, everyone behavesprosaically, but in an environment that is not so nice,
whether an individual has the personality to behave prosaically makes a major difference.
 Together, situation strength and trait activation theories show that the debate over nature versus nurture might best be
framed as nature and nurture. Not only does each affect behavior, but they interact with one another.
 Personality affects work behavior and the situation affects work behavior, but when the situation is right, the power of
personality to predict behavior is even higher.