Personality and Job Performance - Case Study Example

? The Extent to which an Employee’s Performance is Predicted by their Personality Trait and how These Personality Traits Eventually Translate into the Individual’s Professional Careers (Name) (Institution) (Course) (Tutor) (Date) The Extent to which an Employee’s Performance is Predicted by their Personality Trait and how These Personality Traits Eventually Translate into the Individual’s Professional Careers What are Personality Traits? Throughout history, many laypersons and scholars have consistently assumed human being to essentially be rational creatures whose conduct is invariably found to be mainly guided by various abilities, propensities and beliefs. However, this view experienced radical changes earlier on in the 20th century when psychoanalysts proposed that the very essence of a given individual can basically be derived from the given individual’s irrational and unconscious processes. Behaviorists assumed people to be no more than a set of a myriad of learned responses to various environmental stimuli and reinforcements (Ayers, 2007). However, most of the contemporary research has opted to reject these two views due to their extremism. Contemporary research now takes a more commonsense approach in attempting to clearly define personality, the approach taken by this research is careful not to overlook some of the common traits such as sociability and persistence which are key in the determination of an individual’s behavior (Ayers, 2007). Personality traits are defined as various dimensions of a single individual’s personal differences they are essentially a set of distinguishing characteristics and qualities of a given individual. Traits determine the readiness of a person to consistently act, think or feel in a relatively similar manner when exposed to a variety of situations and stimuli (Ayers, 2007). The Different Concepts and Theories Used to Determine and Individual’s Personality and Their Personality Traits There are essentially two approaches that are used in the determination of an individual’s personality. These two approaches are the idiographic and nomothetic approach. The idiographic approach essentially tries to study the given individual’s personality as compared to another individual. In trying to gain a critical and deeper understanding of the individual, it looks at the person’s complexity, uniqueness as well as the richness. Over time, there are several key concepts and theories pertaining to personality that have been developed. One of these theories is the theory formulated by Carl Jung that is used to classify individuals as either having and introverted personality or an extraverted one. According to this theory, introverts tend to be reliable, shy, quiet and often like to plan things well in advance, this is in addition to their often being pessimistic. Inversely, extraverts are seen to extremely sociably as they often do not like being alone, they often tend to have a lot of friends, have an optimistic nature and tend to enjoy parties. In formulating this theory, Jung is seen to make a personality type matrix that is mainly based on four key functions that are normally used by people in the event that they are other individuals, situations or things. These four functions are feeling, sensing, intuition and thinking. According to Jung, everyone tends to make use of these functions but the inherent proportions tend to be vastly different. Jurgen Eysenck also developed a trait theory that has continued to be largely influential. The theory developed by Jurgen have been shown to mainly be genetically based. The model developed by Jurgen offers a means that helps in appropriately linking behavior, traits and types. The theory claims that each individual person essentially has a certain set of various identifiable traits which eventual form a trait cluster and the successive personality structure is then found to be hierarchical (Hayes, 2005). It was Charles Horton Cooley who was responsible for the development of the looking class self-concept. According to Cooley, the people who a person chooses to interact with are essentially that individual’s mirror. If the people that one chooses to interact with tend to be sweet and often favorable in their dealings with us, this supposedly leads to the development of a positive self-concept. However, in the event that the people that one chooses to interact with are found to be rather unfavorable and often quite rude towards us, this will generally result in the formation of a negative self-concept within us. According to Cooley’s theory, it can be derived that the environment in which an individual is in is a key determinant of the personality that an individual will eventually develop through various interactions (Johnson, 2008). Other concepts and theories that aimed at trying to analyze and classify human personality and the different personality traits include the two-sided self-concept that was developed by Carl Rogers, George Herbert Mead who claimed that the self is essentially made to consist of the two key components of the “I” and “Me” and that they two are key in determining a given individual’s personality and behavior (Jun, 2006). The trait clusters have eventually come to be known as the big five in approach that has in recent times gained a lot of acceptance. They help in informing us about our own individual personality. These set of personality traits were initially advocated by McRae and Costa and they further identified six traits which were categorized under each heading. The main super traits essentially serve to help describe the elements found to be common among the clustered sub-factors. The six traits that are seen to relate to openness and run on a scale ranging from explorer to preserver are feelings, actions, aesthetic, values, ideas and fantasy. Persons who have explorer traits are generally found to be intellectual, open-minded as well as creative in nature. These character traits are found to be more useful among persons pursuing careers as artists, architects, agent, entrepreneurs, and scientists. Persons who are deemed as having preserver traits are commonly found to be narrow minded in nature and these trait is thus found to be suitable for persons pursuing careers as finance managers, project managers as well as stage managers. The moderates tend to come in the middle of this spectrum and are usually interested in novelty in the event that it is demanded. The traits found to be relating to conscientiousness are found to be mainly self-discipline, competition, deliberation, dutifulness, achievement, striving and order. These traits are seen to run on a scale ranging from focused to flexible with persons portraying the focused trait generally being ambitious and very well organized, these traits are usually useful for leaders and senior company executives, however, person with the flexible trait are largely found to be disorganized and irresponsible traits which are useful for researchers, detectives as well as management consultants (Louw, et al, 1998). The six traits relating to extraversion are found to be warmth, excitement, positivity, activity, boldness as well as sociable. These are seen to run on a scale ranging from extravert to introvert. Extravert traits are found to be especially useful for persons in politics, arts as well as sales while the introvert traits are useful for persons in production management and branches of natural science. Persons in the middle of this scale are referred to as ambiverts and are ableto easily move from being mainly sociable to being isolated (Louw, et al, 1998). The traits categorized under agreeableness are found to include unselfishness, tender-mindedness, trust and obedience. These are found to range in a scale from adapter to challenger with persons having adapter qualities having a sympathetic and good nature, these traits are found to be good for social workers, psychologists as well as teachers. Persons having challenger traits are found to be mostly irritable, and uncooperative traits that are found to be beneficial for persons pursuing careers in military leadership and advertising while in the middle of the spectrum we have the negotiators that can be able to easily move from followership to leadership positions (Butzen, 2009). Neurotic traits are found to include self-consciousness, worry, anger, weakness, and discouragement. It runs on a scale from reactive to mainly resilient. Persons found to have reactive traits are usually anxious and depressed, such traits are useful for academics, social scientists as well as customer service professionals while persons with resilient traits are usually calm and self-assured useful traits for pilots, engineers as well as air-traffic controllers. Persons in the middle of this scales are referred to as the responsives and they are able to use their own level of emotionality mainly depending on the prevailing circumstances (Butzen, 2009). The Extent to Which an Individual’s Performance is Determined by their Personality Trait Employee performance is often found to invariably involve the setting up of various goals for a company’s employees as well as attempting to try and encourage these employees involvement in the various company activities that might have been planned. There have been several studies that have been carried out to try and establish the relationship that exits between employee performance and employee personality. Most of these studies have shown that there exists a relatively small correlation between these two factors and although many previous studies have been key in showing that personality in itself is essentially not a very good tool that can be used to sufficiently increase employee performance, there has been an increased use of various personality assessment tests used in the employment process that are being used with the intent of attempting to not only increase but also manipulate employee performance. The big five have been shown to impact the actual task performance by an employee. Traits such as neuroticism will tend to relate in a negative manner to job performance as negative employees are found to be more prone to low job satisfaction and performance, while extraversion tendencies tend to link positively to job performance mainly due to the ability by these employees to be positive and easily mingle with other colleagues. Agreeableness also helps employees get along with other employees quickly (Butzen, 2009). There are three key motivating factors that have been noted to affect the job performance of the big five, these are status, the constant striving to try and attain some semblance of communion, and accomplishment. These three factors are seen to play a critical factor in the motivation of The Drawbacks Associated with Positive Personality Traits Traits such as agreeableness and openness are seen to have several drawbacks as open people are more prone to skip jobs, while the good natured people might potentially give up on their own individual success in an effort to try and appease others. These three factors are seen to be key in the general motivation of employees and thus serve to encourage employees to try and work harder so as to be able to increase their employee performance (Barrick, Stewart and Piotrowski, 2002). How Personality Traits Eventually Translate into Various Individual Professional Careers It is possible to make a decision pertaining to a professional career by providing a clear definition of an individual’s personality after carefully observing their inherent personality traits. However, it is important to ensure that one takes into account other key elements other than personality in the selection of one’s career path. Individuals should ensure that they try to clearly examine their abilities, interest, principles and skills in combination with their specific personality type. It is only after the critical analysis of all the collective mentioned aspects that individuals can be able to select the most appropriate career path. One of the most common approaches that is commonly used by career guidance professionals is the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator that is usually abbreviated as MBTI. The MBTI is essentially based on the Carl Jung theoretical approach that seeks to classify individual into categories on the basis of their fondness level (Quenk, 2009). The theory provides four different contrasting pairs of preferences that are used in the identification of personality. The first of these categories is the Extroversion versus the Introversion category that mainly classifies individuals on the basis of their personal energizing ability, the second category used in this classification is Sensing versus intuition that is mainly based on an individual’s information recognition ability, the third category which examines the individual’s decision making ability is the thinking versus feeling while the fourth category is the judging versus perceiving which provides an analysis of how an individual lives their life. These letters are normally typed in bold and are then used to represent a combination of about sixteen different personality traits that help determine and individual’s personality and possible career path (Quenk, 2009). Bibliography Ayers, S., et al. (2007) Cambridge handbook of psychology, health and medicine. Cambridge [etc.] : Cambridge University Press. Barrick, R. M., Stewart, L. G, and Piotrowski, M., (2002). Personality and Job Performance: Test of the Mediating Effects of Motivation Among Sales Representatives. Journal of Applied Psychology 2002. Vol. 87. No. 1. 000-000 Hayes, N., 2005. Foundations of psychology. London : Thomson learning. Johnson, P. D., (2008). Contemporary sociological theory : an integrated multi-level approach. New York : Springer. Jun, S. J., (2006). The social construction of public administration : Interpretive and critical perspectives. Albany : State University of New York Press. Louw, A. D., et al. (1998) Human development. Cape Town : Kagiso Tertiary. Butzen, D. N., (2009). NEO-PI-R Five-Factor Model Facets as Predictors of Forgiveness. ProQuest. Quenk, L. N., (2009). Essentials of Myers-briggs Type Indicator Assessment Epub Edition. John Wiley & Sons Inc. Read More