The Relationship Between Personality And Job Performance

Conscientiousness Personality

Discuss bout the Personality and Job Performance.

Modern workplaces have experienced extensive changes in all aspects of the organization running including workforce diversity that brings in different personalities. An individual personality encompasses a pattern of attitudes, thoughts, and behaviors towards a certain situation, hence, act as a key determinant of how people respond to different circumstances. Job performance refers to the ability of an employee to handle the assigned duties successfully at work. The modern leaders must be aware of different personality and how they impact on the job performance to help them develop ways to capitalize on the diversity. Various scholars have emphasized of on the big five personalities as the acceptable personality structure that encompasses interrelated traits and captures different personalities. The dimensions of the big five personalities include Conscientiousness, Openness, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism.  Hence, the study aims at evaluating the relationship between personality and job performance and give recommendations to organization behavior scholars and leaders on how to utilize the knowledge for efficient organization performance.

According to Barrick & Mount (1991), Conscientiousness is the individual’s ability to exercise self-control and organizing oneself to execute the assigned tasks. A conscientious person is punctual, determined and guided by the need to achieve. Individuals who are result-orientated will engage in organizational duties willingly and pursue the set goals for personal fulfillment. Ahmad, Ather & Hussain (2014) note that people with conscientiousness personality traits are hard workers’ and responsible and can be relied upon to deliver good quality results. Taking responsibility for one’s action is a critical drive to commitment and the desire to perform fulfilling duties.  Being responsible translates to hard work and commitment to achieve the desired results and grow as an individual and the organization. Thus, employees who are conscientious will work hard and give the best to attain the set objectives; this translates to effective individual job performance and organizational growth. According to Mkoji & Sikalieh (2012), Individuals who display characters of purpose and obligation in workplaces perform better. Moreover, conscientious people are persistent. The ability to push more for results irrespective of the challenges enables such employees to achieve the set targets. The workers are motivated by the need of fulfilling end results, and this means they will commit and have good performance at work.  However, Bakker, Demerouti & Lieke (2012) argues that conscientious people tend to be workaholic, and this can affect their performance on the jobs. Conscientious personalities may suffer from fatigue and reduce the quality of their work. Additionally, concentrating more on results may make conscientious people miss out on other aspects such a teamwork which is critical for personal and organizational growth.

Open to Experience Personality

Rothmann & Coetzer (2003) note that open to experience characters are highly creative, have intellectual curiosity and are receptive to new ideas.  People who display openness traits have a preference for variety and need for independent judgment. Workplaces are full of challenging situations that require creative ways of solving the hurdles and, employees with the ability to think out of the box yield excellent performance though creatively thinking out of challenges that would have negatively impacted on the individual and organizational performance. Moreover, people who can learn new ways of doing things and successfully and adapt them boost their performance. Open personalities have the curiosity to learn new skills and competencies useful to compete ably and gain a competitive edge.  According to Bakker, Demerouti & Lieke (2012), People who are open to experience are open-minded and social and, this helps them to question the procedures of doing things knowledgeably, give suggestions and create a cordial working relationship with other workers. Job performance for new employees is highly influenced by how fast and knowledgeable the recruit adapt to the workplace. The open-minded trait in openness personality enables employee to quickly adapt in the workplaces through questions, training and get the know-how ability to give the best performance of the assigned duties. Additionally, teamwork is a crucial aspect of improved performance. People with openness personality relate well with others, learn from each other and boost the individual performance.   

According to Hurtz & Donovan (2000), agreeable personality is likable and relates well with people; they are tolerant and ready to help irrespective of their moods.  An individual who has agreeable personality traits is sympathetic, kind and trusting and perceives every person to be helpful in the running of an organization. A relationship built on trust and willingness to help a healthy working environment for fellow staffs and eventually improved performance in everyone. The ability to tolerate the cultural behavior of every person and assist the fellow employees to learn new ways and organizational culture positively impacts on the performance of the organization. The traits of cooperativeness displayed by agreeable personalities translate to success in teamwork (LePine 2003). Members of teams have different capabilities and friendly people help create a cohesive relationship and bridge the skills gap in every member necessary for high-quality individual and team performance.  Additionally, job performance directly relates to the ability to train and acquire significant skills to match the job descriptions.  The interactive nature of agreeable people helps them teach and learn critical skills for effective performance. However, Guay et al. (2013) note that agreeable people can compromise performance due to their charming personality. The people who are warm and kind may evade conflict scenarios that are necessary for adequate performance.  Individual high on agreeableness will avoid change-oriented discussions such as organizational change resistance from employees that brings conflict, hence, not implement necessary requirements for organization good.

Agreeableness

Job performance is related to the positive feelings of the employees towards the assigned task. Extroverts are outgoing and very optimistic in whatever activity they do. Judge & Ilies (2002) claim that extraversion personality displays character traits such as sociable, talkative, assertiveness and indulges in a lot of activities. When people like their jobs, they commit to the realization of the objectives. Optimism displayed by extroverts prompts them to go to an extra mile to realize their ambitions and, this enhances their job performance. According to Wanberg & Kammeyer-Mueller (2000), employees with extraversion traits are effective in jobs that require social interactions such as sales and customer services. Extraverts enjoy socializing which serves as an added advantage to occupations that require constant interactions with people and ultimately high performance. Additionally, extraverts adjust quickly to new environments and new jobs. Flexibility and adaptability are critical aspects that enhance job satisfaction and individual performance in a new working environment (Bakker, Demerouti & Lieke 2012).The ability to adjust to new jobs without significant challenges creates room for success. They have an easy time that boosts the love for the job and dedication and, this translates to practical performance.  The talkative nature of extroverts enables them to seek for clarity and feedback which is crucial for quality job performance. When one knows the duty expectations and the previous personal performance, they develop the urge to carry out the necessary task and improve their results. Extraversion traits such as friendliness play a crucial role in establishing an exciting environment for people to work peacefully and serve as a recipe for good performance at work. A happy and co-existing diverse workforce is very the key to organizational growth (Wanberg & Kammeyer-Mueller 2000). The ability of extroverts to derive pleasure and happiness from the social working relationship will enhance their performance and entire organization growth.

Neurotic employees can experience constant conflicts with co-workers and negatively affect their job performance. According to Barrick, Mount & Judge (2001), Neuroticism personalities display negative affect such as being extremely temperamental, moody and irritable. People with Neuroticism traits experience, uncontrollable anger, have emotional adjustment problems and are vulnerable to stress and depression.  Individuals who are temperamental and moody are weak team workers and will have a poor relationship with fellow employees and affect the performance of the group. Seibert & Kraimer (2001) notes that people that score highly on neuroticism are habitually unhappy at their workplace. Happiness and job performance are related and, one derives the motivation to get positive results due to fulfilling workplaces as a result of a good working relationship with the management and fellow employees. Furthermore, Neuroticism personalities are affected by stress and are unable to handle depression, thus, affect their productivity. Stress hinders effective employees’ production and keeps them worrying about the stressors.  The Neuroticism traits lead people to hate their job and constantly think about quitting their career due to lack of a fulfilling environment and irritating co-workers. On the contrary, people with a low score on Neuroticism experiences job fulfillment and are more committed to their task. Barrick & Mount (1991) claims that people with fewer Neuroticism traits control their emotions and experiences positive moods at work. The ability to manage one’s stress and disposition allow workers to focus on their assigned task and give the best results irrespective of the situations. Such characteristics enable employees to develop a good relationship at work with the supervisor and fellow workers and enhance their individual performance as well as organizational performance.

Extraversion

Corporate leaders should embrace the ideas of duty delegation and give employees with conscientiousness personality traits the autonomy to make organizational decisions. People with conscientious character are responsible and have a high tendency to set high goals for themselves. According to Abdullah, Omar & Rashid (2013), allowing people with conscientious personality take the responsibility to make critical organizations decisions will elicit commitment and hard work to achieve their set goals. The Conscientiousness personalities are driven by results; they are optimistic on the venture and give their best for individual fulfillment (Colquitt, Lepine & Wesson 2011). The employees will drive more pleasure from being involved in determining the organizational policy and practices and commit to the realization of the objectives.

The organizational leadership should engage people with open to experience personalities in developing and implementing regulatory changes in term of policies and procedures. Individuals with openness to experience personality are receptive to new ideas and very creative. According to Huang, Ryan, Zabel & Palmer (2014), to counter resistance to change from staffs, the management should engage in a consultative meeting with people with openness personality who will be willing to listen and adapt to changes. Additionally, these employees will be creatively come up with ways that will be acceptable to other employees as a result of knowing what other staffs like.

Organizational management should appoint people displaying agreeableness personality to be team leaders and other leadership positions within the organization. Agreeable people will create a healthy working environment for every employee in the team and nurture the skills gaps to help them give the best in their tasks.  Neuman, Wagner & Christiansen (1999) notes that tolerance and friendliness creates a peaceful work environment. The ability to foster an environment where everyone feels valued and appreciated will give more positive results. According to LePine (2003), being cooperative is an aspect of a good leader. People with agreeable personality traits are very supportive and compassionate willingly to listen and help others for the good of the team.

Leaders should strive to break the bureaucratic relationship between management and the staffs and create a sociable environment that people will enjoy working in to capitalize on the capabilities of extroverts. Additionally, they should create teams to encourage people working together to develop both personal and working relationship. Ghani, Yunus & Bahry (2016) argue that creating an environment where extroverts talk and socialize in the course of their duties will yield maximum performance. People with extraversion personality traits draw the energy and the motivation to work from interacting with people. Moreover, the leaders should cultivate the culture of respect to privacy and personal decisions to give room for introverts to enjoy working in their preferred way. Introverts like working alone or in a group of few people (Awadh & Ismail 2012).Thus, for organizations to fully capitalize on the introverts’ personality abilities they should create opportunities to choose the mode of working and type of duties. 

Organizational leadership should develop corporate social responsibility activities that actively engage employees displaying neuroticism personality traits.  Highly neurotic individual are highly irritable, emotionally unstable and susceptible to stress and participating in social activities will enable them to cope with the work stressors. According to Awadh & Ismail (2012), people improve their social skills through practice and interacting with others to relieve anxiety.  Providing a chance for neurotic people to mingle freely and start conversations with new people will make it easy for them to develop the social skills. Moreover, leaders should start counseling centers at workplaces to help such personalities to handle on and off stressors.

Conclusion

Consequently, employees’ personalities influence their perceptions on the job, commitment to their duties, development of necessary skills and motivation to work and eventual individual and organizational performance. The popular Big Five model encompasses different facets of personalities in the dimensions of conscientiousness, Open to experience, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism. An individual character is related to job performance. Conscientiousness traits are driven by the need for achievement and commit themselves to set goals while openness personalities are creative and receptive to training and new skills to enhance their performance. Agreeableness personality traits are team workers and help others willingly to boost the performance of the team while Extraverts draws energy from socializing while working and, this makes them happy which is crucial for good performance. Neurotic personalities are very irritable and vulnerable to depression that deprives them the capabilities to give their best in workplaces. Organizational leaders should launch initiatives such as duty delegation, employees’ consultation in organization change introduction, appointing others as leaders in different capacities, breaking the inflexible relationships at work and involving employees actively in corporate social responsibilities to tap the energies of all the personalities and help other develop to give their best.

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