Five Personality Factors And Individual Performance

An organization is made up of various individuals with disparate tasks with the aim of achieving a common goal. For most businesses, the ultimate objective is to develop and deliver services or goods to their customers. Organizational behavior thus attempts to understand how individual staff or groups work together to achieve such purpose. Its main focus is on the management of organizations, individuals, groups, and processes.  Moreover, the ability to work together as a group to achieve organizational goals depends on the individual’s personality. One of the most important factors influencing the staff and their ability to work effectively is motivation. Motivation is a vital driver in an organization and management of intellectual capital. It underlies the choices made by employees in task performance how and how much effort they are willing to apply in a particular task. The paper examines personality as a factor in organizational behavior using the Big Five Model. It also applies various OB theories and concepts to shade more light on effects of personality in motivation and work performance.

It has been the need in psychology to develop a model that can describe human behavior conveniently to be able to remedy personality problems or disorders. Understanding human personality would be vital in comprehending their attitude towards different things including their workplaces. Therefore, some models have been established to help describe human personality among which some have been successful in achieving this (Attia, & Aubin, 2013). The five-factor or the Big Five is one of the prominent models in the contemporary psychology. The theory involves the use of five disparate variables applied into a conceptual model for explaining personality.  The theory has been proved to be the most applicable and practical model used in the field of personality theory.

The theory was established by mathematical the importance of combination five factors for explaining personality and hence the need to identify such factors (Mlinaric, 2013). Following extensive experimenting and debating the scholarly defined the five factors, their importance in the analysis of personality together with their interpretations. The factors were identified as extroversion-introversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness, and conscientiousness.

Extroversion which is considered to be one of the most important factors in determining one’s personality is also referred to as social adaptability (Attia & Aubin, 2013). It is defined as trait characterized by an interest in other individuals, venturing into the unknown with confidence as well as keen interest in external events.

Neuroticism is another important factor in one’s personality; a higher score is an indication of the positive result since the term is associated with negative denotation.  Its bases are levels of volatility and anxiety. Within such bounds, this factor defines one’s personality by low anxiety and stability as opposed to high anxiety and instability on the negative end (Mlinaric, 2013).

Agreeableness, Openness, and Conscientiousness are popular terms applied in the general realm of psychology. Openness refers to the willingness of people to make adjustments in activities and notions depending on new situations or ideas. Agreeableness, on the other hand, measures compatibility between individuals or their ability to get along with each other. Finally, conscientiousness describes how much one considers others in decision making.

To offers a clear picture of the personality, there are limits in between the three scales like extroversion and neuroticism (Personality Research, 2016). Such limits include helpful and trusting versus uncooperative and suspicious in the scale of agreeableness, reliable and hardworking versus careless and lazy in the scale of conscientiousness, and creative and nonconformist versus down-to-earth and conventional in the scale of openness.

Based on my score in the Big five measure I have been described as somewhat conventional which means I tend to follow the general principles, methods, and behavior.  I have recorded a low score in the scale of openness which is characterized by being conventional, having narrow interest and being uncreative. This score, therefore, describes me to poses an analyzer personality in a workplace (Carter, 2014). It would thus be considered a weakness due to inability to generate new ideas in performing my tasks.

In the scale of Conscientiousness, I have been described as being reliable and well-organized. High scores are associated with being well-organized; self-discipline, careful, and reliable while low scores describe those who are undependable, disorganized and negligent (Mlinaric, 2013). This can be considered strength especially in the workplace where reliability and self-discipline are highly valued traits. Reliable and well-organized employees tend to have positive attitudes towards their jobs. They ensure that every task is accomplished on time and effectively to ensure satisfaction of the client.

My low scores in Extraversion scale described me as being quiet, introverted, inhibited and reserved who tend to shy away from social situations. This is a weakness in my personality as I am not able to interact with other employees freely. Inability to socialize especially in duties involving group work can hinder group performance and hence the outcome (In Raab et al., 2015).

On the dimension of Agreeableness, I tend to consider other people’s feelings in my decisions. A high score describes me as someone who is good-natured, forgiving, sympathetic and courteous. This is a strength in my personality as can relate well with my colleagues and cooperate to accomplish a task.

Finally, my low score in neuroticism describes me as someone who remains calm and relaxed even in tense situations. It reveals my hardy and secure nature as someone who is emotionally stable hence able to handle extreme situations especially high work pressure.

Based on my scores in the Big Five measure, my personality can be described as an analyzer in the workplace.  Analyzers are known for making decisions based on their feeling and security and hence tend to avoid risks. They rely on the analysis of data to make decisions. That is, in the occurrence of a problem, they take the time to collect, study and analyze situations using whatever resources available (Shragay & Tziner, 2011). Moreover, they rely on thoughts and opinions of other involved personnel to reach a feasible decision.

Analyzers also tend to be very academic and prefer serious working environments. Moreover, they use facts, past illustrations and histories as the basis of their arguments in a group or individual tasks. Although they may offer the best advice in most of their conversations, the serious nature of their work environment might be boring to some people who might consider them unsocial. Analyzers also have little or no interest in cultural change in the organization. They tend to be comfortable with their current ways of operation and hence would oppose new methods. They consider new methods to be associated with a lot of risks which they tend to avoid by all means (Brunacini, 2014). Thus they can be secure but stubborn especially when involved in group duties that require collectively developing new ideas or methods of accomplishing tasks.

As described in the Big Five results as a secure individual, it applies to a work place where am strictly concerned about the security of whatever plan I am involved in. For instance, I would ensure that the entire plan either for developing a new product or marketing is successful and develop a plan B in case plan A fails. Similar to analyzers, they employ effective data analysis techniques which are essential in ensuring that the problem-solving process is safe from any failures. By gathering accurate data relevant to a specific situation, analyzers ensure that all facts presented in a problem-solving process are implemented effectively (Farnady, 2011).

The Big Five measure also described my personality as being organized, careful, reliable and self-disciplined. This relates to being systematic which is typical of analyzers at the workplace. Analyzer like routine and systems hence prefer doing things in an organized way where they can be easily followed through from the beginning to the end with little errors (Dipboye, 2014). By performing their duties systematically they provide a clear guideline that can be easily used for subsequent similar projects or used by the different team. Being systematic is also admired at workplace especially where the production process is performed in stages. The production process that requires the product to go through various departments from design to sales requires the use of the well-organized procedure.  That is, a systematic documentation or manual has to be generated by every team handling the product to help the next team as a guideline.

Another important strength of my personality to a workplace is effective risk management. Similar to analyze personality, every process involving decision making is implemented with maximum knowledge of margin of errors. As analyzers perform extensive data collection and analysis, they ensure that the final decision has little or no errors as they are based on empirically sound information (Kohnstamm et al., 2014). Moreover, they collect thoughts and opinions from different relevant personnel which enables them to manage risk to the minimum point possible.

Rules and Regulations define how tasks are accomplished as well as defining relationships within an organization. Without rules, every employee would be reporting to and leaving the job as they wish and working depending on how they feel which would in turn affect productivity (Potocan, 2011). Nonetheless, many people find rules restricting and tend to break or avoid them. However, analyzers like me work best with regulations. They find it easy to monitor closely the set boundaries to ensure that everything is performed as required. By complying with rules, they make sure that everything is on schedule to avoid any problems associated with violation of task boundaries.

Being an analyzer makes me slow to adapt to new culture or methods of working. As described in the Big Five Measure I am conventional and prefer doing things the normal way. Such behavior can hinder my ability to adopt new technologies and embrace new production methods. For dynamic industries like business, engineering, and technology where new methods are created everyday it would mean not being competitive.  For such companies, a rival may easily beat the other for using contemporary technologies to enhance production and reduce cost. For analyzers, venturing into a new production method or technology is considered a risk that they would not want to take thus hindering their motivation and performance (Kavcic, 2014).

Employing extensive analysis to come up with a solution to a specific problem require much time. Therefore, it is a weakness of my personality as I would take too long to find a solution to problems. As an analyzer, I would spend much time gathering data required to ensure that the plan is perfect for execution. Moreover, the process may even last longer than required which can be more costly regarding human labor and finance. As opposed to other personalities like that of a promoter where a decision would be made simply by consulting a few individuals in the group, analyzer requires accurate data to support it. Therefore, finding a solution to urgent problems could be challenging to an analyzer hence hindering their work performance.

The Big Five measure also revealed my personality as being shy from social situations; it would be difficult for me to initiate a conversation with a colleague (Dipboye, 2014). Similar to employees with analyzer personality starting a discussion with others even when in brainstorming sessions would be difficult. This would also hinder the quality of solutions found as it lacks others’ input.

Employees with analyzer personality tend to be more critical and worried about errors which hinder their performance regarding speed.  Therefore, they should be encouraged to be less critical by convincing them that some errors cannot be avoided, and they should focus more on the result. Moreover, most of them are introverts who can be motivated to interact with other people by being friendly to them (Kohnstamm et al., 2014). Being friendly to people who are not social gives them the courage to relate personally with people hence opening up to others.

In conclusion, all firms and organizations including small nonprofit to big companies have to deal with organizational behavior. It is through the knowledge of organizational behavior that managers understand how the organization attempts to achieve its goals.

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