The Personality Traits of a Manager Amelia Martin MOD 310: Issues in Management Week 5 September 17, 2014 A person’s personality trait can define who they are. Some can tell these traits by the way a person reacts to certain situations, personal or on the job. A person develop traits from the way they were raised and the environment that surrounded them. Everyone carries some type of personality trait, but no one carries any that are identical. Managers have personality traits just like everyone else. Traits are linked personally and indicates a person’s character. No one has the same feelings or thoughts. So it is vital for manager to understand their personal traits and figure a way to use them in management. These …show more content…
The key to openness to experience would be to seek and gain new experiences. Managers with a high level of this trait are more creative and encourage others to try something different. Managers with a low level will think twice about taking a risk (McGraw-Hill, 2006). There are many other personality traits that can also have an effect on managers. These traits plays a part of a manager’s demeanor and the way it coincides with others. One trait may affect a manager differently than another. One may be higher or lower than the other. Managers needs to know that learning and understanding the difference in their colleagues will be the key (McGraw-Hill, 2006). When someone has the confidence in themselves and what they are capable of accomplishing is called self-esteem. They have the notion that they can achieve any type of situations. They take on goals that are more on their level. Managers should have very high self-esteem so that they can acquire the desire to keep pushing forward when faced with problematic situations (McGraw-Hill, 2006). Then there are the internal locus and external locus of control which concerns what is going on around them. Internal locus of control takes ownership of their own actions and look for promotions because of them. They take the company goals to heart. External locus of control blame others for their actions because they do not believe in them.
The five-factor model of personality is a set of five broad personality traits referred to as the “Big 5”. These include, openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN). “Each of the five personality facts represents a range between two extremes” (Cherry, 2016).
Working at Kensho differs greatly from working at Goldman Sachs or other financial institutions, and their employees will most likely posses different personality traits. From the case, it is apparent that Kensho’s work environment is more laid-back in dress code, desk style, company size, and office environment (Popper, p. 9). This type of company requires employees to possess certain personality traits in order to be a good fit. The Big 5 personality trait model “proposes that five basic dimensions underlie all others and encompass most of the significant variation in human personality” (Pearson, p. 68). The five dimensions are conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism (emotional stability), openness, and extraversion (Faulk, p. 12).
A professional workplace is an environment that produces numerous challenging situations and if not handled correctly, could create a very unproductive organization. A well-qualified employee is selected to be responsible for overseeing many aspects of a company, including difficult situations that arise between co-workers. The term given to this worker is a manager; their main task in the organization is to help other employees work more effectively towards their goals. This may sound like a rather simple task, but it is very deep and layered with different difficulties. Henry Mintzberg, an internationally renowned author on business and management, broke down the tasks a manager faces into ten different roles. According to Mintzberg’s managerial roles, there are three categories that break up the ten roles a manager performs: Interpersonal, Informational, and Decisional. Interpersonal encompasses figurehead, leader, and liaison. Informational includes monitor, disseminator, and spokesperson. Finally, Decisional covers entrepreneur, disturbance handler, resource allocator, and negotiator. It is clear that being a manager is a demanding job and that it requires a high level of organizational and interpersonal skills.
Allport defines personality as ‘the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychological systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment’ (Allport, 1937). An individual’s unique personality traits and attributes are a powerful indicator of how he/she will interact with the work environment. The difference between average and outstanding employees can often be solely personality related. As the employee is the most valuable asset to the company, ‘selecting the right employee during the process is critical’ (Carbery and Cross, 2013, pp. 41-53)
Personality is an important trait which has an impact on the surrounding in your workplace. As a manager, I believe that a workplace has several types of people who come from various religion, race, country and cultural beliefs. Each individual need to be treated with respect and care, there issues need to be addressed without neglecting and they should be given room for their own personal growth within the organization. Personality is related to the culture being practiced in the organization. They are directly proportional to each other. Culture needs to be initiated by the management and employees follow it.
The following term paper discusses in three parts, from examples derived from scholarly articles and/or books and in critical review style, the need for achievement which falls under the openness to experience in the Big Five personality traits. Upon discussing the need for achievement trait, there is included explanation of the Big Five, its background, and the role it plays in helping to determine certain facets of personality, mainly the need for achievement’s main facet of openness to experience. Also included explanations of the conscientiousness and openness to experience traits will be added to help further the understanding of what exactly the need for achievement and artistic creativity falls under and how the role of these main character traits help to determine how it influences the actions or lack thereof within individuals, including and directly relating to my own self. This leads to the last explanation which will be how the need for achievement is portrayed within me, how it affects my choices, and how it plays a role on my own decision making processes as a woman compared to a man.
I’ve always believed that every person has a set of skills and competencies which make shape that person into what is he. What defines a person is his personality and this personality shapes a manager’s effectiveness in a workplace. I feel that maintaining a positive work ethic is always a choice for anyone and it’s certainly not a result of the personality type. There are certain traits for every personality and those traits show the true person. Like for example, I feel that in a workplace a manager needs a certain set of skills and needs to be of a certain personality to understand his/her employees better and be a better manager. A manager needs to be fair, humble, honourable and selfless. When a manager is fair, only then he/she can decide whom to put together on a same team as things like that would definitely maximize productivity and is good for the organisation. There are certain personalities which are suited for only certain jobs. A personality is not something that remains the same forever. I’m longer the same kind of a person that I was when I was a kid. As a result of my own experiences, I believe that personality changes and evolves according to the life experiences that a person faces in his/her life. In order to manage someone or something, one needs some particular skills and competencies. The best way to understand the personality traits is the Big Five personality traits which clearly explains everything. Even if I need to manage myself, I’d still need
personalities are very direct when addressing an issue (Encheva, 2010). Taking this into consideration along with their high levels of motivational drive, one can expect them to excel in the professional world (Peneva & Mavrodiev, 2013).
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 manage effectively, it helps to understand the personalities of different employees. Having this knowledge is also beneficial to those placing people into jobs and organizations. Personality has been thought to be a significant aspect when performing on the job. Is our behavior in the workplace dependent on our character? Yes, to some extent. For example, having a friendly and outgoing personality may encourage people to seek friends and prefer social situations.This does not mean that their personality will immediately affect their work behavior. At work, people will have a job to do and a role to perform. Therefore, behavior can be more easily impacted by what is expected of a person, as opposed to how the person might want to behave. Personality has a tendency to exert a strong influence on work performance, especially in jobs that involve a lot of autonomy, or liberty, which is something to consider when participating in organizational planning for activities such as job project or improvement. An individual’s personality is the foundation of who they are and also forms the way in which they respond to and act in diverse settings. The employer usually used personality testing in workplaces to identify a
Since our business demands high levels of hospitality and service, people with those qualities will be easier to manage - responding faster, learning quicker, and advancing further. A manager's character can be a powerful influence on employees. The best managers know and like themselves and, by their very actions and ideals, provide guidance and direction to their employees. Good managers develop employees for tomorrow's opportunities by encouraging them to work toward their full potential today.
The Big Five are five dimensions used to distinguish different broad facets of human personality (Costa & McCrae, 1985; Goldberg, 1992). The Big Five or the Five Factor Model (FFM) was developed by a number of independent researchers over the last 70 years (Digman,
As a manager it is very essential to find out how to read and appreciate others which it belongs to personality and perception (Robert P.Vecchi 2006). Correspondingly Mark Cook( 1993) states that personality is something which allows to find the person behaviour in a given situation that can be measured using different elements, for example questionnaire/inventory, which is commonly used to find the characteristics of a person which automatically leads to predict the person behaviour as viewed by(Rollinson 2007)
Personality of the managers is a very important factor to consider when filling managerial positions because personality influence how people feel, think and behave and it represents one potentially important factor
Managing by personality type can allow for the achievement challenging goals. Placing extravert personalities on certain task generally yields effective results, and more introverted employees are the stronger suited in project management geared towards leadership roles. Using this knowledge of personality types of team members will make for a successful completion.
The discussion concerning the use of personality traits in organizational management has been ongoing for quite some time. Researchers have gone into frenzy to prove that it is a good idea while other scholars remain unimpressed by these claims refuting the use of personality traits on the basis of little validity of the information available to be used and the fact that personality tests can be tweaked by an individual to yield what he perceives as better results. This paper discusses how the research agenda proposed by Judge et al. (2008) will help to counter these criticisms by first providing more information that can be used as a basis and making the information so specific that it is more difficult to fake. It also takes a look at how the measurement of core self-evaluation can help in solving questions of job satisfaction and performance, to help both the employer and employee.