Investigating the Relationship between Personality and Leadership - Coursework Example

Personality and Productivity Introduction While an individual’s personality can affect the way they interact with others and react to given situation, it can also affect how they respond to the stresses of work and the demands of productivity placed on them. More importantly, the idea of certainly personalities being more productive in certain positions brings up the idea of the utility a person can bring to a company by being in a managerial position as opposed to being a line worker. Of course the concept can be further complicated by the considerations placed due to the demands of and the nature of the work which is being done. For example, Theory X and Y of management may be used within the same company in different departments depending on the nature of the work involved. Theory X of management assumes that most people have personalities that dislike work and must be controlled by strong means if they are to remain productive. Further, people need direction as well as control and not independence while they work (NetMBA, 2005). Theory Y is the complete opposite of this since it suggests that people are naturally inclined towards work as they are towards play and rest. Additionally, people find satisfaction in work and will use imagination, creativity and their personal skills to solve work related problems if they are allowed to work as they please (NetMBA, 2005). A manager who has a personality which is a good fit for managing with Theory X would find it difficult to create productivity in a department which should be governed with Theory Y. In such situations, personality itself can be defined as the collective emotional, thinking, and action patterns which are exhibited by an individual which are more or less consistent over a period of time (Miner & Dachler, 1973). Psychologists and those who study human personality have defined types of personalities and presented theories which help in placing individuals on certain scales of personality (Joy, 2004). The idea of personality as a set of individual levels of certain traits is fully supported by Cattell (Statt, 2004). It is also suggested that there are quite a few elements which affect human personality and the interaction of these traits as well as the reactions they produce to various stimuli result in a fully formed personality (Plucker, 2007). The Right Personality for the Right Job The work done by Cattell is important for the study of personality and productivity since it lets us gauge an individual’s personality and then connect it to their performance at a given position in the company. At the same time, we have theories that suggest that certain personal traits like aggression, patience, temperance etc. could be more useful in one position as compared to another. This is particularly true when it comes to the nature of the job a person is going to perform for the company. For example, it would be better for a customer service representative to have a higher level of patience while it could be good for a salesperson to be slightly more aggressive. However, the legal and ethical consideration for recruitment and retention of employees must be kept in mind while the personalities and skill sets of individuals are being evaluated (CIPD, 2007). The CIPD (2007) further reports that psychological testing and skills evaluation is a part of the general abilities tests which many companies carry out in the UK. Almost 40% of all companies conduct general abilities test while more than a third conduct personality tests before recruiting. However, the CIPD also reports that eliminating employees from recruitment selection based on the results of one test alone can be dangerous and legally questionable. The productivity demanded by a manager and the motivation provided by a company can be seen as an outside influence which makes people seek pleasure in their work and avoid the pain which can come from being out of work. Certain personality factors which guide behaviour can influence how people react to productivity enhancing methods but the bulk of motivation comes from the reactions to social influences and the environment a person is placed in (Brown, 1999). At the same time, the cognition of future rewards or punishment is what keeps people behaving in a productive way. Personality can be seen as one of the internal motivators as opposed to the external motivation from societal forces which increase productivity. An individual’s personality will guide the creation of mental constructs, the reality around a person and the values and expectations of the individual (Huitt, 2001). External forces and social influences can change these ideas over time as a person develops in maturity but at any given time, a certain personality can be motivated to perform certain required actions if they are made aware of rewards in terms of pleasure or pain in terms of negative consequences (Bandura, 1986). However, finding the right personality match for a company is simply essential and employers will go to great lengths to find the right person even if it means breaking social constraints. An example can be given in the shape of Steve Jobs (former and present CEO of Apple) who took a rather strange interview in order to find out if the person being recruited was a good match for the personalities which were already in the company. Hertzfeld (1982) describes an interview that was taken by Steve Jobs where Steve behaved in a manner which is totally unsuitable for an interview if not completely illegal. The senior management personnel had told Steve that the company needed someone who could continue the sprit of the team and that individual should not be authoritarian in any way. One unnamed candidate for the interview was described as, “Extremely straight-laced and uptight, dressing more like an insurance salesman than a technologist. He also seemed very nervous as he fumbled at our first few questions (Hertzfeld, 1982, Pg. 1).” Steve Jobs asked him questions like, how old he was when he lost his virginity. When the candidate wanted a clarification, Steve asked if he was still a virgin. Before the individual could answer Jobs changed the subject to drugs and asked about the number of times that person had taken LSD. If breaking these social constraints was not enough, Steve Jobs started making turkey like noises while the person was in the process of answering a technical question. At that point the candidate realized that he was not the right person for the job and declared the same to the interviewing panel. Steve simply responded, “I guess you're not, I think this interview is over (Hertzfeld, 1982, Pg. 1).” Personality Testing Personality testing and skills evaluation is an essential part of the recruitment and it has recommended by Murphy (2005) as a good tool for making sure that the personality of the individual matches the personality of the company. The Institute for Employment Studies Research and the Council for Industry and Higher Education have mentioned that there are often gaps left in the education provided to graduates in Great Britain therefore an evaluation of their skills before employment can be useful for a company. While evaluating these skills, a personality test can also be conducted to ensure that not only the candidates’ skills match up with the job they are seeking, their personality does also. For this purpose, an online test is often a quick way to evaluate the personalities of the applicants into a rough order (Murphy, 2005). Of course such a test should not be the be all and end all of the evaluation process since controls on such tests can only be minimal at best. A more controlled test as recommended by the CIPD (2007) can also be conducted but it would surely add to the cost of recruitment and even then the reliability of the results will carry a level of error. Furthermore, the personality evaluation test and testing procedures can change depending on the position and the nature of work which is to be done. For instance, a sales position may look for people who have high confidence and people’s skills while these may not be as important for a technical worker or a programmer. The variety of online tests and the methods of Computer Based Testing (CBT) are particularly effective in this situation since online tests can be taken from the company website by many prospects without them coming into a testing centre. In fact, using the internet and online methods for testing and evaluation purposes is one of the key recommendations given by Murphy (2005) who also suggests that the company website can function as an important recruitment and testing tool. It can be used to provide information about the position, the requirements of the company and other information which can attract the people with the right personalities or guide away those who may not be very suitable matches for what the company needs. The company website can also help to create the image of the company which is another important issue for recruitment. Barker (2005) suggests that the top recruits can select companies based on their repute and projected personality. The best candidates will know if they want to work for a company or not based on the image of the company in the public sector. A brand like Google or PepsiCo is a strong point for the recruiters since they are known to be good companies to work for. It is understood that if a company can create an image of the personality which it has, they are more likely to get applications from best fit graduates of the year and might even be able to pull away people from other companies with ease. The Future Very recently, scientists have discovered a tool which can let businesses screen recruits based on their personality and intentions with the company like never before. Sample (2007) reports that scientists working in the field of neurology have developed a system with which they are able to look into a person’s mind and see their intentions even before they are carried out. Essentially, it allows them to bug the mind of an individual much like a telephone can be bugged. The methodology is based on taking high resolution scans of the brain to identify the activity in certain areas of the brain which can be translated into the actual thoughts of the person. A brain image of this kind could reveal a person who is lying, having violent thoughts, has racial prejudices, or any other negative or positive emotions. While the process can be used to help in interviews and negotiating contracts, it could easily turn into a Big Brother tool much like the thought police. Of course the brain scan could also be used to prove the innocence of an individual accused of something who has not committed the crime but the things such as the invasion of individual privacy and the violation of employee rights certainly bring up interesting questions. Several viewpoints can be taken in terms of how business ethics and ethics in general would respond to the use of this kind of thought scanner. It might be good for the company in terms of stakeholders to know what their employees were thinking about in terms of defrauding the company or even taking time off for the wrong reasons. Not being ill but calling in sick could be one such situation and siphoning company money to private accounts (as per what happened to the late Ernon) could be a more serious situation which could be discovered using the thought scanner. However, such devices put us uncomfortably close to the Orwellian reality where privacy and inner thoughts are a thing of the past. In Conclusion, Personality testing and evaluation can be useful as a rough guide to the productivity of an employee but as we have warnings from several experts in the field, they are not the sole criteria. The motivation provided by the company and the personal charisma of the individual leading the company can also be important factors for improving the productivity of the employees. While the future will surely bring us improved scales and judgements of the productivity of an individual as it connects to their personality, the ethical issues surrounding the problem must never be ignored. Works Cited Bandura A. 1986, Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, Prentice Hall. Barker, J. 2005. ‘How to Pick the Best People (And Keep Them)’, Potentials, vol. 38, no. 11, pp 33-36. Brown, K. 1999, ‘Social Cognitive Theory’. University of South Florida, [Online] Available at: http://hsc.usf.edu/~kmbrown/Social_Cognitive_Theory_Overview.htm CIPD. 2007, ‘Psychological testing’, [Online] Available at: http://www.cipd.co.uk/subjects/recruitmen/tests/psytest.htm Hertzfeld, A. 1982, ‘Gobble, Gobble, Gobble’, folklore.org, [Online] Available at: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Gobble_Gobble_Gobble.txt&topic=Management&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium Huitt, W. 2001, ‘Motivation to learn: An overview’, Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta State University [Online] Available at: http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/motivation/motivate.html Joy, S. 2004, ‘Innovation Motivation: The Need to Be Different’, Creativity Research Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 313-330. Miner, J. and Dachler, P. 1973, Personal attitudes and motivation. Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 379-393. Murphy, N. 2005, ‘Graduating from selection’, IRS Employment Review, vol. 832, no. 1, pp. 42-43. NetMBA. 2005, ‘Theory X and Theory Y’, Internet Centre for Management and Business Administration [Online] Available at: http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/mcgregor/ Plucker, J. 2007, ‘Raymond B. Cattell’, Indiana University, [Online] Available at: http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/rcattell.shtml Sample, I. 2007, ‘The brain scan that can read people's intentions’, The Guardian, [Online] Available at: http://technology.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329710503-117802,00.html Statt, D. 2004, Psychology and the World of Work, Palgrave. Read More