The role of personality in business life

What is personality?

Personality is the term for the characteristic features of people that explain why they do what they do. For years, HR departments believed that personality was of little consequence in governing an individual’s performance at work, and that the reward structures under which people work were far more important. However, in recent years personality has had something of a comeback in organisational psychology. There are three signals for this comeback. The first is the global popularity of test methods that are easy to understand and don’t take long to complete. They describe a wide range of competencies, characteristics, forms of behaviour, motivation and values. There has been little scientific research into these methods, and so they cannot be expected to make any well-founded, long-term, valid statements. They should therefore not be taken into account in the selection of personnel or the definition of development measures. And yet many people believe them to be helpful, and this intuition is undoubtedly correct. Even superficial knowledge of another person’s personality can be useful in helping to understand them, in getting along with them and working with them. In marketing and call centres in particular, these kinds of test methods are popular to the point of being hero worshipped. The second signal for the return of personality is the current enthusiasm for Emotional Intelligence (EQ). The theories of the EQ movement are still quite superficial, but the movement reveals that other things apart from cognitive skills play a part in a successful career. Thirdly, academic psychology now generally accepts that the components of the “Big Five”, the “Five Factor Model” or “FFM”, are far better at predicting an individual’s performance at work than anything that can be predicted by measuring their cognitive skills.

The fact that personality is playing a role once more is a political reality rather than an intellectual achievement. But now that personality is back, how can be it recorded conceptually? Historically, it was Freud who determined the programme by arguing that the most important generalisation we can make about other people is that everyone is neurotic in their own way, and that the biggest problem in life was overcoming our own neurosis. But this was the wrong programme. We believe that the most important generalisation we can make about other people is that they always live in groups, and that every group has its own status hierarchy. Based on this, we can conclude that the biggest problems in life are in getting along with other people while achieving a certain status in our own social environment – in other words, getting along and getting ahead. The other point, which is called socio-analytical theory, can be summed up in the following two points.

1. What do people really want?

People want three things:

• acceptance, respect and recognition;
• status, and control of our resources;
• predictability.

This very basic motivation model tells us what bad managers do in order to demotivate their colleagues beneath them. They show their staff no respect. They manage them too closely, withdrawing their colleagues’ sense of having any control or autonomy. And they do not communicate or give feedback. These three things damage the three most important human requirements that are expressed in our motivation model.

2. What is personality?

Personality should be defined from two perspectives. On the one hand, personality exists from within; this is called identity. This is the person you believe you are, and is best defined by your hopes and dreams, ambitions, goals, and intents – in other words, your values. Secondly, there is the personality from outside, which is called the reputation. This is the person that others see in you, and which is best defined by the Five Factor Model – that is, with regard to self-confidence, sociability, integrity, charm, and creativity, or their opposites. There are often significant differences between a person's identity and their reputation, and the size of the imbalance is directly associated with their professional success. When giving feedback after an assessment, it is important to make the contrast between identity and reputation in order to give the person a realistic assessment of their effect on others. No one can work, manage or lead efficiently without knowing how they affect others. The job description of “the boss” does not make management staff in charge of others; rather, it is the voluntary allegiance of their staff – and that is determined by the reputation of the effect.

When predicting behaviour and success in a company, it is important to predict people’s potential, risks and values and highlight their individual differences, to get along with other people and be able to get ahead. Metaberatung GmbH, in cooperation with Hogan Assessment Systems, can be relied on to achieve this absolutely and completely.