Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this module, you will be able to:
Describe the values, attitudes, and job satisfaction of the individual.
Evaluate the biblical underpinnings of individual personality.
Examine the relationship between job satisfaction and an individual’s values and attitudes
Chapter 3
The Differences Matter
Individual differences (IDs): Many attributes (traits and behaviors) that describe each of
us as a person
- Huge part of our unique identities
- Genetics and environment make us different
Intelligences
Represents a person’s capacity for constructive thinking, reasoning, and problem solving
Practical intelligence: Ability to solve everyday problems by using knowledge gained from
experience in order to purposefully adapt to, shape, and select environments.
Personality, OB, and my effectiveness
Personality: Combination of stable physical, behavioral, and mental characteristics that gives
people their unique identities
-Person input in the organizing framework
The big 5 personality dimensions
1. Extroversion
-Outgoing, talkative, sociable
2. Agreeableness
-Trusting, good-natured, cooperative
3. Conscientiousness
-Dependable, responsible, persistent
4. Emotional Stability
-Relaxed, secure, unworried
5. Openness to experience
-Intellectual, imaginative, curious
Introverts
-Stereotyped and seen less effective of extroverts
-How to thrive as an introvert
Be self-aware
Calibrate your intensity (push your personal intensity level)
Play your strengths
Get team practice
Proactive personality: attribute of someone “relatively unconstrained by situational forces and
who effects environmental change.
-Identify opportunities and act on them, show initiative, take action, and persevere until
meaningful change
-Changes status quo
-Proactive managers
Better fit if you and your manager are proactive
Proactivity and Entrepreneurs
-Successful entrepreneurs often exemplify proactive personalities
Dark Side of Personality
3 individual differences that are universally considered undesirable (referred to as Dark Triad)
-Narcissism
Having a grandiose sense of self importance
Requiring or demanding excessive admiration
Sense of entitlement
Lacking empathy
Exploitative, manipulative, and arrogant
How to identify them
Pay attention to their emotions
They make you feel stupid
-Psychopathy
Aggressive and lack concern for others, guilt, or remorse when their own action do
others harm
Likely to engage or cause counterproductive work behaviors and damage morale
Can identify them by seeing if they have true long time friends or work relationships
-Machiavellianism
Believe the ends justify the means, often maintain emotional distance, and are
manipulative
Climb corporate ladder fast, but rarely make or keep friends
Employees with 1 or more of these characteristics tend to leave destroyed relationships in their
wake over time
Personality and performace
More likely to show personality when your work environment lacks restraints
Extroversion
-Beneficial if the job involves interpersonal interaction
-Stronger predictor of job performance than agreeableness
Agreeableness
-Fit and excel in jobs requiring interpersonal interaction (customer service)
-More likely to stay with their jobs
Conscientiousness
-Strongest and most positive effects on performance across jobs
Emotional Stability
-Associated with higher job satisfaction and well being
-Higher levels of burnout
Openness to experience
-More likely to quit
-Curious and may seek for new opportunities (even if they like their current job)
If employee engagement is the desired outcome
-Proactive personality is the strongest predictor
-Then conscientiousness and extroversion
-Agreeableness and openness were the weakest
There is no ideal employee personality
With today’s work environments and diversity in the workforce, the ideal employee personality
is sheer folly
Core Self-Evaluations (CSEs)
Core Self-Evaluations (CSEs) represent four narrow and positive individual traits:
1. Generalized self-efficacy
2. Self-esteem
3. Locus of control
4. Emotional stability
CSEs have a desirable effect on many outcomes in the organizing framework
CSEs can be developed and improved
self-efficacy (I can do that)
-person’s belief about their chances of successfully accomplishing a specific task
-Can be developed by pushes of confidence by people close to you
-People confident about their ability tend to succeed
-Your evaluation of the situation yields your self-efficacy level
-Ways to apply self-efficacy at work
1. Job design
2. Training and development
3. Self-management
4. Goal setting and quality
5. Creativity
6. Coaching
7. Leadership
Self-esteem (Look in the mirror)
-Your general belief about your self-worth
-Personal achievements and praise raise it. Unemployment and destructive feedback lower it
Locus of control
-Relatively stable personality characteristic that describes how much personal responsibility
we take for our behavior and its consequences
-Has 2 forms
Internal (Internals)
people who believe they control the events and consequences that affect
their lives
attribute positive outcomes to their own abilities and negative outcomes to
their personal shortcomings
Display greater work motivation
Derive job satisfaction from performance
Gave stronger expectations that effort leads to performance
External (Called externals)
Those who believe their performance is the product of circumstances
beyond their immediate control
Attribute outcomes to environmental causes (luck or fate)
Demonstrate less motivation for performance when offered valued rewarsa
More anxious
Earn lower salaries
Emotional stability
-Relaxed, secure, unworried, and less likely to experience negative emotions under pressure
-Prone to anxiety with lower level of emotional stability
-Employees with high levels of emotional stability have higher performance
3 Considerations for CSEs
1. Is having more of a BSE component always better?
2. Is the whole of the CSE components greater than its parts?
3. How can mangers use CSEs?
Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Ability to monitor your own emotions and those of others, to discriminate among them, and to
use this info to guide your thinking and actions
4 key components
1. Self-awareness
-Personal competence
2. Self-management
-Personal competence
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3. Social awareness
-Social competence
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4. Relationship management
-Social competence
Benefits of EI
Linked to better social relationships
Emotions
Complex, relatively brief responses aimed at a particular target, such as a person, info,
experience, or event. They also change psychological and/or physiological states
Positive emotions
-Succeeds in meeting goals
-If you’re goal is to graduate on time and you do
-Pride, relief, joy
Negative emotions
-Failure to meet goals
-Anger, disgust, fright, guilt, shame
Mixed
-Meeting or failing to meet our goals
-Get promotion, but have to move to a different state, which you don’t want to do
Managing negative emotions at work
Always act happy and positive in front of customers
Remain calm in meetings
Don’t show anger
Takeaways for chapter 3
Enhance your self-awareness
Identify the pros and coms of particular IDs for you at work
Create profiles of managers and leaders where you work
Use your knowledge of emotional intelligence
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