The Big Five Personality Factors

Differing management practices, leadership styles and organizational behaviour outcomes play a critical role on how an individual person functions within an organization. Vice versa individual personality traits may influence and impact a company’s performance at the individual, group and organisational level. As such it is important to examine specific personality traits to suit specific job roles such as managerial or leadership roles which if not assessed robustly could lead to a company failing. By mapping my personality profile using Big Five personality factors (or dimensions), I critically assess my strengths and weaknesses in relation to my job within an educational institution and propose areas to focus on to improve my management

The Big Five Model has been shown to be statistically stable and is fairly robust when tested across cultures and types of organisational structures although it tends to predict better in more individualistic cultures such as Australia compared to collectivist cultures (Judge and Robbins, 2013). As such in terms of the Basic Organisational Behaviour Model, personality assessment is of prime importance as it forms one of the three key inputs at the individual level, the other individual level inputs being diversity and values. At the individual level how these three inputs (personality, diversity and values) interrelate will drive or affect an individual’s emotions and moods, motivation, perception, and decision-making. These individual input and processes ultimately determine individual-level outcomes: a person’s attitude, task performance, citizenship or withdrawal

In terms of the results of the test, the key personality dimensions that generated high scores were within the conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion dimensions. This result resonated with me especially as it reflects my self-perception of having strong organizational skills, being assertive and sociable. Tracking from highest to lowest (see Appendix for Big Five Model results), the dimension scores generated and the implications for my leadership style (rather than focusing on managerial style) are explained in more detail