3 GMGT 2070 Individual Differences & Personality

Change up!
Pick up your nametags. Sit somewhere different

and with someone entirely new today 
GMGT 2070 Class 3:
Individual Differences & Personality
Wei Wang, Assistant Professor
[email protected]
By the end of class, you should
Understand some of the aspects of individual differences in organizations

• Personality
• Emotion Intelligence
• Values and Attitudes
Mirror Image Fallacy
Mirror Image Fallacy

E.g., “If I can’t see them, they can’t see me”
 The belief that everyone is “just like me”
 Most people still do not recognize that they
confront the fallacy
What is Personality?
• Relatively stable traits or characteristics
• Enduring patterns of feelings, attitudes, attributes and

behaviors
• The result of both genetics and environment (nature and

nurture)
The Big Five Model
Rhino
Buffalo
Lion
Elephant
Leopard
The Big Five Model
 The Big Five

 Five universal personality dimensions
 One of the most popular personality assessment
instruments
 Broadly used in employee recruitment and social
science research
The Big Five Model
Openness to experience
Imaginative, curious, broad-minded
Conscientiousness
Dependable, responsible, persistent
Extroversion
Outgoing, talkative, sociable
Agreeableness
Trusting, cooperative, soft-hearted
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)
Anxious, insecure, worried
“OCEAN”
Big-5 Personality Characteristics
 Conscientiousness
 Strong purpose, obligation, and persistence
 Related to morning people
 Have the strongest positive correlation with job performance and
training performance
 Positively related to proactive personality – more likely to take
initiative to influence environment
 Extraversion: stable tendency toward sociability,

assertiveness, and talkativeness
 Strengths: poised, engaging, comfortable leading
 Weaknesses: attention hogs, poorer listeners
 Research suggests that extroversion is a stronger predictor of job
performance than agreeableness across all professions
Does this mean introverts are less likely to succeed?

Loudest Voice Wisest Wisdom
The Fallacy of Ignoring the Quieter
(Cain, 2012; thepowerofintroverts.com)

 Openness to Experience: stable tendency toward strong intellectual curiosity,

creativity and a preference for novelty and variety.
 Strengths: adaptable, high creative performance
 Weaknesses: decisiveness, high opportunity costs on focus
 Neuroticism: stable toward anxiety, anger, envy, guilt, depressed mood, and self-
conscious in the face of environmental stress.
 Strengths: vigilant, see risks early, anxiety-based motivation
 Weaknesses: can easily get stressed out; gives energy toward non-productive things (i.e.,
worrying)
(Barrick & Mount, 1991; Bendersky & Shah, 2013 - AMJ)

 Agreeableness: stable tendency toward being helpful, cooperative,

and sympathetic towards others.
 Strengths: friendly, kind, aware of others & social dynamics
 Weaknesses: defer to others too freely, more susceptible to self-doubt
2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 15

Applying personality
Which personality traits are important

for particular jobs?
 Accountant
 Salesperson
 Nurse
 Artist
 Professor
Big-5 Personality Assessment & Discussion
 Step 1: Use the Big-5 Assessment Tool to know more about

your own personality (6 mins)
 Step 2: Discuss your personality with your classmate sitting

next to you and get familiar with each other (3 mins)
 Step 3: Discuss with your neighbor: for the team consulting

project, do you want to work with teammates similar to
and/or different from you in terms of personality? (3 mins)

Locus of Control
Locus of control
• Indicates how much people believe they control their fate
through their own efforts
• Internal locus of control — “I could change everything!”
• External locus of control— “I’m not made to succeed. It’s my
fate.”
Internals are found to have less anxiety and greater
motivation
Self-efficacy & Self-esteem
Self-efficacy
• Belief in one’s ability to do a task
• Positively linked to success of tasks, tolerance for pain, and ability to reduce anxiety
• Self-efficacy could be improved. As a manager, you could improve it by rewarding successes. Even
small successes.
Self-esteem
• Overall, the extent to which people like or dislike themselves
• Positively linked to ability to handle failure
• You could improve a person’s self-esteem by emphasizing desirable characteristics.
Dark personality (Dark triad)
Narcissists
• Self-promotors who keep carving attention
Machiavellians
• Master manipulators who always try to manipulate others to achieve
self-interest
Psychopaths
• Really really really bad people who often do harm to others as they go
about seeking thrills with little concern for who gets hurt along the way
You want to be surrounded with
positive people!
The Power of Positivity

Emotional Intelligence
What is emotional intelligence? Is it a superpower?
• Ability to monitor your and others’ feelings and to use this information to
guide your thinking and actions
Related to
• Better social relations
• Better family and intimate relationships
• Being perceived more positively by others
• Better academic achievement
• Better psychological well-being
The Traits of Emotional Intelligence
Self-awareness
• The ability to read your own emotions
Self-management
• The ability to control your emotions and give an adaptive emotional display (i.e., emotional labor)
• Surface Acting Strategy (e.g., give a fake smile without changing what you really think)
• Deep Acting Strategy (e.g., give a sincere smile after changing your previous thought)
Social awareness
• Read others’ emotions, and understand how your emotions and actions affect others
Relationship management
• The ability to communicate clearly and convincingly, build strong personal bonds
How to Improve EI?
Although it tends to be stable, it could be improved:

• Being aware of your level of Emotional Intelligence
• Understand how others feel about what they are communicating
• Gaining appreciation of what people want from an exchange
Other traits
Carol Dweck: Individual difference in your implicit views about whether intelligence (ability) can be
changed
Dweck’s Mindsets
Fixed mindset: Growth mindset:
Intelligence and talent are fixed • Intelligence can be developed
Innate talent creates success • Innate talent = starting point
• Enjoy effort and process of learning
Effort will not make a difference
• You can always grow and learn
You either get it or you don’t
27
Reminders
 LRJ Chapters 2 & 3 about diversity and emotions at work

 HBR: Getting Over Your Fear of Talking About Diversity
 Start working on Steps 1 & 2 for SDP.
 Read my first newsletter to you (will send it out today)

It is a Wrap …
See you next week …

3 GMGT 2070 Individual Differences & Personality

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

3 GMGT 2070 Individual Differences & Personality

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

3 GMGT 2070 Individual Differences & Personality

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Change up!

Pick up your nametags. Sit somewhere different

Understand some of the aspects of individual differences in organizations

Mirror Image Fallacy

• Relatively stable traits or characteristics

• Enduring patterns of feelings, attitudes, attributes and

• The result of both genetics and environment (nature and

 The Big Five

 Extraversion: stable tendency toward sociability,

Does this mean introverts are less likely to succeed?

(Cain, 2012; thepowerofintroverts.com)

 Openness to Experience: stable tendency toward strong intellectual curiosity,

(Barrick & Mount, 1991; Bendersky & Shah, 2013 - AMJ)

 Agreeableness: stable tendency toward being helpful, cooperative,

2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 15

Which personality traits are important

 Step 1: Use the Big-5 Assessment Tool to know more about

 Step 2: Discuss your personality with your classmate sitting

 Step 3: Discuss with your neighbor: for the team consulting

2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 17

The Power of Positivity

2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 22

Although it tends to be stable, it could be improved:

 LRJ Chapters 2 & 3 about diversity and emotions at work

2023-10-09 I.H. Asper School of Business 32

See you next week …

You might also like