OB Assignment (1st July 2012) What is personality?

? Personality concerns the most important, most noticeable parts of an individual's psychological life. Personality concerns whether a person is happy or sad, energetic or apathetic, smart or dull. Over the years, many different definitions have been proposed for personality. Most of the definitions refer to a mental system -- a collection of psychological parts including motives, emotions, and thoughts. The definitions vary a bit as to what those parts might be, but they come down to the idea that personality involves a pattern or global operation of mental systems. Here are some definitions: "Personality is the entire mental organization of a human being at any stage of his development. It embraces every phase of human character: intellect, temperament, skill, morality, and every attitude that has been built up in the course of one's life." (Warren & Carmichael, 1930, p. 333) (In an acknowledged overstatement...) "Personality is the essence of a human being." (Hall & Lindzey, 1957, p. 9, characterizing statements by Gordon Allport) "An individual's pattern of psychological processes arising from motives, feelings, thoughts, and other major areas of psychological function. Personality is expressed through its influences on the body, in conscious mental life, and through the individual's social behaviour." (Mayer, 2005) Components of Personality While there are many different theories of personality, the first step is to understand exactly what is meant by the term personality. A brief definition would be that personality is made up of the characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviours that make a person unique. In addition to this, personality arises from within the individual and remains fairly consistent throughout life. Some of the fundamental characteristics of personality include:

Consistency - There is generally a recognizable order and regularity to behaviours. Essentially, people act in the same ways or similar ways in a variety of situations. Psychological and physiological - Personality is a psychological construct, but research suggests that it is also influenced by biological processes and needs. It impacts behaviours and actions - Personality does not just influence how we move and respond in our environment; it also causes us to act in certain ways. Multiple expressions - Personality is displayed in more than just behaviour. It can also be seen in our thoughts, feelings, close relationships and other social interactions

According to personality expert, Professor John Mayer, personality is the organized, developing, and system within the individual that represents the collective action of that individuals major psychological subsystems. In laymans terms, I like to think of personality as that inherent driver of how we act. Its that natural disposition we fall back on when all those other forces of the outside world are accounted for. A great way to describe personality is to use a popular model called the Big Five. The five factor model, more popularly known as the Big Five, is one of the most researched models of personality. The model provides a great overview of everyday personality and how it relates to the workplace. Compared to other models, the Big Five enjoys a fairly high level of academic consensus as well as empirical support. The theory being that there are five major trait categories that describe our personality. According to the Big Five, we all consistently fall somewhere along each of the following five continuums that I like to remember as OCEAN.

* Openness to Experience: At the open end, individuals are highly interested in experiencing new things and are flexible in their thinking, where at the opposite end, individuals are more closed minded and rigid in how they approach new experiences. * Conscientiousness: Those who are high in conscientiousness tend to be diligent and dutiful in the way the approach work and life. Individuals who are lower on the conscientiousness scale tend to be big picture thinkers and less interested in the details of how things get done. * Extraversion/Introversion: Probably the most recognizable personality trait is extroversion because its easy to see. Extraverts are socially assertive and gain energy from performing for and interacting with others. Introverts draw energy from reflection and tend to prefer working alone or in small groups. * Agreeableness: This scale looks at the level of friendliness versus hostility that someone tends to display when interacting with others. Those high in agreeableness are more trusting and modest whereas those low in agreeableness are more suspicious and oppositional. * Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Those who are highly neurotic tend to be less stable and frequently demonstrate negative emotions. Those who are more emotionally stable are generally pleasant and tend to be resistant to stress. When thinking about and observing personality I always caution people to keep two things in mind: behaviour and intent.

Why personality matters in organizations? Simple answer is - Personality Affects Your Attitude towards Work. How? In any given workplace, there is likely to be a mix of different personalities that together contribute to the company's mission and goals. Personalities can have a powerful effect on your attitude toward work, influencing different facets of your professional approach. Some personality attributes may help you become a better employee; others may present challenges to be overcome in order to maintain professionalism in the workplace. Motivation One way that personality can affect your attitude toward work is through motivation. People work for different reasons. Individuals with family-oriented personalities may work to earn a pay check and benefits in order to support loved ones. Competitive-natured people may be motivated by the thrill of beating out colleagues and competitors. Passionate-minded employees might have a positive attitude toward work because they love working in their particular field or industry. Professionals with altruistic personalities might view their work as contributing to a better society. Stress Personality can affect attitude toward work with regard to stress. High-octane individuals may thrive in a stressful, competitive or aggressive work environment. Other employees might have an even-keeled approach to stress, not letting work pressures affect their mood, relations with colleagues or personal life. Some employees with sensitive personalities may be overcome with anxiety in stressful workplace environments.

Interpersonal Relations The workplace inevitably involves relations with other people, including managers, co-workers, vendors, competitors, employers and clients. Personalities can influence attitudes toward interpersonal relations at work. Outgoing personalities may welcome opportunities to network, debate, share ideas and pal around with other professionals. More reclusive personalities might feel more comfortable working solo, or in small groups of people. Aggressive or confrontational professionals can struggle to connect with other people.

Professionalism Another way that personality affects work attitudes is level of professionalism. Jokesters and fun-loving professionals might struggle maintaining the right level of formality in the workplace. Individuals with a casual, easy-going personality might be frequently late or miss deadlines. Serious personalities may treat their job with respect, strictly adhering to company rules and policies. Individuals struggling with dishonest tendencies might be tempted to steal office supplies

Risks Work attitudes about risk can also be influenced by personality. In some fields (for example, finance, investment or real estate) risk is an inherent part of the job. There's always a chance that money, clients or investments will be lost. Some personalities thrive in a risky, highadrenaline environment. Risk-averse individuals might not perform as well in such environments, although employers might balance teams with both personality types to avoid taking on excessive risk.

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Why certain personal behaviour impacts the image of organization? Organizational behaviour comes into the picture in answering this. It is assumed, that organizations sport a particular behaviour and are likely to hire people who also sport the same or similar behaviour or those who fall into the behavioural attribute boundaries of the organization. Many a times, people assume, that majority of the people in an organization are like-minded people having almost similar traits and behaviour. This, though, is seldom true; the observations vary from organization to organization. As a result, people begin to relate the image of the organization with the behaviour of the individual employees. This actually works both ways it helps the organization to build a strong clientele base and get customers if their employee behaviour experience by majority of the population is fairly good; whereas it backfires in case of the reverse. Another consideration that goes without saying is that a disciplined top management is bound to have disciplined and responsible team of employees working underneath them and hence the disciplined personal behaviour of the personnels form a constructive image of the organization into the eyes of population. This is simply based on the fact that, people like to have around them or with them, the people which share, endorse, support similar behaviour and promote alike interests popularly known as birds of the same feather flock together. As a result of this, on the other hand, it is assumed that a notorious or infamously famous person is bound to have around him the people displaying similar interests all negatives.

Due to the above cited reasons, personal behaviour is said to impact the image of an organization, especially if you are amongst those top management people who are looked upon as to be guiding the work force in the organization and/or responsible for the work culture, in some way, directly or indirectly, within an organization. Though, it is said that personal and professional lives are different, and the behavioural aspect in each is not dependent, this is very rarely observed. We have many examples of professionally successful people falling off the apex due to their undesirable behaviour in their personal lives and many, who are successful in their professional lives because of their desirable behaviour they portray in their personal lives.