What traits and behavior characterize leaders?

Extroversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience are some of the personal traits that are positively correlated with followers’ leadership perceptions, while there is also some evidence of a positive relationship between leadership and emotional intelligence. We can also refer to some personal traits, like core-self evaluations, to find from there a connection to both, transactional and transformational leadership.
Regarding the way the leaders tend to behave, we can differentiate them by those who have task orientation or are transactional leaders, and those who have a relationship orientation or consideration or are transformational leaders. A recent review of 160 studies done by scholars found that followers of leaders that are high in consideration (transformational leaders) were more satisfied with their jobs, were more motivated, and had more respect for their leader. On the other hand, transactional leaders were more connected with productivity of their followers.

Task oriented, transactional leader

If a leader is high in terms of task orientation, he will tend to define results that must be achieved (objectives), organize tasks (who will do what), give precise instructions (what must be done and how to do it), follow up on the work that is being done and provide feedback, and intervene when there are problems while showing how to face them.

Relationship oriented, transformational leader

A leader who has relationship orientation will tend to explain why something needs to be done, show interest in employees’ opinions, incentivize that employees take responsibility of their own work by encouraging them to make their own decisions, encourage employees to assess their performance and think of ways to improve, support and “cheer up” employees, give praise when the job is well done, and show interest in employees’ welfare.

Situational leadership theory

According to Hersey and Blanchard, the right type of leadership will depend on the person or group being led.

• If the person/group does not know, and not willing –> Coaching leadership.
• If the person/group does not know, but is willing –> Directive leadership.
• If the person/group knows, but is not willing –> Supportive leadership.
• If the person/group knows, and is willing –> Delegating leadership.

Authoritarian decision making

Authoritarian decision making appears in those situations when there is urgency and the decision must be made immediately, there is a high degree of uncertainty (lack of experience or ability) and the employees are confused, there is a lack of willingness  or interest on behalf of employees in taking more responsibility for the decision, or there is likely to be a conflict among team members for determining what solution is the best one.

Participative decision making

Participative decision making tends to appear in those situations when the employees accept or share the objective that needs to be achieved, the decision quality is key and employees have the needed experience or knowledge to make the best decision, or when it is very important that employees accept the decision and it is unlikely that they do if they do not intervene in the decision making process.

Transactional leadership

The main traits of the transactional type of leadership, apart from being task oriented, is that transactional leaders are those that guide or motivate their followers in the direction of established goals by clarifying role and task requirements, recognize needs and wants, and see how they will be satisfied. This type of leadership is based on the exchange and mutual benefit and is aimed at improving the efficacy and efficiency of the organization or business unit, while the vision tends to be taken-for-granted.
Transactional leadership is also directed towards contingent rewards through contracts that exchange rewards for effort, promise rewards for good performance and recognize accomplishments. The management by exception can be “active“, when the leader proactively watches and searches for deviations from rules and standards and takes correct action, or “passive“, when the leader intervenes only if standards are not met. Overall, transactional leadership can also be characterized by a “laissez-faire” approach.

Transformational leadership

A transformational style of leadership tend to support the qualitative change of the organization or business unit. The transformational leadership also tends to be based on commitment through intrinsic motives, tend to inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests and is capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers.
Transformational leaders rely on inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individual consideration and intellectual stimulation.
Transformational leaders tend to motivate us to do more than we originally expected by raising our level of consciousness about the importance and value of designated outcomes, by getting us transcend our own self-interests, and by getting at higher order needs beyond security or affiliation, such as recognition, self-esteem, and self-actualization. Transformation leaders also tend to exert idealized influence by providing a role model for high ethical behavior, instilling pride, and gaining respect and trust. Transformational leaders also exert inspirational motivation by articulating a vision that is inspiring for the followers, communicating high expectations, using symbols to focus efforts, and expressing important purposes in simple ways. Transformational leaders also offer individualized consideration as they stop treating all subordinates alike, set examples and assign tasks on an individual basis to followers to help significantly improve their abilities and motivations and act as coach and advisor while keeping their team members always “in the loop”.
In terms of ethics, transformational leaders are more likely to emerge in times of crisis and uncertainty. Given that transformational leaders can provide followers with a vision for the future, transformational leaders also tend to be moral leaders. Nevertheless, transformational leaders can be immoral when they provide visions not backed by reality, which create false hopes and expectations on followers.

Intellectual stimulation in transactional and transformational leadership

The transformational leader may be less willing to accept the status quo and more likely to seek new ways of doing things while taking maximum advantage of opportunities. On the other hand, transactional leaders will focus on what can clearly work, will keep time constraints in mind, and will do what seems to be most efficient and free of risk. Overall, transformational leaders are more proactive, more creative, innovative, and less inhibited in their search for solutions, while transactional leaders although being equally bright, will rather focus on how best to keep running the system for which they are responsible.

Conclusion

Transactional and transformational leadership styles are hard to isolate from each other as they tend to be present at least in some degree in any leader. It is neither possible to judge what type of leadership is better because that will depend on the characteristics and circumstances of each organization, the type of “followers” and the goals of the organization. Nevertheless, understanding transactional and transformational leadership allows us to be more aware of our own behavior and guides us with some hints towards the right type of leadership depending on what challenge we have to face.

Why studying work teams?

If despite of your experience you are still feeling not sure about this question, here we drop some reasons: 80% of Fortune 500 firms have half or more of their employees working in teams; teams are flexible and can be created and dismantled; teams can be cross-functional and cross-hierarchical, and when they are “true teams”, they can be very motivating for the employees. Teams are also specially indicated for those tasks that are complex and require inter-dependence of different members. We should also notice that individual behavior within groups (and also in teams) is affected by the properties of the group itself (e.g. size) as well as the behavior of other group members.

Stages in group development

When talking about the different stages in group development, we can talk about the forming, storming, norming and performing stages. The first stage, forming, takes place when there is uncertainty concerning the purpose, structure, and leadership in the group and the members of the group get to know each other and clarify expectations. The second stage, storming, takes place when due to an intragroup conflict, some members accept the existence of the group but they resist the constraints the group imposes. There’s conflict over who will control the group and this stage is complete when the group agrees to a hierarchy of leadership. The third stage, norming, takes place when close relationships develop within the group, building higher group cohesion and formal and informal group norms are established. Finally, the fourth stage, performing, takes place when group members can focus on getting the job done and all their energy is concentrated on performing.

The case of temporary groups with deadlines (punctuated equilibrium model)

This model elaborates a bit more on the internal processes that happen within a group that can be working towards meeting certain deadlines for their deliverables. During this process we can distinguish usually the first meeting that sets the direction of the group. This first meeting is crucial because during this meeting the implicit beliefs on the group purpose, the level of effort to be expected, the leadership of the group and other important factors tend to appear. These first assumptions tend to remain stable until half-way before the official deadline. Then,— at half-way members realize “how they are performing” and start benchmarking the environment to see how others are doing and what are the external requirements. During this transition period teams can challenge previous assumptions and re-organize. After this, the inertia starts again until the last meeting before delivering, which can take long and requires great effort. At this point, depending on how the transition was done, the group can experience great cohesion or conflict.

As some of the most crucial features of group structure we can name the roles of the members inside of the group, the norms, the size of the group, its composition and group’s cohesion. We will see them more in detail next:

1. Work team roles

(Belbin, R. Meredith, 1996)

2. Work team norms

—These are shared expectations about how group members should behave. Some examples that are common in most groups are such as scheduling norms, attendance, decision making norms, new members’ acceptance, ways to deal with conflict, work intensity, etc. This norms can develop externally to the group,— by intragroup negotiation or discussion, or spontaneously from experience. This process reminds us about the punctuated equilibrium model and about the relevance of the first meetings, where the first norms are settled.

3. Work team size

In general, larger groups are less effective as there are issues with coordination, as well as there is more possibility for social loafing. Moreover, members in large groups usually tend to be less satisfied and motivated.

4. Work team composition

—It is still not clearly determined what is the relationship between diversity in a group in terms of attitudes, gender, personality or experience regarding team performance. Nevertheless, more diverse groups usually tend to have more difficulties in the begining, although in case they manage to work together, they can reach higher levels of performance than less heterogeneous groups. It is also important to think about the type of task that is being carried out as diverse groups tend to work better with more complex and creative tasks.

5. Work team cohesiveness

Work team cohesiveness can be understood in terms of the degree to which group members are attracted to each other and are motivated to stay in the group. In cohesive groups members usually tend to interact more with each other, talk more about themselves, and create their own language codes. The relationship between cohesion and group effectiveness depends on the performance norms that exist within the group. High levels of cohesion can be useful at the beginning of the group life, or during periods of high pressure. However, if new members do not enter the group, excessive familiarity can end up leading to lack of flexibility and less group effectiveness.

In order to increase group cohesion, we can reduce the size of the group, try to agree on group goals, spend more time together, stimulate competition with other groups, make group entrance difficult for members, isolate the group or compensate the group rather than individuals.

Group decision making

Some of the advantages of group decision making are that the group tend to have access to more complete information and knowledge to make the decision. The group also tends the have more diversity of views and creativity and a greater acceptance of the decisions taken.

In terms of disadvantages the main ones are that group decision making takes more time, tends to have ambiguous responsibility and can be under conformity pressures. The discussion can be dominated by few members and although decisions are usually more accurate than the decisions of the average individual in a group, they are still less accurate than the judgments of the most accurate.

Nevertheless, if creativity is important, groups tend to be more effective, however, as groups usually take more time to make decisions, they still can be less efficient.

Work team conformity pressures

In situations of uncertainty, the group always puts pressure on us to conform. These pressures affect us more when we really care about our group membership. To learn more about it and get a better picture based on field research, check Asch experiments that showed the real impact of work team conformity pressures.

Groupthink in a work team and its symptoms

—Groupthink is known as the phenomenon that occurs when the norm for consensus in a group overrides the realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. The illusions of invulnerability can create excessive optimism and encourage risk taking. Also stereotyping can take place against those who are opposed to the group and start being considered as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid. Direct pressure to conform can be placed on any member who questions the group, being the member couched in terms of “disloyalty”.— Also self-censorship can happen for those ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus, and finally, illusions of unanimity can appear among group members, viewing silence as a sign of agreement.

What factors can increase the likelihood of groupthink?

—To name few of them – group cohesion, depending on how much the members are attracted to the group as well as willing to continue their membership. Faults in the group structure observed through a lack of tradition of impartial leadership, lack of norms requiring methodological procedures or homogeneity of members’ social background and ideology. Finally, a provocative situational context that can be observed through the insulation of the group, high stress from external threats, recent failures, excessive difficulties on the decision-making task or moral dilemmas.

Main motivation theories

Maslow

Maslow‘s theory is very popular, however, there’s little empirical evidence that the structure he’s suggesting is in fact the structure of individual needs. Neither there is evidence that unsatisfied needs will necessary motivate an individual, nor that a satisfied need activates movement to a new need.

McClelland

McClelland outlined the following factors to trigger motivation: need for achievement (drive to excel), need for power (drive to lead others) and need for affiliation (drive for close relationships). Best managers tend to be high on power and low on affiliation, although high need for achievement is not necessarily correlated with management positions. Overall, high achievers tend to do better with tasks of an intermediary degree of risk for which they are personally responsible, and for which they have feedback.

McGregor (theory X/Y)

Based on Maslow, McGregor argued that managers normally assume that employees are guided by lower order needs (theory X), which eventually decreases their performance and motivation. McGregor insisted on the need to look at employees as willing to autonomous and seeking responsibility and argued that acting on Y assumptions would include employees’ motivation. This theory has no empirical validity, either.

Hertzberg (Two factor theory)

Hertzberg argued that factors that lead to job satisfaction are different from those that lead to job dissatisfaction. Job satisfaction increases with achievement, recognition and responsibility (esteem and growth), also called intrinsic motivators. On the other hand, job dissatisfaction decreases with work conditions and relationship with peers (low order and affiliation), also called hygiene factors, or extrinsic motivators. For Herzberg, as for Maslow, intrinsic motivators count only after extrinsic are in place. The cognitive evaluation theory argues that intrinsic motivation decreases when we introduce extrinsic motivators because the person experiences a loss of control over his or her behavior.

Herzberg’s methodology was flawed because it is based on self-reports, and people tend to take credit for the good and attribute the bad to external factors. No measure of satisfaction was used and satisfaction by itself is not motivation.

Self-determination theory

This theory states that all human beings have fundamental psychological needs to be competent, autonomous, and related to others. The satisfaction of these needs increases people’s autonomous motivation while not meeting these needs promotes controlled motivation and amotivation. Autonomous motivation leads to better psychological health and performance. This can also be understood as the “contemporary theory on the positive effects of intrinsic motivation” and can be linked to self-concordance theory and job engagement. To self-concordance theory as it is a related theory that states that people are more motivated when they pursue goals that are consistent with their interests and core values, and to job engagement because it is a a more comprehensive concept than motivation. Engagement is linked to intrinsic motivation, but can go beyond it.

Goal setting theory

Goals setting theory points out that having goals is much better than having no goals. Nevertheless, goal setting works only if there is goal commitment, or in other words, the individual believes he can achieve the goal (realistic goal) and want to achieve it. Setting goals can get our attention and help us to focus. We can also assess how we are doing along the way and correct our behavior. Effective goals need to be specific, achievable, and challenging, knowing that difficult goals, when accepted, can result in higher performance than with easier goals. Moreover, providing feedback leads also to higher performance than when not providing it, but we should be aware of some boundary conditions for goal setting such as national culture and the type of task to adjust the goals accordingly.

Equity theory

Employees compare their inputs (e.g. education, experience, effort) and their outputs (e.g. salary, promotion, recognition) with comparable others and attempt at maintaining an equilibrium. We should keep in mind that if employees perceive inequity they can attempt to change inputs (e.g. improve their skills), change outputs (e.g. work less), distort perceptions of self or others (e.g. over or undervalue someone’s work), choose a different comparison (e.g. someone they feel more comfortable to be compared with), withdraw (e.g. leave the company). The employees will also tend to assess what they believe is fair or not, and therefore, start acting accordingly if they feel motivated or demotivated with their findings.

Expectancy theory

For the expectancy theory, behavior depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome, and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual. The expectancy theory relies on the expectation that effort will lead to certain performance,— and that this performance will lead to a certain outcome, enabling to achieve some personal goals.

Conclusion

Having reviewed some of the most prominent theories in the field of motivation, it is possible to conclude that one of the most actionable ones seems to be the goal setting theory. Upfront, the possibility of bringing the goal setting theory into practice seems to be more straightforward than with some other theories. Apparently, one of the main advantages of the goal setting theory versus the other is the possibility to make it easy  measurable, allowing to capture all the inputs and outputs for research proposes. Nevertheless, as we are talking about social sciences we should be open-minded and incorporate the strengths and virtues of other motivation theories to have a better understanding of motivation. This will allow us to get closer to our goal as managers – achieve a higher performance in our organizations by leveraging and empowering our most valuable resource – our people, through motivation.

Bounded emotionality

According to Putnam and Mumby (1993), bounded emotionality is the expression of a wider range of emotions than is usually accepted in traditional and normative organizations, but maintaining boundaries between what is felt and what is expressed. Bounded emotionality has six main characteristics:

• Inter-subjective limitations, as the emotional expression in organizations should be bounded for interpersonal relationships to function effectively (recognition of individual subjectivity).
• Spontaneously emergent work feelings, because work feelings should emerge spontaneously from the performance of tasks.
• Tolerance of ambiguity, due to the coexistence of contradictory feelings, positions, and demands.
• Heterarchy of goals, as no set of values takes precedence over others.
• Integrated self identity, understood as being oneself at work.
• Community building, as bounded emotionality facilitates strong feelings of community among organizational members.

What we know about bounded emotionality comes from a limited set of small, often nonprofit organization, being bounded emotionality time-consuming and non-instrumental. This leads to question if it is possible to enact bounded emotionality in a large, for-profit organization given the efficiency and financial pressures of the competitive marketplace.
Some of the facilitating factors to enact bounded emotionality are:

• Proportion of women, as an unusual prevalence of women in an organization might prompt innovative, self-disclosing emotional management practices to emerge. Moreover, once at high-level management positions, the willingness to influence the development of bounded emotionality might increase.
• Organization’s ideology, as chances of success are greater to the extent that ideology is congruent with some of the fundamental elements of bounded emotionality.

Impediments to the Implementation of bounded emotionality

Nevertheless, the implementation of bounded emotionality in the organization might face the following challenges:

• Effects on growth depending on the size of the organization. In large organizations a lack of interpersonal closeness can lead to impersonality.
• Limitations of the labour market, as there might be a shortage of qualified candidates for managerial positions that have the needed emotional skills.
• Dealing with emotional diversity, as those who had difficulty complying with the demands for emotional openness might encounter informal requests for conformity.
• Resistance in those cases when some employees might question bounded emotionality.
• Attempts to separate public and private life, as the integration of work-private concerns can face opposition from some employees.
• Stress at work, as the instrumental concerns may take priority over an individual’s personal or family needs.

When to implement bounded emotionality?

In practice it is virtually impossible to separate instrumental emotional labor and non instrumental work feelings (bounded emotionality), particularly when the employees share values with the company. In order to assess a conscious implementation of bounded emotionality to our organization, we should answer some guiding questions: Is bounded emotionality a better way of doing business from employees’ point of view, or is it a more effective, more invasive, and therefore potentially more dangerous control mechanism that might lead to emotional exploitation? Is a pure bounded emotionality approach feasible within the constraints of our industry? Isn’t it better for the employee well-being to be able to separate work and private life? These are merely a sample of possible questions that we need to think about before starting to change anything in our organization.
The proper implementation of bounded emotionality can help to build cohesion inside of the organization and make everyone feel as being in the same boat. Nevertheless, each captain should always have on the radar where are the riffs in bounded emotionality, so to avoid them for the good of all.

Perception

Perception is the way in which we interpret messages from our senses to provide some order and meaning to our environment. Perception also acts as a mediating variable that influences our behavior, and it is through perception that we select data and organize it into meaningful information for us.

The role of schemes in perception and decision making

A schema is a mental template that individuals impose on an information environment to give it form and meaning. This constructs allow to systematize knowledge and organize information about other people, situations, objects, and ideas that are generated through experience. Moreover, schemes allow us not having to organize sensory data from scratch every time we perceive it and speeds our decision making process. Schemes can also act as heuristic devices or rules of thumb for judging other people and judging all kind of situations. Nevertheless, these heuristics can bias our decision making in harmful ways. Schemes can be specific to a certain domain but can also be common to everyone, turning this way into cognitive biases.

Attribution theory, or the perception of others

The attribution theory tries to explain how people identify the reasons (internal or external) for other people behaviors. It mainly depends on these three factors:

• Distinctiveness. E.g. if someone is arriving late, is that something that surprises us from that person? High: External vs. Low: Internal.
• Consensus. E.g. do others also arrive late? High: External vs. Low: Internal.
• Consistency. E.g. does he or she always arrive late? High: Internal vs. Low: External.

We should consider the existence of the fundamental attribution error that is the tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors when judging others. On the other hand, there could be also self-serving bias, meaning that we tend to attribute our failures to external causes and our success to us.

Cognitive Biases in Judging Others

 When judging other we might also face the following cognitive biases:

• Selective perception – when we tend to focus our attention on issues that relate to our own interests, experiences, attitudes, not only when judging others, but in any situation.
• The halo effect – when there’s a tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.
• The contrast effect – when the evaluation of the characteristics of a person is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who can rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.

• Stereotyping – when we judge someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which the person belongs.

Cognitive Biases in Decision Making

And when it comes to decision making, we need to be sure that we are aware of the following cognitive biases that could have a significant impact on our decisions:

• Overconfidence bias – when we have excessive confidence in our own answers to questions.
• Confirmation bias – when we have tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and to discard information that contradicts them.
• Availability bias – when we have tendency to base our judgments on the more recent information.

• Escalation of commitment – when we stay with a decision even when there is clear evidence that it is wrong.

Cognitive Determinants of Escalation of Commitment

I would like to focus on the escalation of commitment as one of the most evident cognitive bias. It takes place when decision makers tend to stick to a previous course of action and keep investing resources despite objective evidence suggesting that staying the course is unwise. This can be related to the concept of sunk costs and reflects the need to be able to stop, take a deep breath, and be able to recognize own mistakes. Those leaders who fail to be able to do so are at a great risk of not only loosing their reputation, but also loosing their company.

Some common cognitive explanations for escalation of commitment are:

• Self-justification theory – when attempting to prove oneself of being right in having made a decision.
• Confirmation bias – when looking for supporting evidence.
• Loss aversion – when we tend to perceive losses to be larger than gains, and as a result we want to prevent losses by all means.

• Impression management – when we try to avoid giving a negative image in front of others.

The proximity to completion and personal responsibility are also two factors that make escalation much more likely to happen, so we need to be aware of that as well. We should also do the link between the escalation of commitement and the concept of “core self-evaluation” that was discussed in our post “Do individuals’ personality traits affect performance?” because those employees who would have high “core self-evaluation” would be less proclive to enter in the spiral of the escalation of commitment.

We can reduce the possible biases in our perception if we understand the impact on our decision making process. By remaining objective, we will manage to increase the quality of our decisions, and that will benefit our organization.

Personality traits affect performance?

In order to drive discussion on this question we first need to understand what personality is and what are the different traits that individuals’ personality can have. It is possible to define personality as those set of traits that characterize an individual. Personality can be influenced by biological, cultural and life events, and virtually all personality measures can be condensed into the 5-factor model of personality factors (Big Five).

5-factor model of personality factors (Big Five)

• Emotional stability: understood as the degree to which an individual can be anxious, depressed, angry, and generally emotionally insecure.
• Extroversion: understood as the degree to which a person can be sociable, talkative, assertive, active, and ambitious and is able to openly express  feelings and emotions.
• Openness to experience: understood as the degree to which an individual can be open to experience, is intellectually curious, appreciative of art, and sensitive to beauty.
• Agreeableness: understood as the extent to which a person can be courteous, good natured, flexible, trusting, and liked by others.
• Conscientiousness: understood as the degree to which a person can be dependable, responsible, organized, and a planner.

Why this is relevant? Because, as studied by scholars, this five traits can have a direct impact on what we can expect from the employee:

• Emotional stability involves less negative thinking and fewer negative emotions. This leads to higher job satisfaction and lower stress levels.
• Extroversion is usually linked to better interpersonal skills, greater social dominance and making the individual more emotionally expressive. This leads to higher performance, enhanced leadership and higher job satisfaction.
• Openness is associated with increased interest towards learning, more creativity and more flexibility and autonomy of the individual. This turns into higher training performance, enhanced leadership and makes the individual more adaptable to change.
• Agreeableness involves the individual being more compliant and conforming. This turns into higher performance and lower levels of deviant behavior.
• Finally, conscientiousness is usually reflected in greater effort and persistence, more drive and discipline and better organization and planning. This leads to higher performance, enhanced leadership and greater longevity of the individual in the organization.

Personality dichotomy

It is also possible to look at this set of factors from different perspectives, like the personality dichotomy view of “type A – type B” personality (quite popular in Organizational Behavior field as well) being:

• Type A personalities those that are associated to hard-driving, competitive individuals who are prompt but always feel rushed, are impatient, competitive and even hostile.
• Type B personalities those that are associated to reflective, more relaxed individuals who feel more open to show their feelings.

Core self-evaluation, Machiavellism, Self-monitoring, Locus of control

Another possible way to classify the different personalities types can be by some of the following traits, that would be a mix of those factors that were already mentioned:

• Core self-evaluation: in those individuals who are able to drive bottom-line conclusions about their capabilities, competences, and worth as a person. Having positive core self-evaluations tend to increase performance and job satisfaction.
• Machiavellism: extend to which an individual can be pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. Individuals with high machiavellism tend to perform better at persuasion. be good in face to face interactions, and potentially get advantage of others’ emotional involvement.
• Self-monitoring: in those individuals who can adjust their behavior to external, situational factors. Generally they tend to be good at presenting themselves differently to different audiences and are more likely to emerge as leaders, receive better performance ratings, and tend to show less commitment to their organizations while being more mobile
• Locus of control: being the extent in which people view causation in their own lives.

 Values

We should neither forget that apart from the personality traits, each individual has a set of values that combined with his or her personality can have an impact on performance.

When talking about values, here we understand them as those basic convictions that a specific type of behavior or end-state of existence is personally (or socially) preferable. Values tend to involve a judgmental base of what is right or wrong and tend to be stable and enduring, though as with personality traits, can gradually change over time.

To provide some further background on how values can be classified we can refer to the Rokeach Value Survey (as one of the most common ways to classify values) that divides values in terminal (preferable end-states) and instrumental (means of achieving those end-states). Another reference is the Hofstede Value Classification.

Hofstede Value Classification

• Power distance: the individual tolerates hierarchical differences and unequal distribution of power.
• Masculinity: the individual values achievement, assertiveness, control, power, etc.
• Uncertainty avoidance
• Individualism (vs. collectivism): the individual prefer to act as individual and don’t expect the group or community to look after him.
• Long term orientation (vs. short term): the individual emphasizes the future, thrift, and persistence

It is also important to notice that values can vary across groups (e.g. employees of different hierarchies), generations, and across cultures. These considerations lead to understand individual’s values as moderation variables that have an impact on performance.

 Conclusion

Having reviewed some of the main concepts behind personality traits and briefly introduced the moderation effect that values can have on them. There is enough base to conclude that individuals’ personality traits can affect performance. Although intuitively the relationship between some individual traits and the impact on performance might look obvious, their relevance should not be neglected. Inertia inside the organizations might lead to skip going through these consideration when managers in a rush are trying to arrange a work team or looking for the right individual for a given job position. This is merely a heads up for managers to avoid burning employees putting them to do something that they are not meant to do. Let’s make sure we understand not only what are the core skills and competences of our employees, but also what are their personality and values. For the organization – there’s much more to gain if we look for the right fit between employees’ skills, competences AND personalities. We strongly believe that the output will worth the effort!