Big Five Models of Personality, Personality and Leadership Style - Coursework Example

Big five model of personality Name Course Name Course Instructor Date 1. Introduction 3 2. Personality Profile Strength and Weakness 3 2.1Consciousness 4 2.2 Agreeable 4 2.3 Experience 4 2.4 Extraversion 5 3. Personality and Leadership Style 5 3.1 Leadership Style 6 3.2 Effects 7 4. Improving Leadership Style In Future 8 References 9 1. Introduction Personality is attributes, traits of a person system of thinking, feeling and acting. It is through this that managers can figure out whom to employ, which person suits which job, promotion and other human resource activities. The big five model of temperament is part of the two powerful systems of personality. It is also known as five factor model and it is more significant compared to other model of personality. This is due to the fact that, it is one with most fact finding support, diverse, constitute most personality traits and better in predicting end results . They include consciousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion. According to the big five model people who have more consciousness tend to be more cautious, trustworthy, determination or focused. Those with more agreeableness are more polite compassionate and kind. For those who have more neuroticism they tend to be eager, unfriendly, dispirited and emotionally unstable. Those with openness to experience are more inventive, visionary, interested, fragile and courage. Also, those with more extraversion are associable, conversational and confident. 2. Personality Profile Strength and Weakness Personality profile helps us put ourselves in others shoes, to understand ourselves, help other people to satisfy their wants and essentials and help reach our own satisfaction. A person with this personality tends to have a few goals which he or she pursues with a lot concentration and cannot be easily distracted. It is mostly about the work itself other than relations with employees. According to Lau rie Beth jones, the relative strengths and weaknesses in personality profile can be explained by using elements such as wind, water, earth and fire. 2.1 Consciousness One personality profile is consciousness. This can be compare to the element of earth. Earth is seen as what hold us in place. It is seen to provide shelter for us. Consciousness can be related to earth as people with this trait tend to be dependable. The earth is as well dependable and is the best to explain this trait. The strength in this personality profile here include, security and foreseeable. The challenges include uncompromising, traditional and not flexible [Gol90]. 2.2 Agreeable Another personality profile is agreeableness. It is this trait that helps me have a lot of friends as I seem friendly and approachable. This personality helps a person to be reachable and get to know people and understand them. It helps Identify when the employees are not satisfied and when they are satisfied. The element that best describes this is water. Water is still and healing, deep. It is pleasant and agreeable. It therefore shows same characteristic as of agreeable profile. Agreeable profile people are more of polite, good natured, compassionate, mindful of others and respectful. The strengths of this personality profile include flexibility and easy going. This helps in solving problems and reaching decisions, peaceful and they are mainly cooperative especially in groups or teams. The challenges are that one easily loses themselves to group mentality and forget their self-identity. They adopt to others bad and good behavior. It is hard to say no and thus agrees easily or is easily persuaded and influenced (Furnham, 2011). 2.3 Experience The third personality outline is openness to experience. This can be best related to the element wind. This is as the wind is peculiar, uncertain, enthusiastic and worldwide. It therefore relates to openness experience due to its characteristics. This includes visionary, original, interested, delicate and adventurous. The wind blows openly showing the relation with the personality to experience which is openness to experience. The strengths of this includes, unplanned or impulsive, vibrant, forward motion and convincing. The weaknesses are uneasy or anxious, do not weigh consequences of its actions and has low concentration. 2.4 Extraversion The fourth personality outline is extraversion. This can be related to the element fire. This is as fire is dancing, blistering, bright, passionate, charming and liberating. Extraversion traits include, unreserved, communicative, warm and confident. Through these characteristics one can be able to see the relation between fire and extraversion trait. Fire symbolizes warm while an extraversion personality should be a person who is warm or social. This therefore shows the connection. The strength of this personality profile includes, charming, exciting, energetic, fierce and devoted. The weaknesses include lack of fear of confrontation and also not minding about other’s needs (Digman, 1990). 3. Personality and Leadership Style It is very important for a leader or manager to understand his or her personality and to effectively change his or her leadership style and management environment. When leadership technique and personality integrate they form leader’s values. Personality check is the best way to identify a true leader from others. This is as personality affects the way he rules or leads others. This therefore shows that the two cannot be separated. Leaders are the ones who make change to be possible. It is therefore important to look at their personality as it is through personality that change is possible. Every manager has different characteristics that vary from one to another. However, there are those which are the most important to all. If one manager is put in a certain work environment so as to bring change he might actually deliver while another might be kept in the same environment and not bring the same changes needed. This is all due to difference in personality (Judge, Heller, & Mount, 2002) 3.1 Leadership Style The leadership styles include, Authoritarian or autocratic. This is the type of leader ship style which the leader or manager is fully in charge. He makes decision individually without consulting the employees. He gives out duties and responsibility and expects them to be done his way without questioning. Another type of leadership is participative or democratic style. This type of leadership or management styles is where the leader involves his or her employees in the decision making or problem solving. They are allowed to air out their views. This helps make good or quality decisions. It also helps make the employees more involved. Also ideas are exchanged and the best is chosen. It also helps the employees to feel like they are part of the organization by giving or sharing their views. Though the employees help to make the decisions, the manager is still the final decision maker[Sar08] The third type of leadership or management style is delegated or free reins also known as Laissez faire. Under this style the spearhead gives the employees approval to make decisions although he is still answerable for the decisions made. The leader here does not believe in doing everything alone and therefore assigns different tasks to the employees. In this style the manager has no option but to fully trust the employees to do the right thing. This type of style portrays a lazy character or personality. This is as the leader tries to avoid confrontation and any interaction with the employees. He or she does not want to be involved in the organizations’ activities. This therefore shows that all employees need leadership, guidance and also supervision. 3.2 Effects The manager’s personality can either be of positive influence at work or negative influence. Security, firmness or stability is one personality managers should have in order to keep the organization running smoothly. Therefore, for this to happen, managers need to show that they are in charge by showing authority. This is by giving orders, tasks and instructions on how they want the work done. These can be best elaborated using the big five model of personality. This trait of security can be seen under consciousness. It is very important for leaders to be certain. This is as to lead people through uncertain things or any unreliable issue. There is a relation between extraversion and leading change. This is as leading to change involves being influential and this would not happen if a manager does not interact with the employees. The best leadership for this type of personality would therefore be democratic (Abele, 2011). The leader cannot make a difference if he or she is a narcissist. Also managers who are more involved in organizational activities can make a change in the organization. Another is that openness to familiarity is relates to autocratic governance style. Leaders or managers who use autocratic style in an organization have the advantage to enjoy openness to experience which gives them courage and tend to believe in themselves and have emotional stability. Awareness and extroversion do not lead to autocratic style of leadership. It is through knowledge of personality that you can determine how to change management style in future. The best way of improving on leadership style is by being more involving. Through extraversion personality a person can be able to involve employees in decision making. This is as a person can be social and this would help in interaction with the employees. It would help to get them to be active in decision making and problem solving. This would thus help the organization to grow successfully. According to Eggers (2000), a person would also ensure that they use their personality of openness to experience to help the organization to grow. This is as it would improve leadership style by being imaginative, creative, curious, and sensitive and risk taking. It would help change lazy style of management to being active. This would thus help be inventive and also active in supervising the employees. It would also help come up with better management styles. Another way of using personality in order to improve management and leadership skills in the future is by putting the good or positive personalities together so as to attain quality work or good skills. This would help improve the management style one will be using so as to give better outcomes at work. It is from this that one can learn how to lead well, how to handle difficult situations at work and how to get good results or from the employees in the organization and successful results in the end. 4. Improving Leadership Style In Future It is from ones personality that a person can relate to a certain type of leadership or management skill. Personality of a person determines the kind of leader one is or becomes. It can make you choose a certain type of leadership and also it determines how good you become at being a leader. It is from this that we see extraversion is positively related to leading change. Also being more involved can lead to positive change in an organization. Change of personality can led to change of leadership or management style. Change of leadership is seen due to change of personality therefore showing how important personality is in management[DrA11]. It is therefore advised to consider the type of personality when hiring, promoting or giving certain task in an organization. This is as personality shows the capability or level of passion one has for a given task. There are different positions or task for different personality and it all depends on what ones personality traits are. The big five model of temperament helps in the path of group this personality in more understandable groups so as to be able to know where one fits best. This helps simplify ones work as during hiring one can easily know where each candidate fits then relate it to the job available or the requirements (Alfakhri, 2012). Through this a manager also knows what he or she is supposed to adopt in order to attain the goals he needs. He is aware of the traits he need to adopt so that he can change his management style or so as to be able to achieve the set objective and goals that he has. It is important for one to know their personality so that one can know where they fit best at work and the changes the required in order to reach their targets. They should also know what personality is needed or effective where and under which situation it does not. Employees also gain by learning the personality of their leader or manager and they know what to expect. This involves how he will handle them and what might be required from them. Also how he would act or handle some situations. References Gol90: , (Goldberg, 1990), Sar08: , (Sarv Devaraj, 2008), DrA11: , (Dr.Ali Hussein Alkahtani, 2011), Read More