The Five-Factor Model of Personality in the Workplace

"The Five-Factor Model of Personality in the Workplace" by Sean P. Neubert clearly showed a large correlation between elements of the five-factor model and job performance. But what is not entirely clear is what types of jobs show increased performance, and more importantly which types show little or no correlation. As stated by the author, most if not all studies on this topic were preformed on sales jobs or other jobs highly dependent on interaction with others. With a wider variety of research, an equally wide array of results might occur. Much of the research also seems to look at traits as either on or off, in that certain traits that seem to have negative effects on a certain aspect of job performance could be positive in lower amounts.

The author rightly stated that the five-factor model's relation to job performance is most likely due to the social aspects of the workplace rather than an individual's ability. Cognitive ability is the major factor in job performance, and outside of jobs that are based on social interaction, the model's effect is merely a product of background environment in the workplace. The social aspects of most jobs are unnecessary to the actual work one is required to do. Granted this social aspect can almost never be removed--and is a must for many people due to personal needs for interaction--the model will have its affect in a large number of cases.

In a large company, I believe that the five-factor model has much less impact. With a larger company usually comes an impersonal relation between employee and employer. This means that as long as employees have all the required cognitive abilities, provided they have a job that does not involve teamwork or customer interaction, they will perform just as well as those who have a favorable personality. In a smaller company, by contrast, the relation between employee and employer is usually much more personal, and in some cases the line between employee and employer is very small. In this case a non-favorable personality could have a very large effect on a person's job performance. Cognitive ability seems to be a concrete factor in all cases, but the effects of personality on job performance seem to vary greatly depending on the importance or prevalence of social situations in the workplace.

The research cited on the five-factor model seemed to consider someone as either having a factor or completely lacking it. This is most obvious in the statement that agreeableness is negatively correlated with job performance in leadership positions. I agree that an unusually large level of agreeableness, such that one would allow oneself to be "used as a door mat," would have a negative effect on leadership performance, but the trait is definitely necessary to succeed as a leader. If one's boss were completely disagreeable, would one willing follow his or her requests, or would one do everything in one's power to slow or impede the completion of one's assigned work? A good leader needs to be well-rounded in all the "positive" social aspects of the five-factor model, without any traits being so pronounced as to reduce performance, such as high levels of agreeableness impeding one's will to put forth one's own ideas.

The author cited many interesting points, and I agree with most of his conclusions. I would like to see more research on a boarder range of professions to truly see how large a role the five-factor model plays in one's job performance. I thought that certain aspects of the model could be further explored to reveal varying level of certain factors being more or less influential on job performance. The five-factor model may be a good indicator of job performance, but I am not convinced that it is as big of a factor as the author portrayed.

Good teamwork is essential to job satisfaction. If workers are a part of properly functioning teams, then they feel that they are needed. Furthermore, along with the sense of belonging is a sense of accomplishment. Team members need to feel that they are actually contributing to the collective goal of the team. If a team member feels as though he or she is doing trivial work while others are doing more meaningful work, then team unity will deteriorate. This is a situation in which the team leader needs to step in and properly distribute tasks so that each team member is challenged by his or her assignments. Leaders with proper skills in motivation, who stimulate and challenge subordinates, are referred to as transformational leaders.

Transformational leadership consists of four constructs: charisma or idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration (Lim & Ployhart 2004). These are leaders whose teams always outperform everybody else. These types of leaders are the ones whom everyone wants to be like or to have on their team. How do transformational leaders relate to job satisfaction? Transformational leaders take time to answer the questions of an individual worker. They make the worker feel needed. When team members feel as though they are needed by the team, they are more likely to be satisfied with their job. Transformational leaders act toward other employees like coaches and mentors, and many times are seen more as the person with all the answers then as a a higher-ranking employee. The transformational leader does not have to be the appointed leader either. The transformational leader can be a normal team member with all the traits of a transformational leader, acting to mitigate the diminishing effect that a non-transformational leader has on the team.

Transformational leaders also contribute to workers' sense of accomplishment. When an employee goes to a transformational leader with a problem, not only does the leader take the time to help the worker on a one-to-one level but also pushes the worker to achieve the most with the solution. Another important quality of transformational leaders is modesty. When commended on a job well done, a transformational leader oftens directs the credit to his or her workers. This lets the workers know that they are valued, which also contributes to their sense of accomplishment.

Overall, transformational leaders not only seek to improve the functioning of the team by using only the brightest individuals but also work with all staff members to improve their skills. The transformational leader knows that teams are often together for only a single project. Thus, by helping the individual feel needed, the transformational leader gives him or her a sense of accomplishment when the goal is reached. More importantly, the transformational leader instills confidence in his or her employees. This translates into not only better job satisfaction for employees but also better productivity for the company.

A person's personality may not necessarily have a very high impact on a person's job or productivity per se, depending on the type of work being done. As discussed by Sean P. Neubert, the notion that salespeople who exhibit high levels of extraversion will have better overall job performance is pretty evident, for being a salesperson requires a lot of social interaction, and an introverted salesperson would obviously be less effective than an extravert. Given that point, another point brought up is about conscientiousness in addition to extraversion and its positive correlation with job performance in terms of the social atmosphere present in most workplaces: a conscientious person is obviously more likely to be a more productive worker and an extraverted person will experience an optimal level of arousal in a social workplace. Personality influence would perhaps become less palpable if an individual's place of work is not a highly social arena or the job is non-traditional.

If one's job does not require constant or high levels of social interaction, then one's cognitive ability can become a much greater factor. Depending on the type of job one holds, one's personality may have very little impact on the quality of work being done or other job performance indicators. As mentioned by Neubert, a job such as a writer may not necessarily require high levels of extraversion. Other types of jobs that do not require direct social interaction are probably similar in terms of cognitive abilities or other factors affecting overall job performance.

Openness to experience has not been shown to correlate significantly with job performance. This may seem counterintuitive, because openness to experience is sometimes also referred to intellect, and cognitive ability and intellect are presumably related. One's openness to experience should be indicative of creativity and originality; consequently, there may be a direct but unobvious connection to job performance in terms of creating and trying new things that may improve personal productivity or otherwise maybe even affect general productivity on a greater scale--for example, a new way of doing things may improve operation of an entire company. Openness would also then tie into working with other people--for example, a person who is more open to experience would be willing to try out new and different ideas presented by coworkers. Openness may not relate to job performance due to limitations in the methodology of past research, lack of a high enough correlation to reach statistical significance, or even perhaps because there really is no direct relation between openness to experience and overall job performance.

People's personalities obviously have an impact on many, many things that they do, if not everything. How profound the effect of personality is on job performance depends of course on the unique facets of an individual's personality. Does personality have a great impact on overall productivity in a social workplace? Yes, it does. Cognitive ability, however, has been shown to be more positively correlated to actual task performance. From this fact, one can argue that personality comes into play again, because if one is unwilling to perform the task and lacks conscientiousness, then the job will not get done, regardless of potential ability. Social aspects of many traditional work environments may overshadow some other unseen factors that affect overall workplace productivity. More research needs to be conducted on other types of work environments.

Although job performance may be related to the personality factors of conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extraversion, these measure only whether a person will show up to work and get along with his or her co-workers. Although important in the workplace, the more important concept of task performance is only briefly mentioned in the paper "The Five-Factor Model of Personality in the Workplace." In the eyes of management and human resources professionals, a worker who is able efficiently to finish tasks is much more valuable to a company than a worker who is everyone's friend. Therefore, the goal of any worthwhile workplace study is successful performance.

Although only mentioned in a few sentences in the paper, cognitive ability is one of the few, if not only, predictors of successful completion of tasks. Cognitive ability plays a significant role in jobs that require decision-making and individual work. It is obvious that more intelligent persons will be able to complete tasks assigned to them faster and better than less intelligent co-workers. Because of their success at the tasks assigned to them, intelligent workers will be able quickly to rise up the corporate ladder to positions suitable to their skills.

The second and equally important predictor of long-term career performance is emotional intelligence. Employees who are the best in their field, whether it is psychology, law, medicine, engineering, or banking, are not just good at their jobs and friendly with their co-workers. They are resilient, optimistic, and confident. Thus, it takes more than traditional cognitive intelligence to be successful at work--it also takes emotional intelligence, the ability to restrain negative feelings such as anger and self-doubt, and instead focus on positive ones such as confidence and optimism. Emotional intelligence is positively correlated with happiness at work, life success, and career salaries. This shows a strong relation between personality and workplace success. People with more emotional intelligence are more successful at work.

Finally, the fields of work that the paper discussed are very narrow. Depending on the job, each of the five factors could be the most important. For example, a highly neurotic accountant who fusses over every detail would be an extremely beneficial addition to a company. A person high in openness to experience would succeed easily in a job that places the person in a variety of situations, such as actor, doctor, or soldier. Extraversion would really only be positive in a job that requires a lot of interpersonal contact; in jobs that are mostly based on individual tasks, the importance of extraversion would be negligible.

Finally, the paper neglected to mention creativity as having a viable place in the workplace. Creative people at work are often the most useful. The creative worker is the one who will innovate and try to move the company forward or come up with new ideas for products. Creative workers will also come up with solutions that other people might not consider. A creative solution could potentially save a company vast resources, including money, manpower, and supplies. In jobs that involve independence, like artists, designers, advertisers, and inventors, creativity is intrinsically necessary to the profession.

I would like to thank the authors of the peer commentaries for providing good points for discussion with regards to my paper. Among the commentaries there appeared to be a consensus that cognitive ability is a more crucial factor than personality in workplace performance. Although it is indeed true that cognitive ability has been more strongly correlated with completing a specific task, every study has found that conscientiousness is strongly correlated with workplace performance. Conscientious employees are less likely to be absent from work and are less likely to steal from the organization. Although cognitive ability relates strongly to the ability of an employee, conscientiousness relates strongly to how an employee applies that ability.

Howell reiterated that most of the research has been on persons who are in work environments that require interaction, and that research into different professions, which may not require so much interaction, may lead to different results. Despite over a decade of research regarding this topic, there is not a prolific number of studies that have attempted to find differing degrees of influence of personality in separate professions. Every research sample has included sales representatives, convenience store clerks, managers, or another occupation that requires social interaction. Future studies should address this issue by looking at occupations that allow telecommuting and professions that do not require working with other people directly.

Sinha questioned why openness to experience has not been positively correlated with workplace performance. Studies have found positive correlations between this trait and performance, but the findings were not replicated universally, nor were they strong enough to be beyond chance.

Stupak suggested that emotional intelligence plays a key role in workplace performance, whereas the five-factor model is not important for measuring actual performance. Although emotional intelligence may be a part of workplace performance, research indicating positive correlations between workplace performance and conscientiousness have been more abundant.

Milinichik elaborated on the role of transformational leaders within a team environment. If I were to revise my paper, I would include this topic.

This paper was an attempt to find correlations between personality and work performance. With research on this topic spanning only the past 10 years, this is a relatively new field of research. Although the question of whether different professions are affected differently by the personality of an employee is a question for future research, current data conclusively indicate that conscientiousness and cognitive ability are two characteristics of an employee that strongly predict positive workplace performance.