A Significant New Book for Understanding the Big Five at Work:

The Owner’s Manual for Personality at Work:

How the Big Five Personality Traits Affect Performance, Communications, Teamwork, Leadership, and Sales.

By Pierce Johnson Howard, Ph.D.,

and Jane Mitchell Howard, M.B.A.

Austin, Texas: Bard Press, January 2001

272 pages, 7x9, with index

4-page color foldout

$19.95 paperboack, 1-885167-45-8

Business/Psychology

Available in German, July 2002, from Campus Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt, Germany

(To find the book easily, use the search term "Howard" on the Campus Verlag website.)

Take a look at:

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Owner’s Manual for Using This Book

Part 1: Getting to Know You: The Why and What of Personality at Work

1.       Setting the Stage: Why Study Personality at Work?

2.       Stress: Need for Stability/Negative Emotionality (N)

3.       Sociability: Extraversion/Positive Emotionality (E)

4.       Curiosity: Originality/Openness to Experience (O)

5.       Negotiation: Accommodation/Agreeableness (A)

6.       Focus: Consolidation/Conscientiousness (C)

7.       Traits: Working Together to Create Personality

Part 2: The Big Five at Work: Real-World Applications for Individual and Organizational Performance

8.       Leadership: More Steak, Less Sizzle

9.                  Selling and Influencing: How to Build Rapport

10.     Career Planning: If the Job Fits, Work It

11.     One-on-One: Troubleshooting Partnerships and Relationships

12.     Team Development: Roles, Phases, Needs, and All That

13.     Selection: Reducing Risk in Hiring Decisions

Part 3: Solomon as Manager: The Wisdom of Developing People

14.     Nature Versus Nurture: What You Can Change, and What You Can’t

15.     The Right Stuff: The Raw Material for Performance Competencies

16.              When Pigs Can’t Fly: Human Resource Optimization 

17.     Learning Styles: Matching Training Methods with Individual Workers

Part 4: Your Own Big Five: Personal Applications

18.     The Big Five After Five: Family, Friends, Romance, Health, Hobbies, and Spirituality

19.     At the End of the Day: Accepting Who You Are, But Not Bowing to Fate

Appendix: Timeline for the History of the Big Five

Bibliography

Index

About CentACS

Pullout: Your Big Five Profile Estimate

Sample Passages from The Owner’s Manual for Personality at Work:
 

Excerpt from Chapter 1

Setting the Stage

Why Study Personality at Work?

“Why is it that I always get a whole person when what I really want is a pair of hands?”

—Henry Ford

During a typical week, while trying to get our jobs done, each of us runs head-first into personalities. Personalities at work are like cars in the city: they can often keep us from our destination. On the other hand, personalities can often make the job easier. Here are just a few examples of these two effects:

An insensitive manager: Ellen was an award-winning architect and had been managing a team of a dozen architects and project managers for about two years. Everyone in her department, to a person, hated her and complained above her head about her unfair, insensitive management practices. Her boss didn't know how to get to the next level, short of firing her.

A model employee: Tomas was the number-one border patrol agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency. He consistently had the highest arrest rate and could do no wrong, and the powers-that-be wanted to clone him. How did he do this?

A team that was breaking down: A training team delivered top-notch programs to the thirty-campus health care conglomerate for which it was responsible. However, their team meetings typically ran over by several hours, members resented the intrusion onto their private planning time, and their respect for their team leader and each other was eroding.

Fighting managers: Frank and Fran managed two different manufacturing processes housed under one common roof. Frank's bottom line looked great, but sales were stagnant; Fran's margins were nonexistent, but sales were soaring. They were at each other's throats daily, and their boss had no clue how to resolve their backbiting, destructive conflict, blaming, and lack of mutual respect.

A lawyer who hated his job: Heminway was a successful litigant who had grown to hate the law. At age forty, he was rolling in money, but sleepless. He couldn't stand the thought of going to court another day.

Personality and the Bottom Line

          The bottom line in these examples is performance, for the individual and the company. Understanding your own personality better as well as the personalities of those you work with can make a significant difference in your performance and advancement. The way you communicate, persuade, and motivate is important if you are working on a team, leading a department, or selling a service or product. Much of your success may depend on how well you understand and act on the personality dynamics in your workplace.

          Whether you’re a vice president of a division, a professional who has no staff, or a customer service representative, you have company goals to achieve. Your ability to understand the personalities of the people you work with and those of your customers or clients plays a big part in how quickly and effectively you can achieve the functions for which you are responsible.

          We wrote this book so that you can better understand how personality can both obstruct and enhance work. At the end of each of the next five chapters, we have included implications of the Big Five personality dimensions for your performance and that of your associates.

What Is the Big Five?

The terms Big Five and Five-Factor Model are, for our purposes, interchangeable. The model emerged from a line of research begun in 1936 when Gordon Allport and Harold Odbert threw out a challenge to the psychological research community. They had identified approximately 18,000 words in the unabridged English dictionary that described personality. After paring away some 13,500 words because they did not portray normal everyday personality characteristics, Allport and Odbert (1936, p. 24) suggested that psychological researchers determine how many synonym clusters were required "to distinguish the behavior of one human being from that of another.” After a long line of research, a solution was finally reached in the 1980s. Why so long? Early solutions were based on factor analyses that were done manually and were full of errors. The invention of the personal computer and the availability of factor analysis software enabled a flurry of research in the early 1980s to converge on a common solution.

          The answer? Five synonym clusters appear to account for the majority of the differences between individual personalities. Today, these five factors are typically referred to by the five letters N, E, O, A, and C. Although different names are sometimes given to the five factors by different researchers (sometimes for academic reasons, sometimes for marketing ones!), N, E, O, A, and C always refer to the same personality dimensions, regardless of what the actual names are.

          N refers to one's "Need for Stability," or "Negative Emotionality." A person high in N is very reactive and prefers a stress-free workplace, while a person low in N is very calm and is relatively unaffected by stress that might cripple others.

          E refers to one's "Extraversion." A person high in E likes to be in the thick of the action, while a person low in E likes to be away from the noise and hubbub.

          O refers to one's "Originality," or "Openness to Experience." A person high in O has a voracious appetite for new ideas and activities and is easily bored, while a person low in O prefers familiar territory and tends to be more practical.

          A refers to one's "Accommodation," or "Agreeableness." A person high in A has a tendency to accommodate to the wishes and needs of others, while a person low in A tends to cater to his or her own personal priorities.

          C refers to one's "Consolidation, or "Conscientiousness." A person high in C tends to consolidate her or his energy and resources on accomplishing one or more goals, while a person low in C tends to prefer a more spontaneous work style that involves switching from one task to another.

A Word of Caution

We wish to emphasize one point before delving into definitions and examples. Human personality is complex, mysterious, and wonderful. Even though we have agreed upon five supertraits, we have not unlocked the mystery of personality; we merely have found a uniform language to use in our exploration. Having the building blocks of personality in hand does not allow us to make an individual. N, E, O, A, and C are to the individual as sugar, flour, eggs, and milk are to cookies. The ingredients are not the same as the final product. And we must remember that having a uniform language to describe individuals does not dictate that there is any one right way to be or any one profile that represents an ideal. As Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, "Every individual nature has its own beauty.”

          Many forces are at work in shaping the individual, with the five factors forming only the main infrastructure. If there were only ten personality traits, with ten levels of each trait, we would be able to describe some ten billion unique combinations. In fact, we are looking at over two dozen different traits that are subsumed under the Big Five, providing for literally trillions of combinations. In his book The Roots of the Self, Robert Ornstein (1993, p. 4) wrote: “So don’t expect to discover in these pages a formula for finding yourself. It just can’t be done. Consider this: at any mating, one male and one female could produce 52 trillion biologically distinct individuals. . . . Simply put, human individuality is genetically too complex for any one system to explain.”

          But just because perfect knowledge of ourselves and others is impossible, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t endeavor to build that knowledge. As Charles Darwin wrote in Vox Populi, Vox Dei, “Details are all that matters. God dwells there, and you never see him if you don’t struggle to get them right.” Let us now start the struggle, together, and catch a glimpse of the wonder of human personality at work.

Excerpt from Chapter 2

Stress: Need for Stability/Negative Emotionality

Implications of N for Your Job and Career

If you are N-, you stand out from the pack in your ability to perform calmly in high-stress situations. By volunteering for stressful assignments to the degree that makes sense to you, you will be building on your strengths.

          If you are N=, you will probably be much more satisfied in the long term if your work includes a balance of stressful and restful episodes. One crisis after another or one deadline on the heels of another will probably be unpleasant for you and, in the long term, will be harmful to your health. You need one of two situations: times of intense stress alternating with times of calm or a regular diet of only moderately stressful situations. You should exercise just after particularly stressful episodes in order to burn up the cortisol (the “fight-or-flight” chemical fuel) that is left in your system from the stress response.

          If you are N+, you need to seek out a position or role that is essentially stress-free or has only occasional stress. Celebrate your stressful responses, however, because they tend to serve as a conscience, or emotional barometer, for your team or organization.

Excerpt from Chapter 3

Sociability: Extraversion/Positive Emotionality (E)

The Recognition Event

“You have just been told that your organization wants to honor you. Expense is no object. The size of the event, who will be invited, the location of the event, and the way you will be honored are entirely up to you." When they were given this situation, fifty leaders responded in these ways:

E-- (Extreme Introverts): “I’d like a manager I respect to call me on the phone (or E-mail me) and tell me that I’m doing a good job.”

E- (Moderate Introverts): “I’d like a dinner for my spouse and me at a nice restaurant. It would be quiet and dark and there’d be a fire in the restaurant fireplace.”

E= (Ambiverts): “I’d like a gathering of my teammates where we could have a nice meal in an elegant setting. We would all wear evening dress and celebrate the work of the team. There wouldn’t be any speeches, just a nice time knowing what we had accomplished.”

E+ (Moderate Extraverts): “I’d want to get the whole department together with our families and have a picnic at the lake. There’d be boating, skiing, horseshoes, volleyball, games for the kids, and lots of good food and drinks. The department manager might give me a plaque for the accomplishment.”

E++ (Extreme Extraverts): “I’d rent the local stadium and send invitations to everyone I know or have ever met. I’d encourage people to bring their friends so there’d be a huge party atmosphere. Bands would be playing from the field while everyone partied. There’d be all kinds of food and drink. The party would start at noon and go on for twenty-four hours. About midnight, I’d go up on the stage and thank everyone for coming. Then the company president would tell everyone what I’d done. An annual scholarship would be set up in my honor, and all the broadcast media would cover the event and interview me. Afterward, we would take a two-week cruise with a thousand of our closest friends!”

Obviously, this scenario is rather far-fetched for the real workplace. Unlimited budgets are never available for parties. Still, interesting truths do emerge from these extreme scenarios. Can you spot those that relate to Extraversion?

          One of the most obvious elements is the number of people who are involved in each scenario. As we move from E-- at the low end of the scale to E++ at the high end, the number of people who are included in the event increases, from one manager by telephone, to my spouse, to my team, to my department, to everyone I ever knew and their friends! One reason for this increase is that additional people contribute to the sensation of the overall experience. This relates to Sociability, our second element of Extraversion. You will also notice that the examples tend to talk more and more about the senses as the E score increases—more sights, more sounds, more tastes, more sensations for the body to experience. A third element in analyzing the responses has to do with how large a leadership role the person is comfortable taking when being recognized.

Excerpt from Chapter 8

Leadership: More Steak, Less Sizzle

What Is Leadership?

If we know what personality traits are associated with the ideal leader, surely we also know what leadership is! Although hundreds of definitions pepper the business literature, including one of our own, probably the most common theme among these definitions was reflected by Robert Hogan in an article entitled “What We Know About Leadership” (Hogan, Curphy, and Hogan, 1994, p. 493): “Leadership involves persuading other people to set aside for a period of time their individual concerns and to pursue a common goal that is important for the responsibilities and welfare of a group.”

          It was Machiavelli who pointed out that the leader could not be successful by leaning on a single set of behaviors. In The Prince, he suggested that one can gain a leadership position through birth, skill, fortune, or force, but that in order to keep the position the leader must be willing to be both a Fox and a Lion. By “Fox” he meant shrewd, and by “Lion,” strong. The Fox can be generous yet thrifty, merciful yet just, trusting yet skeptical, restrained yet bold, serious yet frivolous, cautious yet impetuous. The leader who only exhibits the first trait in each pair will be viewed as weak and will be disrespected. The leader who exhibits only the second trait in each pair will be hated; he or she will have the power without the glory. By presenting a balance, by being willing to draw on complementary resources and not just those that feel natural, a leader can be loved, not hated, yet will be appropriately feared; she or he will have the power and the glory. As Machiavelli said at one point, the best fortress of a leader is not to be hated.

          Taking this to heart, leaders, who are generally calm (N-), must be capable of occasionally showing agitation (N+), so that people don’t regard them as unfeeling. Although they are generally outgoing and assertive (E+), they must occasionally retire in solitude (E-), or others may conclude that they are uncomfortable with themselves. Although they may espouse a vision (O+), they must be practical and efficient (O-), so that people don’t think that they are out of touch with reality. Although they may be unyielding (A-), they must be nurturing on occasion (A+) to avoid being accused of greed and arrogance. Although they are generally focused on the goal (C+), they must occasionally be spontaneous and playful (C-), or others may conclude that they are headed for a breakdown.
 

Excerpt from Chapter 11

One-on-One: Troubleshooting Partnerships and Relationships

          Aristotle said, “What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” More than two millennia later, contemporary research has confirmed his view. Over the long haul, the more similar two individuals are, the more satisfying the relationship. In a 1989 “B.C.” comic strip, a bold ant sings from the top of her anthill, “I gotta be meee!” No sooner is the lyric sung than the ant is zapped off the top of her hill by the anteater, who laments unapologetically, “Unfortunately, so do I.” Clearly, according to Aristotle, these two could never be friends, because they do not share the same soul, the same “rock bottom,” the same trait infrastructure.

          Two relatively recent studies of interpersonal relationships have clarified the importance of trait similarity to satisfaction in relationships. Burgoon, Stern, and Dillman (1995) emphasize the beneficial effects of similarity between two partners. They find that partners who begin on a positive footing actually become more like each other. The trait gaps converge, as it were. They call this process “reciprocity.” Partners who start off more shakily, and who in fact are relatively more different than similar, undergo a process that Burgoon, Stern, and Dillman label “compensation,” in which they change away from each other. The trait gaps diverge, moving even further apart. Other research confirms that although opposites seem more appealing for the short term, both in business and in romance, being with people with similar profiles is more satisfying over the long haul.

          Kiesler (1996, p. 6) emphasizes the importance of what he calls “behavior concordance”: “Any interpersonal act is designed to elicit from a respondent reactions that confirm, reinforce, or validate the actor’s self-presentation and that make it more likely that the actor will continue to emit similar interpersonal acts.” In other words, the anteater did not validate the ant! Kiesler is trying to say that when we behave a certain way in the presence of our partner, we expect our partner to react in a way that is accepting of us as an individual. If we see a news story about our partner’s schoolchild, clip it, and present it to her at work, we certainly don’t expect her to say, “Don’t you have something better to do with your time?” or “No thanks, I’ve already got two dozen of the things.” Kiesler goes on to conclude that when behavior is concordant, when my behavior gets a response from you that is accepting and validating, then the chances of satisfaction in the relationship are high. He further points out that the chances for such concordant behavior are highest when two partners are similar with respect to their trait infrastructure (in addition to having similar intelligence and physical characteristics). In addition to such concordant behavior, similarity of traits also encourages reciprocal behavior, which involves responding in kind. I ask you out to lunch today, and tomorrow you ask me. Such reciprocity is another way of validating or accepting another’s value as an individual.

          We are going to be most satisfied when we can be ourselves and don’t have to put on an act. Kiesler observes that midrange people, whose traits are more moderate, act like universal donors, able to be satisfied with the widest possible range of partners. For example, an ambiverted team member can be comfortable around both more introverted associates and more extraverted ones. However, people with extreme traits, like those with Big Five scores above 65 (the upper 7 percent of the population) or below 35 (the lower 7 percent), are more likely to be unsatisfied with people at the other end of the continuum. We two authors of this book both score very high on O and find people who are low in O difficult to enjoy, as they find us tedious or tiring because of our multiplicity of interests. On the other hand, we are both close to midrange in the other four dimensions and are able to relate satisfactorily with many other people on those terms.

          Neil Diamond sang, “You don’t send me flowers anymore.” The subtext of that lyric is: “My behavior doesn’t elicit from you the validating behaviors it used to.” Whether people are in a marriage, a business partnership, a boss-subordinate relationship, a relationship between two work associates, or a corporate or team culture, they prefer a context in which they can behave naturally. Introverts want to introvert, Challengers want to challenge, and trusters want to be able to trust. Anything else is unsatisfying. 

Excerpt from Chapter 18

The Big Five After Five: Family, Friends, Romance, Health, Hobbies, and Spirituality

          We have summarized some of the more significant and practical applications from personality research that have been done on various topics that relate to our lives outside of work. As a way of pointing out the relationship of these "after-five" profiles to the rest of this book and justifying their inclusion, let us suggest that the information in this chapter could provide an excellent basis for marketing and advertising decisions [Following is a brief sampler of the topics covered in this chapter]:

• Homesickness: Children and adults who get homesick tend to have the following profile: N+, E-, O-, A+, and C1-.

• Motivation: People who are N+ and E- generally tend to be motivated by fear of punishment ("Be bad and you'll be given a time-out"), while those who are N- and E+ tend to be more motivated by the promise of rewards ("Be good and we'll go shopping").

• Romance: When we want romance, do we want long-term stability with a partner over time or a mad, passionate fling with someone who is completely unlike us and with whom we don’t see ourselves growing and maturing? As a general rule, opposites attract for the short term but people with similar profiles tend to be more satisfied with one another for the long term, as discussed in Chapter Eleven. When people who are different on one or more traits are together for a lifetime, it is imperative that they accept these differences and not take them personally. For example, an E+ should not accuse an E- spouse of not wanting them to go out together; the E- doesn't want to go out period, regardless of the partner.

• Crying: People who are N+, E+, A+, and C- have a tendency to cry and/or get teary-eyed.

• Love styles: Research has identified six distinct styles of expressing love: Ludus (game playing) tends to be associated with N+, E+, O+, and C- profiles; Storge (friendship or parental) is associated with N- and C1- profiles; Pragma (logical and practical) does not appear to be associated with any particular profile; Mania (possessive or dependent) is associated with N+, E+, O+, and C- profiles; Eros (erotic) is associated with N- and C1+ profiles; and Agape (all-giving and selfless) is associated with the C1- profile.

• Longevity: People who are A2-, A5+, and C5+ tend to live the longest.

• Traffic tickets: People who are A- and C- tend to get the most tickets for moving violations.

The Authors…

 Pierce Johnson Howard, Ph.D., is a general partner and director of research for CentACS, the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he develops both public and organizational programs based on the most current research in cognitive science, especially regarding the Five-Factor Model of Personality. Since starting the company in 1986 with his partner and wife, Jane, Pierce has specialized in team building, assessment, and cognitive science. He now manages CentACS’ research division, compiling data from a variety of ongoing research projects on the Five-Factor Model of Personality, working with student interns, developing software applications, and continuing to develop and teach The Big Five certification program with Jane.

          A native of North Carolina, Pierce received his B.A. degree in 1963 from Davidson College and his M.A. degree in 1967 from East Carolina University, both in English, and his Ph.D. degree in education with a special interest in curriculum and research in 1972 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His skill and interest in debunking myths and in finding the most effective ways to help others learn has served him well in the business community.

Copyright 2007, CentACS (Center for Applied Cognitive Studies)