Why do we behave the way we do?
By: Robin, Senior OWLS Facilitator and Program Designer
Have you ever wondered how come your colleague can’t stop talking or why your boss stays behind closed doors? Do you not seem to be communicating with someone in your office? Do you always seem to be at odds with a colleague? Or, ever wonder how someone whose desk is in a state of chaos gets anything done? Some of the answers for these behaviors come from the most basic of things, our personality. The combination of temperament and behavior is what makes us who we are. The inability to overcome these challenges can impede our performance, productivity, communication skills and development. Understanding the makeup of our personality can help us to utilize our strengths and develop strategies for managing differences to both improve performance and head off our challenges.
There are many assessment tools in the marketplace today. Some are primarily behavior focused while others are personality identifiers. Some of the trendier tools provide the participant with a color or a name. Many of these offer some basic level of insight and can create some self-awareness but most leave the participant with a label and few strategies for professional and personal development. It then becomes easy to refer to that label as the excuse for behaviors.
I have taken many of these assessments over the years and find that they all offer up much the same information in different formats. I was tired of the labels and wanted to find a tool that would help me and my clients understand the depth of personality and how to use that information to develop and to work more effectively with others. Several years ago I learned of the Five Factor Model and the Big Five personality tool. The history of this tool began with research in 1936 around the terms and words used to describe personality. By the 1980’s a group of “five synonym clusters appear to account for the majority of differences between individual personalities.” (Howard & Howard, 2001, p 29, Personality at Work). The long years of research were due to the sorting process which was speeded up with the computer. The more validated a tool is by research the more reliable will be its results
What makes this tool different?
- It is psychologically endorsed because of its reliability, validity, norms, global applications, and descriptive power (Howard & Howard, 2001, p. 32, Personality at Work). The Big Five offers in depths look at the primary traits NEAOC and sub-traits that make up the richness of who we are.
- It offers individuals, teams, leaders, and group’s insight and greater understanding into why they behave and interact the way in which they do and offers strategies for enhancing those interactions as well as performance.
- The Big Five is specifically designed with questions and words approved in the workplace.
- Its uses are for team building, professional development, coaching, job selection and succession planning, 360 feedback and job structuring.
The benefits of using the Big Five are comprehensive.
- Utilizing the tool as a means of helping a team to head off potential areas of conflict
- Coaching individuals to higher levels of performance based on their strengths
- Reducing attrition by making the tool a part of selection criteria or succession planning.
- Improve communication skills
- Job fit and development
- Team selection to optimize skills and strengths
- Career development
We are often required to work effectively and communicate with colleagues that don’t necessarily share our point of view, our manner of thinking, learning or communicating. The inability to do this can create stress and tension, both non-productive to accomplishing work. I recently worked with a group who were challenged by some dysfunctions of other groups with whom they had to interact. The dilemma was that this group knew the other interactions probably would not change but that they could gain insight and knowledge into how they could develop their own skills to better communicate with the other groups.
Two Case Studies:
I put together a 1.5 day workshop with highly interactive sessions to help them to first; understand their personalities in the workplace and second; to develop strategies for coping and better communicating with the differences they were encountering. By gaining insight into how they typically respond to situations in the workplace and then role playing various scenarios with colleagues we worked together to develop strategies to reduce the tension associated with not communicating well and learning to flex to a different behavior from their own. With some coaching around their own personality traits and some exercises in role-playing to different types they were able to develop strategies to overcome the differences and thus to gain greater control over their interactions. We were also able, by understanding the traits, to identify the key traits of the individuals with whom there was conflict. Thus, the participants were able to use this information to reduce the tensions of those conflicts.
Another group I worked with was a newly formed leadership team. The leader of this team wanted to see how they could capitalize on the strengths of the individuals and to look at the overall makeup of the team. Through a workshop we discovered where the team needed to pay close attention to “group think” because of their similarities and where the individuals with different scores often were overlooked. In addition to the Big Five, each team member was given a job competency report. Their primary job responsibilities were provided and the Big Five runs an estimated report on competency fit based on research of optimal personality infrastructure to perform that competency. I then provided coaching to each individual utilizing the Human Resource Optimization tool developed by the Big Five to develop, support, compensate or work around depending on the “fit”. This provided them with professional development strategies for improving performance and meeting some longer range goals.
In summary, we are our personalities. Creating a higher level of self awareness about the how’s and why’s of our behavior augments our emotional intelligence, our ability to be a part of a team, and our leadership.
So, what about that person with the chaotic desk? Well, they are probably a low scorer on the C or Conscientious spectrum. This does not mean they cannot get things done, they just don’t see organization as important. We can modify our traits (and do) to some degree in the workplace but cannot change. The Big Five is a tool with a depth of uses and information to enhance workplace development and job fit.
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