L02 “Big Five” and “Myers-Briggs”

With respect to this lesson, the first course reserve reading is from a standard organizational behavior text. One of the very important concerns in understanding the nature of the workforce is personality. What personality characteristics positively (or negatively) influence performance? Those who study the subject focus on what has been dubbed the “Big Five” personality factors. These traits include,

• Emotional Stability – anxious to calm
• Extraversion – outgoing to reserved
• Openness to New Experiences – preference for exploring to preference for routine
• Agreeableness – trusting to suspicious
• Conscientiousness – organized to disorganized

The following short video presents a fair summary of each trait. As you will see, it isn’t necessarily bad, for example, to be an introvert!

 

 

The reading from the Griffin, et. al. (2020) text also describes the Myers-Briggs testing process, a tool that many employers use to help match personality types to specific jobs. If you have never participated in such an activity, you can take the free assessmentinks to an external site. on the 16 Personalities website.