Let's take some time now to look at the role of personality, as it relates to leadership success. As we talked about earlier, personality's a set of stable attributes formed early in life, but develop some over time. In this course we're using two personality assessments. One is the big five based on a large body of academic research, but we'll also occasionally refer to the Meyers Briggs personality assessment. For now, let's take a closer look at the big five. The first domain out of the big five is extroversion. As I pointed out earlier, the number scale of the assessment that you did has no particular meaning in and of itself. All it is intended to do is show a tendency towards one end of the domain versus the other. There's no average or good or bad associated with the number scale. As we look at extraversion, at the high end of that scale, we see those people that derive their energy from being in a group setting, they tend to be very sociable and outgoing. However, they can be perceived as acting before thinking or even steamrolling the introverts in the group. As we look at the introverts, what we see are those people who derive their energy from being alone, or certainly have to devote a great deal of energy to be in a group setting. They can be perceived as being aloof or distant. However what you'll notice in the team setting is that the introvert is typically the one who's thought through multiple times what they're going to say. So my suggestion for the extroverts is when you see the introvert being quiet, it's an opportunity to ask them their thoughts. Moving to the Agreeableness skill, this typically refers to those people who avoid conflict. As we see at the agreeable end of the scale these are people who value harmony, they're empathetic, however, they can be perceived as being inconsistent. And avoiding the conflict in circumstances where it would actually be beneficial for the group. At the lower end of the scale is not so much being disagreeable, but it's being a willingness to engage in conflict where it is useful. However the draw back to this end of the scale is that you can perceived to be excessively competitive. My experience is that among the engineers that I've had in the classroom, they tend to fall at the higher end of this scale. As we move to the conscientiousness scale, what we see is that individuals who fall at the high end of this scale tend to be very detail-oriented, they tend to want to deliver results. That has some potential negative consequences, in that they can become micromangers. They can, in many circumstances, not be willing to trust those in the team to deliver results. As we begin to look at the low end of this scale, what we see are those individuals who aren't as responsive under pressure, who tend to prefer less structure, they can be prone to procrastination and their spontaneity can create stress within the group. My own experience in observing engineers in the classroom is that they tend to fall at the higher end of this scale. My experience has been that mostly engineers I've seen tend to be at the high end to that conscientious scale, they wouldn't be where they are if they weren't conscientious. We move on to the neuroticism scale, again, this refers to how do you respond emotionally to the circumstances around you. Those at the higher end tend to have a much more emotional response to what happens around them. They are prone to worry and they are prone to anxiety. That can have negative consequences in the team setting when that anxiety is seen and experienced by other members of the group. Those at the lower end of the spectrum tend to be calm under pressure and are perceived to be even tempered. However the negative consequence can be that they are too laid back and are not ready to take action when action is needed. Moving onto the openness to experience domain, we see individuals at the upper end of this scale tend to be non conforming, very creative, and that can be a benefit in a team setting. However, they also tend to not want to follow the rules, and that can have negative consequences. As we move to the lower end of the scale, here's what we typically see engineers who tend to be down to earth and very practical in their approach. The negative consequence for that is that they can be too focused on the here and now and they too absorbed in the analysis of the problem to focused on the details of the problem and not able to see the big picture. So as we move to these five domains that you're going to do in your personality assessment, what I would like for you to focus on is how do each of these domains affect your personal leadership style. What are the things that you have to consider, in either your development or how you consciously behave as a leader, to either leverage a personality trait or to cope with aspects of it that don't contribute to effective leadership style? In that vein, I'd like to share with you my own results and some insights from my own experiences as a leader. As I start with the extraversion category, what you see here is I'm at the lower end, I would be considered an introvert. Throughout my experience as both a military officer and as a manager in the industrial environment, I found that there were times I had a consciously behave in a more extroverted manner in order to be effective. I had to overcome my tendency to want to be an introvert. On the agreeableness scale I tend to want to preserve harmony and avoid conflict. And I found that in most of the team settings that I was in, particularly in the industry, that proved to be an effective strategy in delivering results. I fall higher on the consciousness scale, I didn't get what I'm as a military leader or as an engineer without being conscious and delivering results ultimately as engineer that's one of the things that you will have to deal with. If you happen to fall at the low end of this scale, you may want to devote some thought to how can you add more structure to the way you work in order to become more effective? In my case, I fall at the low end of the neuroticism scale. What that ended up for me, in a positive way, was that I was able to stay calm in circumstances where it was a crisis. That was a benefit both in my military and in my engineering careers where I could deal with pressure when others were not able to do so. On the openness to experience category, you see I fall typically where other engineers do at the tends towards the lower end. I tend to be very practical, very well grounded, and I tend to follow the rules and be more conforming than non conforming. So as you look at your results, you may want to take a similar view as to how each of those domains affect your leadership style, and what conscious decisions you might want to make to behave differently, to be effective when needed.
