Leadership Today - Practical Tips For Leaders
Business:Management
This week we explore how agreeableness as a personality trait has a positive impact on work investment and teamwork.
Transcript
Welcome to episode 167 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how agreeableness as a personality trait has a positive impact on work investment and teamwork.
Since the 1950s, and particularly from the 1980’s, personality research has focused primarily on the big 5 personality traits - Openness-to-Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism. Taken together these 5 traits account for the majority of differences in personality between individuals while also having predictive ability across a range of positive and negative outcomes in workplace settings. They provide our best understanding of personality across a range of settings and individuals.
A recent study focused on the agreeableness trait. As a personality trait this describes people who are cooperative, polite, friendly and kind. Agreeableness is associated with an interest in others and in building positive relationships. The study by Wilmot and Ones is of the most comprehensive analyses of agreeableness undertaken, bringing together 1.9 million participants across more than 3,900 research studies.
Their research highlighted a broad range of positive outcomes associated with agreeableness in a workplace context.
The benefits for individuals and teams included:
Focus on growth and concern for others
Contentment with current circumstance
Investment in building and maintaining relationships with others
Team working including cooperating with others and working towards shared goals
Work investment and commitment
Tendency to place less emphasis on results, and being more lenient in rating others’ performance
Ability to adjust to new contexts
Greater likelihood of respecting social norms and rules
In summary, those with agreeableness as a personality trait are likely to invest more effort into their work, primarily in a corporative and team-building way.
Here are some tips for building agreeableness:
Take a genuine interest in others. Empathy is a cornerstone of agreeableness. It’s easier to get along with people that we understand and can relate to.
Invest time in building relationships. Agreeableness is often about quantity time. Relationships require investment.
Consider shared goals, not just individual goals. Agreeableness is interested in collective outcomes and team wins.
Maintain connections during moments of disagreement and conflict. Relationships are usually more important than winning an argument.
It’s also worth nothing that, as a leader, you can assess and select for agreeableness and other personality traits that may be important for work performance. This requires personality instruments that are specifically designed for a selection context, but is worth exploring if you want to build effective teams.
References
Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2022). Agreeableness and Its Consequences: A Quantitative Review of Meta-Analytic Findings. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 26(3), 242–280.
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Episode 99 - How to Create Meaningful Work
Episode 98 - Making Virtual Team Feedback Real
Episode 97 - Shocking - Decisions Improve When We Consider Others
Episode 96 - Does Being a Jerk Get You Ahead at Work?
Episode 95 - Just Pick Up The Phone
Episode 94 - Addicted to Insights?
Episode 93 - Is the Problem Worth Tackling?
Episode 92 - Five Ways to Stop Zoom Killing Your Focus
Episode 91 - Team Meetings That Bring Out The Best In People
Episode 90 - Monthly One-On-One Meetings
Episode 89 - Better (and Fewer) Meetings Now!
Episode 88 - To Impress, Do Less
Episode 87 - Take a Break!
Episode 86 - Don't Be So Hard On Yourself
Episode 85 - It Turns Out Development Isn’t Quite 70/20/10
Episode 84 - Ten Great Questions Leaders Ask
Episode 83 - Turning Criticism into Feedback and Growth
Episode 82 - Five Ways to Avoid the Paranoia Associated with Uncertainty
Episode 81 - Inspiring Others from the Outside In
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