2.1 Personality and Leadership Introduction
What’s in it For Me?
Reading this chapter will help you do the following:
- Describe the roles of personality and values in determining work behaviors.
- Explain the process of perception and how it affects work behaviors.
- Identify the major work attitudes that affect work behaviors.
- Define the concept of person-organization fit and how it affects work behaviors.
- List the key set of behaviors that matter for organizational performance.
- Demonstrate positive attitude skills.
Individuals bring a number of differences to work. They have a variety of personalities, values, and attitudes. When they enter into organizations, their stable or transient characteristics affect how they behave and perform. Moreover, companies hire people with the expectation that they have certain knowledge, skills, abilities, personalities, and values.
Recall the approach to principles of leadership and management through the planning-organizing-leading-controlling (P-O-L-C) framework as shown in Table 2.1.1. Employees’ personalities, attitudes, and work behaviors affect how managers approach each P-O-L-C dimension.
Table 2.1.1: P-O-L-C Framework
| Planning | Organizing | Leading | Controlling |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Vision 2. Strategizing 3. Goals & Objectives |
1. Organization Design 2. Culture 3. Social Networks |
1. Leadership 2. Decision Making 3. Communications 4. Groups/Teams 5. Motivation |
1. Systems/Processes 2. Strategic Human Resources |
Here are just a few examples:
- When conducting environmental scanning during the planning process, a manager’s perceptions color the information that is absorbed and processed.
- Employee preferences for job design and enrichment (aspects of organizing) may be a function of individuals’ personalities and values.
- Leading effectively requires an understanding of employees’ personalities, values, and attitudes.
- Absenteeism can challenge a manager’s ability to control costs and performance (at both the group and individual levels).
It is important for leaders to understand the individual characteristics that matter for employee and manager behavior. In this chapter, you will begin to see the terms leader and manager intermingling more in the text. For some, this may be an affront to leadership principles, but the fact remains that good managers are leaders. As management professor and researcher Henry Mintzberg said, “Being an engaged leader means you must be reflective while staying in the fray – the hectic, fragmented, never-ending world of managing” (Mintzberg, 2009). Read more to support this concept by Henry Mintzberg.
The hope is that as you go forward, you will develop leadership skills and understanding that will help you successfully manage your time, your talents, and your personal and your professional life in such a way that you will influence and empower others with whom you interact.
“Chapter Introduction” in Principles of Management by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
