Personality in the Work Place

Personality is one of my favorite topics in general. It is how an individual represents and defines themselves. And when it comes to organizational behavior can make or break a leader. With that said, I am reminded of my tenth grade geography class, when we were learning about Buddhism. My teacher said that to achieve enlightenment, one must be self aware. The reason I bring it up is because, I can see how a person whose runs a company must know how they are come off. CEO’s and other business leaders are aware of the fact that it is important how, they come off, as far as discipline, and getting things done. So, a lot of business people will hire a business psychologist to give them a personality test, these test will tell the applicant, if they have leadership abilities, how they disciplined there employees, and how they work oversee employees.
I had the chance to take a sample test, and it broke down into the big five. The big five is the general base of most personality theories, and includes negative emotionality, agreeableness, extraversion, openness and conscientiousness. I will admit, I was very intimidate by this, and I was almost embarrassed, at my results for it showed my positive marks, but also my negative marks. But I feel it would be good to use myself as an example.

I scored High in the following:

In openness, which means I am more creative, innovative, inquiring and, imaginative

In conscientiousness, which mean I am prepared, reliable, precise, and ambitious

In extraversion, I scored high with it saying I am talkative, affectionate, and optimistic, outgoing

I scored Low in:

In agreeableness where I was more good-natured, helpful, trusting then rude, obstinate, irritable

And finally in negative emotionality, where I am always worrying, emotional, insecure, nervous, and I am usually not calm, secure, unemotional, relaxed.

Basically after taking the test, I realize I need to relax more and not be so stressed, because if the manager you worked under was always stressed, then that mean the environment you work in my be more stressful. The nice thing about these tests is, that you can take the sample ones, which are usually free and broader, but if you choose to pay the 40 to 200 dollars for the test, it will give you more in depth criticisms, and usually a consultant can better explain the answers to you.

Diversity

Diversity is by far one of the most complicated topics business psychologist must take. When I was looking at you tube, I never thought I would find a video for my blog, but then I remembered the TV show "The Office"(a comedy which has a strong basis of psychology in general). Diversity is often followed by profiling which is where people are singled out based on race, ethnicity, genders, and even sexual orientation. Even though the example from You Tube is pretty funny, in the office place it can be a serious issue.
Denny's years ago had acquisitions claiming they did not treat there customers of color well, and didn't hire people of different ethnicity's. Because of that, Denny’s started training the managers of the restaurants, different exercises to help ease and eliminate the bias.
The video from you tube is an example, of an exercise an owner might do with its employees. The idea is to get ones bias about the other person out in the hope and to help them realize why they feel that way. Then after resolving the issue they with demonstrate a change in behavior where they won’t show the bias as much, which ultimately will mean better customer service and inter group communication.

When I first entered college, I started off as a double major in education and studio art, The education major changed to a psychology major, and after two semesters, of taking my general required courses, I decided I wouldn’t get anywhere with my major in psychology unless I had at least a masters. So I wanted to find a specialization to really market myself to employers so I can pay off my bachelors before I start my masters. After many classes, I found my love in business psychology.
Business psychology is the studies of the way humans think in a business aspect, from how employers treat their employees, job performance and job satisfaction, as well as leadership, training, communication, inter-group behavior, and conflict...
In this blog, I hope to share my passion of business psychology with everyone and also show why it is important for anyone who is a business major to have at least one class in this. I also hope to educate others on the work and cases that business psychologist do, because business psychology is a field not many people have heard about, and I believe with a basis in it that a person can really succeed in being a great boss and be happier as an employee.