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Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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(5) Figure 5-4: Positive and Negative Emotions illustrates goal
incongruent and goal congruent behaviors. See Slide 5-31
ii) Developing Emotional Intelligence
(1) Daniel Goleman proposed that traditional models of intelligence
(IQ) are too narrow and fail to consider interpersonal competence.
(2) In his book Emotional Intelligence, Goleman brought the concept of
emotional intelligence (EQ or EI) to the mainstream.
(3) Emotional intelligence: ability to manage oneself and interact with
others in mature and constructive ways. See Slide 5-32
(4) Table 5-5: Developing Personal and Social Competence
through Emotional Intelligence profiles the four components of
EI: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and
relationship management. See Slide 5-34
(5) EI may not be a good predictor of job performance because of
invalid measurement and EI scores may not improve on the basic
Big Five dimensions when it comes to predicting job performance.
(6) EI does appear to have a place in employee personal growth and
development programs.
iii) Practical Research Insights about Emotional Contagion and
Emotional Labor See Slide 5-35
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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(1) Emotional Contagion
(a) Emotional contagion occurs when moods are transferred
between individuals by one person influencing the emotions of
another person.
(b) Both foul and good moods can be contagious.
(2) Emotional Labor
(a) Emotional labor is when someone displays emotions different
from felt emotions.
(b) Emotional labor can be very detrimental psychologically and
physically since individuals may bottle up emotions which are
not appropriate to display.
V. Paving Your Road to Success with Lessons from OB
i) Paving Your Road to Success Overview
(1) There are four key paving stones on the road to success:
psychological capital, deliberate practice, luck, and humility.
(2) The Real World/Real People: One Chinese Student’s Life Plan
profiles the planned road to success for one college student.
ii) Psychological Capital
(1) Psychological capital (Psy-Cap): striving for success by
developing one’s self-efficacy, optimism, hope, and resiliency.
See Slide 5-36
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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(2) Resiliency: the ability to handle pressure and quickly bounce back
from personal and career setbacks. See Slide 5-37
iii) Deliberate Practice
(1) Innate talent may play less of a role in success than the role of
preparation.
(2) Deliberate practice: a demanding, repetitive, and assisted
program to improve one’s performance.
iv) Luck
(1) Lucky people, through how they think and behave, make their own
good fortune.
(2) Richard Wiseman’s four guidelines for improving luck include:
See Slide 5-38
(a) Be active and involved.
(b) Listen to your hunches about luck.
(c) Expect to be lucky no matter how bad the situation.
(d) Turn your bad luck into good fortune.
v) Humility
(1) Humility: considering the contributions of others and good fortune
when gauging one’s success.
(2) Humility involves a capability to evaluate success, failure, work, and
life without exaggeration and it is the mid-point between the two
negative extremes of arrogance and lack of self-esteem.
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BACK TO THE CHAPTER-OPENING CASE
1. Would you call Mark Zuckerberg a high or low self-monitor? Explain.
How can you deal effectively in the workplace with such a person?
a. Mark seems to be a low self-monitor. He seems to be unable to
skills.
2. Will being an introvert as a young college student help or hinder Mark
Zuckerberg as CEO of Facebook as it continues to grow into a global
social media giant? Explain.
3. Suppose you were an executive coach, how would you coach Mark
Zuckerberg to have the emotional intelligence to handle being the head of
a giant corporation?
a. The four components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness,
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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To gain further insight and knowledge about Facebook, visit its website:
1. How would you describe Stephen Schwarzman’s personality?
a. Stephen Schwarzman is a meticulous fellow. Much of his decision
2. Relative to the concepts you have just read about, what traits and
characteristics would describe the “ideal” Blackstone job candidate?
Explain your rationale for selecting each characteristic.
3. Ranked 1 = most important to 8 = least important, which of Gardner’s
eight multiple intelligences are most critical to being successful at a major
investment company like Blackstone? Explain your ranking.
4. Using Table 5-5 as a guide, how important are the various emotional
intelligence competencies for making good investment decisions?
Explain.
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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a. Although student opinions will vary, self awareness, self
5. Do you have what it takes to work for someone like Stephen
Schwarzman? Explain in terms of the concepts in this chapter.
a. Answers will depend both on student personalities and also their
levels of self-awareness.
LEGAL/ETHICAL CHALLENGE: Should Managers Play the Guilt Card?
Is guilt a legitimate management tool for improving job performance?
1. Yes, guilt is one of many potentially productive characteristics people
bring to the job that should be channeled for the good of the organization.
What is your ethical justification?
2. A little guilt can be a powerful motivator, so it is okay for managers to
selectively use guilt to enhance performance. The trick is to strike a
humane balance—not too much, not too little. What is your ethical
justification?
3. People generally are neurotic enough without managers throwing another
brick on their emotional load. Give your ethical argument.
4. Invent other options. Discuss.
Discussion:
The appropriateness of guilt as a managerial tool for improving job performance
is likely situationally appropriate. For some employees, guilt would likely be a
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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INTERNET EXERCISE
http://www.eiconsortium.org
http://www.mhs.com/eihe.aspx
This chapter describes the concept of emotional intelligence. The purpose of this
exercise is to explore the issue of emotional intelligence in more detail. First, go
to the Internet homepage for the Consortium for Research on Emotional
Intelligence in Organizations, at http://www.eiconsortium.org and select the
subheading “About Us.” After reading this material, go back to the homepage
and select the options for “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence” and
“Guidelines for Best Practice.”
Then turn your attention to the role of emotional intelligence in student success.
Although emotional intelligence has received substantial research attention in
regard to workplace applications, it is also associated with student success in
college. More schools are focusing on emotional intelligence in students to help
with student retention. To see how emotional intelligence is used in predicting
college student success, go to http://www.mhs.com/eihe.aspx and under “Higher
Education” click on “Applying EI.” Then open and read the report “EI in Higher
Education.”
Questions:
1. What is the purpose of the Consortium for Research on Emotional
Intelligence?
2. “The Business Case for Emotional Intelligence” describes how emotional
intelligence has contributed to the bottom line for organizations. How
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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emotional intelligence was linked to higher productivity, higher
profits, higher sales, less turnover and several measures of
3. The “Guidelines for Best Practice” describe the current knowledge about
how to best promote emotional intelligence in the workplace during the
four phases of the development process. Describe the four phases and
summarize best practices for each stage.
4. Discuss how emotional intelligence assessment of students could help
them make the transition to college.
a. The first year of college is a difficult transition period for many
individuals. Students go from the highly structured environment of
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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INSTRUCTIONAL RESOURCES
1. An interesting discussion on the limits of intelligence testing can be
facilitated with “What Intelligence Tests Miss: The Psychology of Rational
Thought” by K. E. Stanovich (Yale University Press, 2009).
2. See “Topic 5: Individual Differences and Personality” in “An Instructor’s
Guide to an Active Classroom” by A. Johnson and A. Kinicki (McGraw-Hill,
2006).
3. Getting to know each other as individuals is the focus in “Developing First
Encounters of the Close Kind: A Beginning Class Exercise” by M. Manning
and P. Weber in Journal of Management Education, 2001, Vol. 25(5), pp.
617-623.
4. See “Student Online Self-Assessment: Structuring Individual-Level
Learning in a New Venture Creation Course” by S. Human, T. Clark and
M. Baucus in Journal of Management Education, 2005, Vol. 29(1), pp.
111-134.
TOPICAL RESOURCES
1. An interesting account of how both personality and ability can affect one’s
influence in teams can be found in “Collective Estimation: Accuracy,
Expertise, and Extroversion as Sources of Intra-group Influence” by B.
Bonner et al. in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes,
2007, Vol. 103, pp. 121-133.
2. Rotter’s seminal discussion of locus of control can be found in
“Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of
Reinforcement” by J. B. Rotter in Psychological Monographs: General and
Applied, 1966, Vol. 80(1), pp. 1-28.
3. The effect of procedural fairness and rewarding leadership style on self-
esteem is discussed in “Rewarding Leadership and Fair Procedures as
Determinants of Self-Esteem” by D. DeCremer et al. in Journal of Applied
Psychology, 2005, Vol. 90(1), pp. 3-12.
4. The influence of the work environment on self-esteem is discussed in
“Work Context and the Definition of Self: How Organizational Care
Influences Organization-Based Self-Esteem” by D. McAllister and G.
Bigley in Academy of Management Journal, 2002, Vol. 45(5), pp. 894-904.
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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5. The relationship between personality and transformational and
transactional leadership is examined in “Personality and Transformational
and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analysis” by J. Bono and T. Judge
in Journal of Applied Psychology, 2004, 89(5) pp. 901-910.
VIDEO RESOURCES
1. The CBS news program “60 Minutes” aired a profile of Mark Zuckerberg in
its segment called “Mark Zuckerberg & Facebook” on its December 5,
2010 episode. As of August of 2011, links to the video that aired in two
segments were available at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120522n and
www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7120538n.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Assume you are struggling to learn the material in one of your classes.
Discuss actions steps you could take to improve your self-efficacy. How is
your self-efficacy linked to your success in your studies?
2. What could your university do to create higher levels of organizational
identification by the students?
3. Describe yourself using the Big Five personality dimensions. Which
dimension is your strongest for your selected profession or career path?
4. Using the dimensions of emotional intelligence presented in Table 5-5,
critique your level of emotional intelligence.
5. The final section in this chapter describes four key paving stones on the
road to success. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses for each of
these dimensions.
Chapter 05 - Key Individual Differences and the Road to Success
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SUPPLEMENTAL EXERCISE 1: YOUR SELF-ESTEEM AND MINE1
APPLICATION
This exercise is a simple way to encourage positive self-esteem in students.
Remember, self-esteem is more easily raised by having a person think of
desirable characteristics that he or she possesses rather than undesirable
characteristics that he or she lacks. Ask each person to find a partner, preferable
someone he or she doesn’t already know. Partners should ideally be facing each
other. Follow the procedures listed below:
* * *
Ask each person to think about two eras of his or her life—prior to beginning
college and since beginning college. Have students recall each of these time
frames and recollect something that he or she did or experienced that made the
individual very proud. In turn, each person will play two roles: the speaker and
the listener. The speaker should talk for two minutes and tell the listener about
his or her proud moments (one from each time of life). The listener cannot speak
during this time, but should exhibit supportive eye contact and body language
(e.g. no crossed arms or legs). When finished, the speaker and listener switch
roles and repeat the process.
As a class, consider the following discussion questions:
1. What kinds of things do people tend to take pride in?
2. What kinds of things were not mentioned very frequently?
3. How many people periodically review past successes?
4. Are we sometimes reluctant to express a positive self-concept to others?
Why?
5. How did it feel to have an empathetic listener?
6. Can you think of some relatively “safe” ways in which we can express self-
esteem at work?
7. How might you help to build someone’s self-esteem in the workplace? Is
this always a good thing?
1 Adapted from “I Like Me Because” and “I’m OK, I Really Am” in E. Scannell and J. Newstrom, Even More
Games Trainers Play, 1994, New York: McGraw-Hill.
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SUPPLEMENTAL LECTURETTE 2: THE RISE OF THE BIG FIVE2
This lecturette can be used to supplement the chapter’s coverage of the Big Five
personality dimensions (i.e., extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness,
emotional stability, and openness to experience). It describes the importance of
taxonomies (such as the Big Five) and then assesses the advantages and
disadvantages of using the Big Five as the dominant personality taxonomy.
* * *
Before 1965, research on personality and personality inventories was a popular
topic for industrial/organizational psychologists. However, an influential review
by Guion and Gottier in 1965 greatly influenced researchers away from
personality as a topic of study. Guion and Gottier concluded that personality
measures should not be used as a basis of decisions regarding employees.
Although their critique was largely based on the faulty research methods used to
study personality, their review was interpreted by others in the field as calling for
a moratorium on personality research. By the late 1980’s, researchers once
again picked up the banner of personality research. Partly responsible for this
change in status was the advent of suitable taxonomies by which to classify the
multitude of potential personality traits. This allowed researchers to explore the
relationship between personality and job performance within (rather than across)
personality constructs, resulting in significant relationships that were unknown
previously.
Taxonomies provide a classification scheme and as such facilitate the
organization and accumulation of information. An appropriate taxonomy is a
significant milestone in the gathering of knowledge. Useful personality
taxonomies must consist of traits that have been replicated. That is, traits within
the personality taxonomy should be replicated across different samples,
subgroups of people, time, cultures (if one wishes to generalize across cultures),
languages, measurement strategies (e.g., self-reported versus peer-reported
information), and data-analytic techniques. Second, the taxonomy should be
comprehensive in that it provides for the classification of all known personality
traits. Third, it should include traits having outside correlates. In other words, the
personality traits should be related to real-world outcomes such as job
performance.
So, how does the Big Five taxonomy stand up to these criteria? One of the
2 Adapted from Kevin R. Murphy, “Individual Differences and Behavior in Organizations: Much More Than g”
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greatest strengths of the Big Five is replicability. It has been replicated across
substantial time periods (decades) and numerous samples. Similar conclusions
come from both self-report and peer-report data. There is also some support for
generalization of the Big Five personality constructs across cultures. In short, the
Big Five taxonomy has been demonstrated to be highly replicable in many
contexts.
The comprehensiveness of this taxonomy, however, is perhaps the most
challenging deficiency. Some researchers argue that the Big Five factors of
extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and
openness to experience are too broad to be of practical use while others assert
that additional key traits need to be included to create a more appropriate
personality taxonomy. Some research suggests that the addition of a
masculinity/femininity component is necessary. Additional studies suggest the
extraversion and conscientiousness constructs should be divided into four
separate constructs—dependability, affiliation, achievement, and potency. Thus,
the Big Five seems to confound some personality variables and excludes others.
Finally, the ideal personality taxonomy should include traits having outside
correlates. The Big Five taxonomy measures up reasonably well against this
criterion. For example, the openness to experience construct was found to be
significantly related to school performance while conscientiousness relates
positively with job performance. Even more striking, an individual’s score on
conscientiousness measured during childhood was significantly (and positively)
related to longevity. Specifically, those scoring at the 75th percentile on this
construct were 77% as likely to die by the age of seventy as people at the 25th
percentile.
In summary, the Big Five taxonomy is quite replicable, predicts important
external real-world outcomes, but likely is less comprehensive than desired.
SUPPLEMENTAL LECTURETTE 3: WHAT IS YOUR LEARNING STYLE?
There are a number of learning styles. Engage your students and have them
reflect on how they acquire new information and skills, both at work and in other
environments. Encourage the students to consider not only their own learning
styles but also how the differential learning styles of others they work with affect
them.
* * *
Diverging Style
Like to ask “why” and to study problems from different angles
Are people-oriented and prefer to explore situations from a solid base of
information
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Like to brainstorm and deal with feelings
Accommodating Style
Prefer to have a plan and systematically experiment
Good at interpreting immediate circumstances
Good interpersonal skills and adept at influencing others
Assimilating Style
Prefer theoretical models and inductive reasoning (drawing generalizations from
specifics)
Enjoy the search to new knowledge
Prefer a disciplined rather than random search for the “right” answer
Converging Style
Likes to ask “how”
Prefer to focus on specific, practical problems
Prefer deductive reasoning (using general principles to understand specifics)
