Emotion and Personality in the Working Environment

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Table of Contents

Executive summary
Introduction
Literature review
Emotion and individual behaviour
Personality traits and individual behaviour
Methodology of self-analysis
Results
Recommended strategies
Conclusion
Works Cited

Executive summary

Emotion and personality play a role in our everyday life especially in places of work. This analysis focuses on the effects of emotions and personality on ones behaviour and how they impact in a working environment. This report also includes the use of proper diagnostic tools of both emotional and personality competencies and evaluation of actual behaviours. In addition, the assessment also involves identifying certain strategies that can be adopted to improve effectiveness at work. Personal attributes and emotional competence and how they improve performance at work were also assessed. Findings showed that positive affectivity and emotional recognition also have an effect on people’s behaviour at work. From the assessment, there is valid evidence on how emotion and personality contribute to effectiveness at workplace.

Introduction

Quite a number of studies have tabled both negative and positive gains of individuals’ physical, psychological, and social wellbeing in work settings. The benefits flow across an entire organization thereby advancing job satisfaction, reducing absenteeism and turnover and trimming down the incident rates. On the other hand, the greatest challenge in coming up with effective workplaces is the recurrently changing working environments. Individuals have tried to counter this challenge but have often failed. To do this, they must overcome hurdles that hinder these changes like human emotion and personality. In my analysis, voluminous information from a workplace contributed to more findings on the actual dynamics of change. The report opens a black box, laying emphasis on how people can diagnose their own emotional competencies and evaluate their behaviours. I tried my level best to answer the indispensable questions and came up with realistic ways on how efficient strategies are formulated to develop a successful workplace. From this report coming up with and sustaining an effective and proficient working environment is a concerted learning process. Its dynamics are reflective and none-linear. It is also interactive in the sense that people learn from insights to refine their performance.

Literature review

The current era has witnessed great scholarly attention to personality and emotions especially when it comes to their impact on effective performance of a leader (Weibler and Jurgen, 35). Interest in transformational behaviour required in leaders is greatly emphasised by scholars such as Avolio and Bruce on their theory of ‘Full range leadership’ (Bruce and Avolio, 215). This theory has three behavioural traits namely; transactional, none transactional and transformational traits. The traits describe behaviour in terms of effectiveness and activeness of an individual. Ineffective and passive individuals avoid leadership. The ability of a leader to engage in exchange processes with subordinates shows the transactional trait of an individual.

This behaviour involves rewarding excellent workers and punishing wrong subordinates. According to Avolio, this trait can be corrective as well as constructive. Corrective exchange involves acting in advance to prevent a mistake from occurring or correcting it after it has happened. Constructive exchanges, however, involves promising people rewards for better performances and fulfilling the promise once the achievements are made. A scholar named Podsakoff came up with seven conceptualizations of transformational behaviour. These aspects showed how leaders engage closely with followers to make them more productive. They include the ability to work within the future vision, manage group work, raise standards, challenge subordinate’s thinking, support subordinate’s needs, and set a good example (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Philip, Organ and Scott, 272). Though leaders can portray either transactional, none transactional or formational behavioural traits, effective leaders portray transformational and contingent behaviour.

Emotion and individual behaviour

Emotional intelligence involves how different individuals solve and understand problems (Bruce and Avolio, 217). Its effect on transformational behaviour is that it makes leaders sensitive to followers hence they show empathy. It also creates a strong relationship between the leader and the followers. When it comes to personal and interpersonal behaviour, it is important for people to manage their emotions. Relations are developed by creating excitement and enthusiasm. It is, therefore, easy to analyse people’s behaviour and how they feel by examining how they relate with others. The ways in which people behave without speaking or moving and instead show authentic feelings affect their behaviour towards others. People who are always angry never socialise easily with others at work. They instead wear sad faces that scare people away from them. Some people are always affected emotionally by certain issues but lack the emotional intelligence which acts as a control. They, therefore, seem gloomy at work and have mood swings in offices making it hard for open communications or even team work. As a result, one’s ability to inspire and build competence depends on emotional intelligence.

Personality traits and individual behaviour

There is a well-known factor that can be utilised in assessing the effects of personality traits on individual’s behaviour (Brief and Arthur, 122). Transitional individuals are champions of change which has an effect in social values. They also use their emotions to communicate the mission and visions of the organisation to fellow workmen. Individuals with high positive affectivity derive pleasure from social relations hence eliciting positive behavioural change. Positive affectivity as a trait makes people believe that everything is possible. If one is able to recognise ones emotions then that ability will assist him in attending to the needs of individuals by choosing the best causes of action. Extraverted individuals have high emotional recognition. The effect of this is that it is easier to work in an environment where everyone understands each other’s feelings. It increases productivity of individuals because group work can be initiated to help build others. Very intelligent individuals without enough social skills are often viewed as ineffective in social maters. It is, therefore, important to have expressiveness together with personal effectiveness in order to create a better working condition.

Methodology of self-analysis

As an individual, this is a report on my behavioural assessment where I set some standards by myself. I had to satisfy some three criteria: one is that I chose three fellow staff at the office to rate my behaviour; the second is that they were to report to me for at least three months with their rating. Lastly, I had to complete the measure that assessed the variables in the study. I used a scale to measure my effectiveness which included both positive and negative effect. I used negative analyses because of purposes of valid assessment. Both scales contained five adjectives with negative and positive traits. I also used a non-verbal accuracy tool to analyse my emotion of fear, anger, happiness and sadness in twelve photographs of facial expressions. I gave this to the three fellow staff and I also had one for myself because I wanted an authentic the analyses. As for my behaviour, it was easy because I could identify them by myself from the way I did my work. I also went further and investigated how I related to people in the office. Setting time limits and trying to do my work within that given time also formed part of my assessment.

Results

I realised that emotional competencies and personality traits are closely related to transformational behaviour. My analysis was, therefore, closer to early findings of scholars and this was encouraging. I actually lacked transformational skills. Therefore, many people perceived that I was ungrateful and that I lacked empathy. My level of competency got an average rating just as I had thought and various factors contributed to this result. I never worked within the limited time provided and as a salesman at times I failed to reach the set number of clients that I was supposed to attend to. In most cases it was difficult to move on because I kept postponing my work just because I was late and I did not complete my work on time. It also came out clearly that I was always angry and hardly smiled. I knew I hardly smiled but I had never known it had an effect on my performance at work but this was subsequently another reason for average performance.

Recommended strategies

I came up with various strategies to solve these issues so as to create an effective workplace. Socializing was one of my strategies because I wanted to reach out to people, understand them and how they felt. In this process, it would be easier to share my worries with them hence making it easier to smile and avoid the angry face. This would result to more satisfied clients hence more sales. I also chose to attend some training workshops on controlling emotions at work and office manners. Concerning the lateness habit, I had to set mechanisms to ensure that I was always within the time frame. Time management strategy also helped in organising my work. When clients are attended to within the agreeable time, they build some trust and become loyal.

Raising high standards was my strategy against procrastination. I had to meet a certain minimum number of clients within a certain period and until that was completed I could not strike any deal with another client. This may have even created room for more clients. Planning as a strategy can aid in achieving the set goals and objectives to reach the company goal. Production is measured in terms of results. Therefore, poor planning can only lead to inefficiencies. Baring in mind that at times I never reached out to many clients, there was need to ask for help from colleagues hence teamwork became an essential pillar in the struggle to improve performance. Another way of improving performance was linking my goals to the company goals. I also worked on integrating the objectives to the business planning process of the organisation so that all my decision took the business into account. Open communication with the top-level managers and frequently evaluating outcome so that top level managers could be updated on my performance would keep me on toes. It would also help eliminate the fear that existed between me and the managers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, a workplace comprises of articulate human skills and behaviours that must conform to the standards and policies of an organization. This implies that people have to institutionalize their specific human traits in order to accommodate one another because a working environment incorporates people from different backgrounds and with varied behaviours. It is, therefore, imperative that people asses their characters in a bid to work smoothly at their workplaces.

Works Cited

Avolio, Bruce J, and Bruce J. Avolio. Full Range Leadership Development. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications, 2011. Print.

Brief, Arthur P. Attitudes in and Around Organizations. Thousand Oaks U. A.: Sage Publ, 2006. Print.

Organ, Dennis W, Scott B. MacKenzie, and Philip M. Podsakoff. Organizational Citizenship Behavior: It’s Nature, Antecedents, and Consequences. Thousand Oaks, Calif. U. A.: Sage, 2006. Print.

Weibler, Jürgen. New Perspectives on Leadership Research. Mering, Schwab: Hampp, R, 2008. Print.

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