BW Online | June 16, 2004 | Personality Profiling: Shrink to Fit?
BW Online | June 16, 2004 | Personality Profiling: Shrink to Fit?
The above is a discussion about the effectiveness of psychological testing of current and potential employees in an organization. It brings out a very interesting notion- how are the 3 concepts of personality, behavior and performance related.
That your personality drives your behavior is well accepted, although the correlation is not trivial to establish even in this. For example, a certain type of behavior is difficult to ascribe to a certain personality trait in a general sense- often behavior is also affected a great deal by one's context. For example, the clean and prim campus of Infosys technologies in Bangalore discourages people from throwing garbage on the roads- the same people who might not think twice before dirtying an already dirty road in the interiors of the city.
What is more interesting from a management perspective is the issue performance. Even if there are certain behavioral traits in a person, it still does not imply that one's performance will be affected in a predictable manner on that basis alone. The context factor plays a role here as well. One's environment- peers, the boss, the perception of the company, one's growth prospects- all these play a role in determining the performance of an individual as much as, or more than, one's behavior.
So that is what a professional manager should seek to do- have a system in place which gets optimal levels of performance from different kinds of individuals, with different personalities and different behavioral traits. This system virtualizes the individual as far as performance is concerned. This does not mean it hides the individual eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, forcing the organization culture onto his persona. It rather is a mechanism using which the person is given a context in which he can perform best. Performance does not need to kill your individuality.
posted by Amit @ 10:10 PM
