Abstract
This chapter reviews literature and research on the Big Five personality traits, namely agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness, and their role as drivers and blockers in an individual’s change efforts. Personality traits constitute an important component of self-awareness. Understanding and identifying differences in personality can play a critical role in self-awareness and leadership development, helping people identify and solve their weaknesses, implement solutions and handle difficult situations. We argue that the five personality traits can influence people’s motivation and behaviors, encouraging them to direct, accept and oppose change. These directly relate to potential drivers and blockers—and in our field research we have seen these factors operate as extremely powerful drivers and blockers. In this chapter, we explain and explore each trait in turn, along with the hypothesized associations between these and a person’s change efforts. As an important contribution to the literature in the field, this chapter includes detailed examples of drivers and blockers for each of the Big Five traits.
You cannot defeat darkness by running from it, nor can you conquer your inner demons by hiding them from the world. In order to defeat the darkness, you must bring it into the light.
Seth Adam Smith, in Rip Van Winkle and the Pumpkin Lantern
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Keywords
- Leadership development
- Self-awareness
- Conscious and unconscious
- Drivers
- Blockers
- Drivers and blockers
- Immunity to change
- Insightfully aware leadership
- Leadership transformation
- Individual change
- Leadership development objectives
- Coaching approaches and tools
Personality can be defined as “an individual’s characteristic patterns of thought, emotion and behavior, together with the psychological mechanisms—hidden or not—behind those patterns” (Funder, 1997, pp. 1–2). These patterns communicate one’s choices, likings and wishes and impact behaviors which are stable across contexts and which differentiate one individual from another (Vakola, Tsaousis, & Nikalaou, 2004).
Self-awareness, as discussed earlier, refers to one’s ability to be aware of the features of self (Hall, 2004), and personality traits constitute an important component of the self. We believe that understanding and recognizing variations in personality can provide crucial insights for leadership development, enabling people to identify and mitigate the gaps between what is required of them and their capacity to deliver; find solutions that will nurture them; and manage or avoid stressful situations. These directly relate to potential drivers and blockers.
Therefore, in this chapter, we review literature on the Big Five personality traits: (agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness). Our field research shows that these are most likely to act as drivers or blockers in an individual’s change efforts. Each of these is explained in turn, and the hypothesized associations between these and a person’s change efforts, drivers and blockers, are discussed.
5.1 Personality Traits: The Five Factor Model
The role of the personality Five Factor (agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness) Model (FFM)Footnote 1 in predicting people’s motivation and behavior is well demonstrated by research (Hogan & Holland, 2003; Judge & Ilies, 2002). Classic and current studies in a variety of disciplines acknowledge the FFM as a comprehensive model which sums up and explains the crucial and consistent individual variations in personality (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Costa & McCrae, 1992; Fleeson & Gallagher, 2009; Judge, Simon, Hurst, & Kelley, 2014). With regard to change, research (e.g. McCrae & Costa, 1986; Vakola et al., 2004) has employed the FFM model to examine individual attitude toward change.
A detailed overview of the Big Five personality traits, including descriptions as well as relevant previous research, is provided in Table 5.1. We also provide direct examples from our own research of how these personality traits act as drivers or blockers in a person’s change efforts. Based on our review of the research, we believe that these five personality traits can encourage individuals to direct, accept and oppose change. In other words, they can act as drivers as well as blockers in determining people’s change efforts. However, they might work together with other factors such as emotions, values, worldviews and the like, and potential interrelationship is an area we identify in our conclusion for further research related to drivers and blockers.
Beyond the “Big Five”, there are a number of other personality traits, dispositional variables and characteristics that are associated with change, assumptions and forces that can also act as drivers and blockers, which we explore in the next chapter.
Notes
- 1.
We use the NEO-PI version of the FFM for this book. In addition, in Sect. 10.5, we provide a comparison for reference, with the Myers-Briggs personality indicators because that instrument is so widely used in managerial training and development.
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Woodward, I.C., Shaffakat, S., Dominé, V.H. (2019). Exploring the Reservoirs of Drivers and Blockers (Conscious and Unconscious): Big Five Personality Traits. In: Exploring Leadership Drivers and Blockers. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6276-7_5
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