Conscientiousness people are dependable, persistent, organized, and goal directed. As employees, they tend to be more motivated to perform well on the job; however, excessively conscientious folks can be so focused on their goals that they become rigid and inflexible.

Is it possible that too much strength of personality can be a weakness?

A new study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology examined the relationship between conscientiousness and job performance. The study also examined how this relationship might differ between high complexity and low complexity jobs. High complexity jobs (e.g. accountant, financial analyst, scientist, and engineer) require accuracy, creativity, and non-routine tasks, while low complexity jobs (e.g. bank teller, bookkeeper, administrative assistant) involve routine tasks requiring speed and accuracy.

The study found a curvilinear relationship between conscientiousness and performance that was most pronounced for low complexity jobs. This means that higher levels of conscientiousness resulted in higher levels of performance up to a point. Beyond that point, more conscientiousness lead to decreased performance. For high complexity jobs, the drop in performance was very slight, but for low complexity jobs the drop in performance occurred sooner and was significant (see below). The study also examined the relationship between emotional stability (calm, steady under pressure) and job performance, and found the same curvilinear effects.

The implications are pretty clear. For your jobs that are highly complex, selecting and promoting highly conscientious employees is one of the best things you can to do facilitate performance. For your less complex, more routine jobs, keep in mind that too much of strength can be a weakness.  The best employee for some jobs is the very good one, not the great one.

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

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Praise Grit

Strength-Based, Individual Leadership. How Does It Affect Your Team?

A few weeks ago I got into a conversation about whether situational leadership was more appropriate for top-level or front-line leadership. I argued that situational leadership is most appropriate for front-line leadership. To be more specific, I believe that the front-line is about management and situational leadership is about how to manage, not necessarily lead, teams with diverse backgrounds (Hersey and Blanchard, 1972). This theory states that managers should respond in one of four styles, corresponding to the maturity levels of individuals on the team. In addition, managers should respond different to each individual, since maturity levels are different. Buckingham (2005) differentiated management and leadership by asserting that managers coordinate the strengths of individuals on a team (situational leadership) in order to bring about optimal performance and leaders rallied individuals to work toward a better future. Very little “people rallying” occurs with situational leadership, making it more appropriate to front-line supervisors acting as managers.

Theories such as Charismatic leadership and Transformational leadership appear to be more about rallying followers to better future using motivating factors (Northouse, 2006). These theories seem to be more appropriate for consideration when working with an organization’s top leaders, those concerned with motivating followers toward the future of the organization.

Buckingham, M. (2005) The one thing you need to know: about great managing, great leading and sustained individual success. New York, NY: Free Press

Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. H. (1972). Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources (2nd ed.)New Jersey/Prentice Hall.

Northouse, P. (2006). Leadership: Theory and practice (4^th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Situational leadership defines four leadership styles: S1 (high-directive but low-supportive), S2 (high-directive and high-supportive), S3 (low-directive but high supportive) and S4 (low-directive and low-supportive). Developed by Hersey & Blanchard, the theory’s model (called Situational Leadership II or SLII) promotes a particular leadership style depending upon the development level of the follower: D1 (low-competence but high-commitment), D2 (moderate-competence but low-commitment), D3 (moderate-competence but no commitment) and D4 (high-competence and high-commitment). Effective leadership is a matter of assessing the development level of a follower and acting in the correlating leadership style to elicit the best response from followers (D1s respond to S1, D2s respond to S1, and so on).

Useful Lies

In the time since its inception, situational leadership II has become a standard model for use in training managers and leaders. The situational approach is effective and provides a prescription for leadership success rather than merely describing why certain leaders work in certain situations. In this way, situational leadership theory further eroded the notion of “one best way” of leadership. Despite a broad base of support from trainers and consultants, situational leadership theory lacks a significant body of research-based support. While situational leadership considers the followers in determining leadership style, it does so on a one-on-one basis and does not provide guidelines on how to use the model when leading group.

• Intro to Leadership Theory
• Why Theory
• A Word on Theory
• Trait Theory
• Skills Theory
• Style Theory
• Contingency Theory
• Situational Leadership Theory
• Path-Goal Theory
• Leader-Member Exchange Theory
• Transformational/Transactional Leadership Theory
• Servant Leadership Theory
• Strengths-Based Leadership Theory