Unit 2: Personality, motivation and leadership

Personality is the sum of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others.

• Determinants: heredity, environment (culture, family, social groups) and situation.
• Big Five traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (emotional stability).
• Other traits relevant at work: locus of control (internal vs external), self-esteem, self-monitoring, risk-taking and Type A / Type B personality.

The MBTI classifies people into 16 personality types using four preference pairs.

• Example: ESTJ — organised, practical, decisive, suited to managing operations.
• Use: self-awareness, team building, career guidance. Limitation: weak predictive validity for job performance; the Big Five has stronger research support.

An attitude is an evaluative statement about objects, people or events. Components: cognitive (belief), affective (feeling) and behavioural (intention to act). Work-related attitudes: job satisfaction, job involvement and organisational commitment.

Values are basic convictions that a specific mode of conduct or end-state is personally or socially preferable (Rokeach).

• Terminal values: desirable end-states (a comfortable life, family security, wisdom).
• Instrumental values: preferred means of behaviour (honesty, ambition, responsibility).
• Importance: shape attitudes, perceptions and motivation; values conflicts between generations (Gen Z seeks purpose and flexibility).

• Leon Festinger (1957): cognitive dissonance is the discomfort a person feels when holding two inconsistent attitudes, or when behaviour conflicts with attitudes.
• People reduce dissonance by changing the attitude, changing the behaviour, or rationalising (adding a justifying belief).
• Strength of the desire to reduce dissonance depends on the importance of the elements, the degree of influence the person has, and the rewards involved.

Perception is the process by which individuals organise and interpret their sensory impressions to give meaning to their environment.

Attribution theory (Harold Kelley) explains how we judge whether others' behaviour is caused internally (personal factors under their control) or externally (situation).

• Fundamental attribution error: underestimating external factors and overestimating personal factors when judging others.
• Self-serving bias: crediting our successes to ourselves and blaming failures on outside factors.

Applications of motivation theories

• Job design: job enrichment (Herzberg), job rotation, job enlargement; Job Characteristics Model (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy, feedback).
• Goal setting: specific, challenging goals with feedback (Locke).
• Pay for performance: incentives, ESOPs, gain-sharing.
• Employee involvement: participative management, quality circles.
• Recognition programmes and flexible work arrangements.

• Equity theory (J. Stacy Adams): employees compare their output–input ratio with that of others; perceived inequity leads to changing inputs, outputs, perceptions, the referent, or leaving.
• Goal-setting theory (Edwin Locke): specific, difficult goals with feedback lead to higher performance — the basis of SMART goals and MBO.
• Self-determination theory: people are motivated by autonomy, competence and relatedness; extrinsic rewards may reduce intrinsic motivation for interesting tasks.
• Reinforcement theory: behaviour is a function of its consequences.
• Self-efficacy (Bandura): belief in one's ability raises effort and persistence.
• McClelland's needs theory: needs for achievement, power and affiliation.

Leadership is the ability to influence a group towards achieving goals.

• Trait theory: leaders have innate traits — intelligence, self-confidence, integrity, drive.
• Behavioural theories: Ohio State studies (initiating structure and consideration), Michigan studies (employee-oriented vs production-oriented) and the Managerial Grid (Blake and Mouton: concern for people vs concern for production; 9,9 team management is ideal).

Transactional and transformational leadership

• Contingency theories: Fiedler's LPC model, Hersey–Blanchard situational leadership, path–goal theory (House).

• Charismatic leaders (Max Weber; House; Conger and Kanungo) inspire followers through vision, personal risk-taking, sensitivity to followers' needs and unconventional behaviour.
• Process: articulate an appealing vision, communicate high performance expectations and confidence, model values, make self-sacrifices.
• Dark side: narcissism, dependence of followers, risky decisions and weak succession.