The importance of analyzing psychological traits in the work environment
Public disclaimer: the mentioned list is solely not made for categorizing, stereotyping or simplifying human individuality. Our minds, personality and experience are a complex, constantly evolving system that cannot be defined easily and precisely. This is just a glimpse of things to notice in people around us to make our interaction more effective and comfortable. This article represents the author’s opinion and may not fully represent the vision of Flatstack, LLC.
While working as a project manager, a large part of my job is all about interacting with numbers of people on a daily basis: from communicating with clients and team members to taking part in the recruitment process. Having a psychological degree made me always question how the knowledge of psychology can be of help in our industry. This mindset of paying attention to psychological traits brought me to creating the following list of items structured in thematic blocks to highlight during your work with people: whether you’re dealing with job candidates, your current team members or actually even any people around you (including yourself).
The main purpose of this article is to inspire anyone involved in the recruitment and management process to view the candidates and team members holistically, without underestimating the value of psychological complementarity and awareness. One of the central questions that we always need to keep in mind is can we offer the candidate optimal conditions for his most effective contribution? How can this particular person enhance our team’s spirit and performance with his individual experience, personality and attitude?
1.Motivation structure
➛ What working conditions are essential for this individual? For example, an attitude towards working extra hours might be very different: one would do that voluntarily just because he’s that involved in his project, other will consider this a threat to his work-life balance (which totally makes sense) and will eventually burn out. Setting common ground, preferably in the beginning of your collaboration, would help avoid disappointment and frustration.
➛ What working conditions are a total no-go? It might be anything from having strict non-flexible working hours to working on-site only without any opportunity to work remotely. It is crucial to outline all future working conditions and situations potential colleague might face long before he does.
➛ What are the main factors that provoke creativity flow? What working conditions contribute to the highest engagement level?
➛ Is one’s motivation predominantly oriented to avoiding failure or approaching success? This might explain the reasoning behind employee’s actions, decisions and opinions.
2. Personal values (kinda intersects with motivation sector)
➛ What life values is this person guided by and how does it affect his work? What values does he expect the company to maintain? Current work processes in the company with all its good and bad practices may either contribute to employee’s self-actualisation or demotivation.
➛ What values or actions of the company or lack thereof will be a dealbreaker? If there are discrepancies between basic values and factual working conditions that might cause an internal psychological crisis. For example, if an individual’s basic value is transparency and he’s working in the company with a corporate culture that promotes silence when problems occur… Well, let’s just say the employee might have an internal (sometimes even unconscious) conflict that will eventually arise. And vice versa.
3. The daily content of one’s work
➛ Does the individual truly enjoy working in this field or is it a temporary place that he’s willing to get away from as soon as there’s a chance? Sure, people driven by certain other motives can still stick to the field for a long while or at least as long as the motive is present and relevant. But work happiness is proven to be essential for high performance and engagement.
➛ What kind of work tasks specific for one’s position are driving and motivating the individual and what bores or challenges in a bad way?
➛ Does the expectation of one’s typical workday line up with what he’s about to face in the company daily? If that is not transparent from the very beginning of the work relationships then you’re at risk of triggering cognitive dissonance that might undermine the costs of onboarding when the employee leaves as soon as he sees it.
4. Personal experience
➛ How did the individual get into the field? The story behind it might reveal a lot about one’s personality.
➛ Has the individual experienced the burnout or something that felt like that or was close to that? What was the subjective trigger to cause this condition? How did it manifest?
➛ Is the individual in the field/company for the long run or is it an interim place?
➛ What was the true reason why you all gathered here for this interview (if we are talking about the stage of interviewing)? Natural curiosity, lack of satisfaction in the current workplace, casual job hopping, can’t say “no” when the recruiters reach out?
5. Psychological characteristics of an individual: temperament, character accentuation, extraversion or introversion, e.t.c..
Depending on what role and what job content the individual applies for it would be nice to know if he meets the psychological characteristics typical for the type of job. The discrepancy can sooner or later lead to the internal crisis or resignation.
➛ Temperament. Monotonous process of filling in tasks with technical specifications can be interesting for phlegmatic or melancholic individuals, while sanguine and choleric individuals may find it easier to communicate and take over leadership.
➛ Character accentuation. Critical comments won’t hurt hyperthymic individuals as much while sensitive people can be left in a long lasting frustration by that.
➛ Introversion/extraversion. Can an introvert in the leadership position easily handle hours of calls with team and clients or will it eventually lead to a work escapism?
➛ Tolerance to uncertainty or monotonous work. The fact that task specifics can be changed in the middle of the task’s implementation can be very tough to handle for some people, the same way as the monotonous process of page layout can be very boring for some people. Some people cannot work under the pressure of deadlines, others cannot work without any.
➛ How reflexive is this individual, does he recognize his own motivational drivers or the behavior?
You will sometimes find the answers to most of these questions just by observing and listening to what the candidate says in the interview, other aspects can be revealed by psychological questionnaires, interviewer’s experience or direct questions asked.
To summarize, hiring people for long-term work relationships and predictable performance just by assessing their hard skills is challenging and the cost of onboarding and turnover is high therefore factoring in the psychological individuality of the candidate/employee is crucial.
