Understanding Personalities

How will you use your knowledge of personalities and attitudes to be a better leader in the workplace? Personalities are a set of relatively stable characteristics that lead to consistent patterns of behaviors. As a leader or manager it’s important to understand your employees behaviors because it will dictate how they will react to and execute the job. Understanding personalities will better me as a leader by teaching me to learn how to emphasize the positive and mitigate the negative aspects of my employees actions. The knowledge of personalities will also give me guidance on how interact with different various employees. For example, I would interact with an extroverted employee more socially and interactive compared to a introverted employee

It’s also the use of power and relationships within a business or company to achieve personal or organizational benefits. There are positive and negatives of politics in the workplace and it’s important for the leader decipher and understand them. Office politics boil down to the impression one may have over another. Employees practice impression management with their boss to gain favorability over their peers. Impression management is the process by which individuals try to control the impression others have of them, this includes name dropping, appearance, self-description, flattery, favors, and agreement with opinion. A good leader will recognize the sincere acts and disregard the insincere actions. Overall, a good leader will not play too much into the office politics but rather manage their employees on behavior and

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a diagram of a triangle with physiological needs at the bottom and self-actualization at the top. To be a good manager it’s crucial to understand what motivates your employees. If you employees fall into the Theory X category then it means they are motivated by lower order needs such as money and security. If your employees fall into Theory Y then it means they are motivated actualization and esteem needs. Knowing what category employees identify with will help you with the overall management process. The second motivation theory is Herzberg’s Two-Factor theory which includes the Hygiene Factor and Motivation Factor. The hygiene factor is work conditions related to dissatisfaction caused by discomfort or pain and the motivation factor is work conditions related to the satisfaction of the need for psychological growth. Like the prior theory it’s important to understand which employees identify with with factor because it gives the manager insight on how different factors motivate their employees. The last theory is Adam’s Theory of Inequity and it states people are motivated when they find themselves in situations of inequity or unfairness. To be a better leader you must keep a level playing field in the workplace by treating employees fairly and practicing procedural