Introduction

Like gender and culture diversity in workforce, personality diversity in the workplace can enhance the performance of the organization, along with many other advantages. Therefore, it essential to hire people with different personalities instead of similar personalities (Marsh, 2018). It may seem beneficial to have similar personalities in order to avoid conflicts in the organization, but diversity of personality will, in particular, be more useful to the organization.

Five Personality Traits

There are five personality traits or characteristics every person, or here, manager, falls within. These traits are given below:

• Extraversion: It is the characteristic which shows that a person is sociable, open, excited, and high amount of expressiveness emotionally. People with high extraversion are love being out and staying with people, interacting with others. But there are some people who have low extraversion, who refer solitude in place of socializing (MANCOSA, 2021). A manager needs to have extraversion in his/her personality, as it will help them meet more people and help them grow. It will also help them know their team better, which will lead to better management of the team. A Public Relation manager, or top executive managers will be most common example, as they meet with various people and socialize with clients, which helps the business gain more growth and development.
• Negative affectivity: Negative affectivity is a person’s tendency to be affected by negative emotions and moods. People who have this trait in abundance, they will be more critical of themselves and those around them. These people will also experience anger and dissatisfaction very easily, when they think that others, and even themselves, are not working as much as they should (Lemogne, et al, 2011). This trait in abundance, is not good in any manager, although this will help in reaching the standards set during the planning phase. For example, the production manager is the person most commonly seen to possess this trait, as they are the ones who demand perfection in the production of the product, from themselves and from their production team. This ensures that the product received by the customers meets the standards.
• Agreeableness: When a person gets along well with others, it is the trait of agreeableness. This is a trait which works in favor of a manager, as they are able to get along with everyone, the team members of the team, along with executives at high level will be able to rely more on the manager (Bresin and Robinson, 2015.). The manager can gain the faith of the team members and the top executive with the help of this trait. For example, a Human Resource manager is a person who gets along with almost everyone in the organization. This trait suits his/her job description, and facilitate his/her work, as he/she gets along well with everyone.
• Conscientiousness: This trait in a person depicts that the person is careful, dedicated, persevering and focus on the details of the work they are doing. These people are extremely self-disciplined, and could be relied upon because of their characteristics. Their organized behavior, along with their self-discipline makes them extremely good candidate for managerial jobs. But this trait, at times, does not let them take risks and makes them more rigid, rather than being flexible. But this trait will be most beneficial where the manager is needed to be disciplined. The most common example of conscientiousness trait is in project manager on strict schedule of a project. The manager is needed to complete the project on time (Roberts, et al, 2014). This trait will provide a discipline and organization to the project, will help complete the project on time. This will also provide a better control over the team, and will not let them lack. But too much of this trait will not let flexibility in, which is essential to any organization, and at times, in projects too, otherwise the manager will not be able to cope up with the changes being introduced.  
• Openness to experience: This is trait which shows that the person is open to new experiences, and also have wide range of interests. These people are original, and are open to broad range of stimuli, which makes them risk takers and daring (DeYoung, et al, 2014). For example, a marketing manager, who is open to new experiences and is also a risk taker, will be more open to ideas and creativity, which will make the marketing campaign he/she is working on more creative and enhance it to appeal to the customers. Therefore, this trait is important in any modern business which plans to survive in the dynamic environment.

Conclusion

From above description and explanation of the personality traits, it can be observed that different traits play different role, and beneficial in different conditions for managers. These traits are not only important for diversity and different point of view, but also affects the way a manager leads his/her team.

References

Bresin, K. and Robinson, M.D., 2015. You are what you see and choose: Agreeableness and situation selection. Journal of Personality, 83(4), pp.452-463.

DeYoung, C.G., Quilty, L.C., Peterson, J.B. and Gray, J.R., 2014. Openness to experience, intellect, and cognitive ability. Journal of personality assessment, 96(1), pp.46-52.

Lemogne, C., Gorwood, P., Bergouignan, L., Pélissolo, A., Lehéricy, S. and Fossati, P., 2011. Negative affectivity, self-referential processing and the cortical midline structures. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 6(4), pp.426-433.

 , 2021. Organisational Leadership: Module Guide.  

Marsh, E., 2018.  . [Online] Available at: https://www.t-three.com/soak/insights/the-importance-of-personality-diversity-in-the-workplace [Accessed: 12/03/2021]

Roberts, B.W., Lejuez, C., Krueger, R.F., Richards, J.M. and Hill, P.L., 2014. What is conscientiousness and how can it be assessed?. Developmental psychology, 50(5), p.1315.