The science of ‘behavioral traits’—identify high-potential employees

Are there six traits that could mark out your potential to achieve?

Are you curious, conscientious and competitive? Do you also have the more mysterious qualities of “high adjustment,” “ambiguity acceptance” and “risk approach”? If so, congratulations! According to new psychological research, these six traits constitute a “high potential” personality that will take you far in life.

The truth, of course, is a little more nuanced. It turns out the same traits, in excess, may also impede your performance, and the real secret to success may be to know precisely where you fall on each spectrum, and how to make the most of your strengths and account for your weaknesses. However, this new approach promises to be an essential step forward in our bid to understand the complex ways our personality affects our working life.

Personality tests are not great at predicting managerial success

Attempts to capture our workplace personality have, after all, suffered a checkered record in the past. One of the most popular tests used today is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which sorts people according to various thinking styles, such as “introversion/extroversion” and “thinking/feeling.”

As many as nine out of ten US companies now use Myers-Briggs to screen employees. Unfortunately, many psychologists feel that the theory behind the different categories is outdated and fails to correlate with actual measures of performance. One study suggested that the MBTI is not great at predicting managerial success. Some critics even claim that it is pseudoscience.

As a conversation starter, it is an excellent tool, but if you are using it on a large scale to predict performance or to try and find high-performing candidates, it doesn’t work.” - Ian MacRae, a psychologist, and co-author of the book High Potential.

In our post Predicting Job Performance: Do Personality Tests Work? It is the first in our two-part series on predicting job performance. In Part Two - Behavioral Assessments Work!, we set out the research on validated tools for predicting success in a given role that works with 85% reliability.

Even a decade ago, researchers and editors of top psychological journals reporting the results of the predictive power of tests for hiring discovered something that should have opened eyes and definitively eliminated the use of personality testing for hiring by staffing professionals. Statistics found that companies using personality tests alone had an incredibly low rate of success in predicting job fit, or either excellence or failure in actual job performance: less than six percent. The panel of prominent personnel psychologists reported one clear theme: the validities of personality measures are so low that to use them for employee selection should be questioned. One of the authors of the study, Peter Capelli, summed it up stating:

Why are we looking at personality as a valid predictor of job performance when the validities are still close to zero?” — Larry Cash

Figuring that recent advances in psychological research could do better, Ian MacRae and Adrian Furnham of University College London have now identified six traits that are consistently linked to workplace success, which they have now combined into their HPTI.

MacRae points out that each trait may also have drawbacks at extremes, meaning there is an optimal value of each one. He also emphasizes that the relative importance of each attribute will be determined by the job you are doing, so the thresholds would need to be adapted depending on whether you are hoping to succeed in, say, a technical position.

The six traits are:

Conscientiousness - Conscientious people commit themselves to plans and make sure they carry them out to the letter. They are good at overcoming their impulses and thinking about the wisdom of their decisions for the long-term. After IQ, conscientiousness is often considered one of the best predictors of life outcomes like educational success. At work, high conscientiousness is essential for proper strategic planning, but in excess, it may also mean that you are too rigid and inflexible.
Adjustment - Everyone faces anxieties, but people with high adjustment can cope with them more easily under pressure, without allowing it to influence their behaviour and decision-making negatively. People with low scores on this scale do appear to suffer from poor performance at work, but you can mitigate those effects with the right mindset. Various studies have shown that reframing a stressful situation as a potential source of growth – rather than a threat to their wellbeing – can help people to recover from adverse circumstances more quickly and more productively.
Ambiguity acceptance - Are you the kind of person who would prefer tasks to be well-defined and predictable? Alternatively, do you relish the unknown? People with a high tolerance for ambiguity can incorporate many more viewpoints before coming to a decision, which means they are less dogmatic and more nuanced in their opinions. Low ambiguity acceptance will not always be a drawback. In specific fields – such as regulation – it can be better to take a more ordered approach that irons out all the wrinkles in the process. Knowing where you stand on this spectrum may prevent you from stretching too far from your comfort zone.
Curiosity - Compared to our other mental traits, curiosity has been somewhat neglected by psychologists. Recent research shows that an inherent interest in new ideas brings many advantages to the workplace: it may mean that you are more creative and flexible in the procedures you use, help you to learn more efficiently, increases your overall job satisfaction and protects you from burnout. In excess, however, curiosity can also lead you to have a “butterfly mind” – flying from project to project without seeing them through.
Risk approach (or courage) - Would you shy away from a potentially unpleasant confrontation? Alternatively, do you steam ahead in the knowledge that the short-term discomfort will resolve the situation, bringing long-term benefits? Unsurprisingly, the capacity to deal with stressful situations is critical for management positions where you need to take action for the greater good, even when you are faced with opposition.
Competitiveness - There’s a fine line between striving for personal success and caving into unhealthy jealousy of others. At its best, competitiveness can be a powerful motivation that leads you to go the extra mile; at its worst, it can lead teams to break down.

Together, these six traits attempt to consolidate common understanding on the many different qualities that influence work performance, particularly for those setting their sights on leadership.

Equally fascinating are the personality traits that MacRae and Furnham have not included. The extroversion-introversion scale, for instance, may determine how we deal with certain social situations, but it seems to make little difference in overall job performance. Agreeableness – our capacity to get along with other people – does not predict professional success.

"Almost everyone will fall outside the optimum range for at least some of these traits, but this need not be a problem if we have colleagues who can rein us in.” — Larry Cash

SuccessFinder goes much further

We go further — SuccessFinder predicts career satisfaction and success based on discriminating factors: human behaviour and competencies. Along with skills and experience, these are the key differentiators in determining performance. High performers share a common subset of behaviours that they are extremely adept in using. Our career assessment compares each personal profile with those from "high performing" individuals in the same role, which are established in our benchmarks. We can predict success with up to 85% predictive validity. SuccessFinder maintains the most rigorous standard of validity and training required to interpret a behavioural and career assessment in the industry —at level C1— as outlined by the American Psychological Association. This is based in part on the depth and breadth of our assessments, including 85 statistically distinct behavioural scales and 35 specific career theme scales —all which interface with 2,500 occupational titles and 500+ career success benchmarks.

Our Best-Fit Staffing progress gets you the right people int he right jobs.

Leadership Styles

MacRae’s work is impressive. However, leadership is much more complicated. Research on “leadership style” suggests most leaders do not have a single dominant style. We also help individuals understand their leadership style and how to apply it in given situations. The seven primary leadership styles are:

Leadership Style	Description
Administrative Style	This leader follows normative rules and establishes regulation guidelines for operating. They are often distinguished as “coordinating” Vs “leading” or “managing”. Administrative Leadership style equates enforcing the rules as effective “leadership”. You will often find this leadership role in a situation where the work environment is dangerous and specific sets of procedures are necessary to ensure safety. Their emphasis or belief is that a good leader must first establishes good controls, rules, regulations, systems, policies and procedures.
Agile Style	This leader values the need to adapt to constantly changing conditions, with the ability to embrace new effective behaviors based on new requirements and the challenges of a chaotic, even volatile market place driving a magnitude of change, with the potential to confound by it daunting complexity and uncertainty.
Collegial Style	This leader had a “hands-off¨ approach. It is one in which the manager provides little or no direction and gives employees as much freedom as possible. All authority or power is given to the employees and they must determine goals, make decisions, and resolve problems on their own.
Directive Style	This leader retains control, influence and decision-making authority. The directive leader does not feel the need to consult employees, and employees are expected to obey orders and to receive “constructive criticism” without discussion or reciprocal feedback. The commanding leader tries to establish a motivation environment by creating a structured set of rewards and punishments.
Entrepreneurial Style	This leader is a primary force behind successful change. They are the “pace-setting” leaders whose direct reports have the most difficulty getting a handle on or predicting their needs because they go their own way, guided from within by some base of impulse, inspiration, revelation, reason or value unique to them alone. In leadership scenarios, where others may come to a common understanding, they often do not come to the same conclusion. It is usually admiration, loyalty and devotion among followers that provides an Entrepreneurial leader with credibility to lead.
Inspirational Style	This leader engages with others in such a way that leaders and followers constructively raise one another to higher levels of motivation, effective relationships, quality orientation and overall workplace productivity.
Utilitarian Style	This leader drives the workplace to maximize the greatest number of task accomplished from the greatest number of employees. The Utilitarian leader believes strongly in the concept that work produced should be the main or only criteria of one’s salary level. Utilitarian leadership is grounded in practicality, where decision-making centers around the issue of quality of effort or results, political correctness (or astuteness) and profitability criteria.

Behavioural traits can predict subjective and objective measures of success. High performers in a given role have similar behavioural traits. We use SuccessFinder to screen high potential candidates. Our analytics also aid personal development, so that you can identify your strengths and weaknesses and the ways you may account for them. Also, our analytics are useful for constructing a balanced team that reflects the full spectrum of “high potential” traits, with a wealth of research showing that groups benefit from diverse thinking styles. Almost everyone will fall outside the optimum range for at least some of these traits, but this need not be a problem if we have colleagues who can rein us in.

For development purposes, we have created 26 competencies. They are a combination of three to six of the 85 behavioural traits that we measure.

However, does anyone ever meet all the criteria?

No. We provide the likelihood that the individual will meet and exceed expectations. Our ladder of leadership is a behavioural competency model for three levels of corporate leadership. An individual needs to have a high ranking in four of the ten competencies. They can develop strategies to manage the other competencies.

Our insights give you information, so you know exactly what to expect with your new high-potential hire – they are someone you can trust, rely on and respect. These insights facilitate a customize onboarding plan for the new hire and internal promotions.

Still curious to learn more?

We are incredibly passionate about Behavioral DNA and the impact this scientific insight can have on you. We hope more promising men and women can achieve the learning and development they need and discover their unique path to career success and satisfaction. This is possible if you learn about your behavioural DNA and leverage your unique strengths throughout your career journey. We offer our services worldwide.