Day: February 18, 2021

1. A 2014 study by Judge and Papata found that all personality traits are more predictive of job performance when the work was performed in an unstructured environment where employees have the freedom to make personal choices. In addition, the study found that the employees’ traits also indicated how they would act in a situation because of those same traits.

You took a test about your own personality traits for the Case Assignment in Module 1. Did you find that the results were what you expected? Most people find that they are generally correct, but they all have a surprise or two. Did you know that if you were to wait an hour and retake the test that your results would be different? This is because as you read your first test results, you rationalize why the findings were correct or incorrect and then you try to change up your answers in an attempt to change your results. If you were to take the test after a much longer period of time after taking it the first time, your results may also be different. This is because your frame of mind when taking a test also impacts the answers you select.

To combat people changing their answers to get a better result, test designers reframe questions in several ways, inserting multiple ways to ask the same question. Some test-takers are bothered by the repetition of questions, most likely because they do not realize it is done intentionally. If they were to list all of the repeat questions, though, they would find that each is written differently from the others.

2. The results may have been very close to what you think are your personality characteristics, although some of them may have been a surprise to you. Keeping those personality characteristics in mind and after reading the descriptions of all of the characteristic categories, think about how these characteristics affect your own work attitudes and job performance.

3. What are your personality characteristics? In what ways do they affect your attitudes at work?
How does your work attitude affect your job performance and behaviors?

4. Then, meet with your manager or a coworker who knows you well, and discuss your findings in your personality test. Discuss how they see you compared to your test results. In the final submission, include a paragraph of at least 75 words covering the highlights of your discussion with that person.

(If you are not currently working, you can select a family member, friend, or someone else who knows you well to complete this part of the assignment.

1. What do you think happens when you put together a group of people from a variety of diverse backgrounds and cultures? This is what you are going to learn in this module. Two commonly recognized benefits include:

better problem solving
increased productivity
Think of staffing a company like putting together a puzzle: fitting people into the best fit with their skills and experiences, but not forgetting about considering their potential, too.

2. Not only do new diverse employees bring their skills and experiences, but they also bring their knowledge and ideas. Employees should not be nervous about making suggestions in front of their peers because research has shown that diverse teams see a 60% improvement in decision-making abilities (PM Editorial, 2017, para. 2).

Source: PM Editorial. (2017, October 23). Diversity drives better decisions. People Management. Retrieved from

3. Every employee has valuable input regardless of their age, gender, ethnicity, or other cultural variables. It really all comes down to experience as to the quality of their suggestions.

Have you ever worked at a company where you had a supervisor who did not seem to appreciate you for your differences from your coworkers? If not, imagine that you were in that positionone where nothing you did seemed to please your supervisor. How would that make you feel? Given this scenario, would you be prepared to work all day with an upbeat feeling of confidence that you are a valued asset to your employer?

Your feelings really depend upon your own key personality characteristics, so it is important to know what those characteristics are. You can easily find out by taking the free Big 5 Test that is comparable to both the Myers-Briggs and Jung tests. The five factors measured by this test are: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability (also called “neuroticism”), and intellect/imagination (also called “openness”). The test only takes about seven minutes or less to complete.

4. Your essay will cover the following five questions:

List your five personality factors, including your score. Describe a summary of each factor according to the report received after taking the test.
After reviewing your report, is there any part of the report that you do not agree with? Why do you not agree with it? Explain in detail.
Is there any part of your personality characteristics that you want to work on to change? Explain in detail.
How does your personality affect your attitude at work? At home? In a public setting? Explain in detail.
How does your personality affect your job performance? Explain in detail.

5. A good way to organize your paper is to divide it into the following sections:

Introduction that briefly describes the assignment and personality test
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
Neuroticism
Openness
Do I agree with my test results?
Time for a change?
Personality vs attitude
Personality vs job performance
References
Support your arguments with at least two scholarly references to the concepts you discuss in your paper.

1. Imagine you are the owner of a small electrical company. You have been penalized $14,000 by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for what you consider to be petty violations. You do not think you should have been cited for two of the three violations that were identified as Serious:

There was an open elevator shaft 30 feet from where your electrician was working.
Someone cut the grounding prong off one of your extension cords.
Your electrician did not cover an open circuit breaker box that was energized, which exposed other workers to potential electrical shock hazards.
In addition, you consider your companys safety program to be one of the best in the industry, having won several awards from the local Safety Council. You also have not had a recordable injury for more than 5 years.

You do not think you should have been cited for the elevator shaft, since it was not very close to where your electrician was working (so the employee wasnt really exposed to the hazard). He didnt even have a reason to go near the shaft, and it wasnt your companys responsibility to put up a guard rail (the carpenters are supposed to do that).

You do not think you should be cited for the electrical cord because you have repeatedly instructed your workers not to cut grounding prongs, and you have a program to check grounding prongs daily (though your foreman sometimes forgets to do this).

You decide to set up an informal settlement conference to try to settle the case with the area director. You have heard conflicting stories related to her willingness to negotiate in good faith, however.

A framing contractor (who is admittedly a bit of a hothead) stated that the area director is a jerk and that she has it in for construction contractors. He stated, I showed her how her inspector was clearly wrong and all she would do was give me a 20% penalty reduction. She wants to put us all out of business. A roofing contractor stated, however, that you just need to get on the area director’s good side. He stated that the area director was very accommodating and that she withdrew two out of four serious citations tied to an inspection conducted at one of the roofers sites. He ended up with a 65% penalty reduction overall.

In this scenario, you are the business owner and are entering into a negotiation with a federal manager to reduce the penalties issued against your company. You really do not know what to expect. For this assignment, please review the background materials and prepare a 2 page paper in which you outline the key tenets of emotional intelligence and discuss how an awareness of emotional intelligence and the human element can be useful going into such a negotiation.