PERSONALITY AND STRATEGY
by Dr. Steve Payne
The term “locus of control” refers to assumptions that a
person has concerning personal control of his or her fate or destiny. Those with a strong “internal” locus of
control believe that they have much personal control of their life
consequences, while “externals” perceive that outside events, forces, and
individuals largely control their personal fate. Most individuals think that both internal and
external forces shape their personal destinies; however, individuals often lean
more toward one of these two extremes than the other. Effective strategists usually believe that
they can strongly shape their fates through their greater knowledge of
influential external forces.
Humans have many needs and motivations, and individuals
differ in the strength of particular needs.
Psychologist David McClelland identified three particular and important
types of needs (achievement, affiliation and power) that can differ greatly
among individuals. Achievement or a
sense of accomplishment is a powerful need and motivator for many, and
individuals have many different career and life paths along which they can
fulfill this particular type of need.
The need for affiliation or social belonging/identity is also very
important for many, and this need can be fulfilled in many different employment
and life contexts. A need to have and
use power obviously motivates many as well.
Other or related needs that can vary greatly among individuals include desire
for fortune, fame, and helping others (altruism).
Other personality dimensions that have been identified and
might be investigated in a quest for greater self-knowledge include the
following tendencies:
* extraversion vs. introversion (Do you enjoy and seek
social occasions and encounters or do you prefer being more of a loner?)
* conscientiousness (Are you more of a procrastinator or
fairly zealous in following up on commitments and responsibilities?)
* openness to experience (Do you often seek new challenges
or prefer routines or previous experiences?)
* judgmental orientation (Do you quickly or commonly make
judgments about people even without knowing that much about them or are you
slow in making such judgments without a lot of evidence?)
Among personal characteristics is intelligence. Traditional measures of intelligence focused
on forms of cognitive ability. More
recently emotional intelligence has been identified and studied. There are many types of skills, whether
cognitively or emotionally based, that can be helpful or critical for certain
occupations.
There are other personal dispositions or characteristics
that I might easily mention, but perhaps I have provided enough examples for my
purposes. I’m not suggesting that people
need to take an expensive battery or series of personality
tests/inventories. Most of us already have
some self-knowledge of ourselves, but personality dimensions such as those covered
here might be roughly evaluated. We
might use this list and a page or two of notes to describe ourselves. Then we might ask three or four friends who
would be open and very honest with us to verify our self-perceptions. We might ask them, independently or without
revealing our own self-perceptions, to describe how each of them views our
personality and personal characteristics.
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