Your success or failure as a leader is largely determined by your judgment. When we think about leadership judgment, most often we frame it around strategy. The truth is that good judgment is actually about people. Who you hire and listen to is so essential to your success that you should consider your judgment about people as a defining leadership capability. So how can you improve that? Focus on the science of personality instead of “EQ”, as personality will actually predict behavior.
As I like to say: “It’s helpful to know if a person is angry; it’s much more meaningful to know if they’re an angry person.”
Over the course of a hundred years of research, psychologists came to understand that there are five underlying, fundamental personality attributes that remain relatively stable over the course of our lives. All other traits sort of fall under these categories. Tons of research papers have now been published on this finding, to the point where we now call these the Big Five, and most psychologists agree with the structure. A slightly adapted version of these five traits proves helpful when evaluating candidates for key roles. I call this the personality blueprint, and it will dramatically enhance your ability to make good people decisions.
5 Personality Traits to Evaluate in Job Candidates
- Intellect: How that person thinks.
- Sociability: How they engage with other people.
- Emotionality: How they express their feelings.
- Drive: Why they do what they do.
- Diligence: How they get things done.
Here are some things to look for in each of these areas.
5 Attributes to Look for in Job Candidates
1. Intellect
Is a person analytical or more intuitive? Are they decisive? Are they focused? Are they thorough? How fast and accurate do they process ideas? Are they worldly and global in their mindset? Are they creative? What is their tolerance for risk? Can they handle ambiguity? Are they capable of flexibility in their thought?
2. Sociability
Is a person authentic and sincere? How skilled are they in social situations? Are they expressive? Are they tactful? Are they good listeners? Are they verbose or concise? Do they have a commanding presence or more of a meek or subtle one? Do they talk with elegant sophistication or uncomplicated plain-speak? How well do they do when communicating spontaneously? Do they engender trust in others? Do they fit in easily and conform to groups, or are they independent and get into conflict with others a lot? Do they form relationships easily and manage them well?
3. Emotionality
What is a person’s typical mood (are they happy people or downers)? What happens to them when stressed or in a crisis? How sensitive or defensive are they? Are they resilient and hardy, or do they break down easily when challenged? Are they confident in themselves or self-conscious? Are they patient with others? Are they anxious and tense by nature or even-keeled and composed?
4. Drive
Are they ambitious? Are they altruistic and driven to help others? What are their perspectives on money and how does it affect them? Are they motivated by creative expression and will they feel stifled in a boring environment? How much initiative do they generally show? Do they give up easily, or do they persevere? Which values drive their behavior? How would they characterize their moral code, and their efforts to live by it? Are they conservative, progressive or something in between?
5. Diligence
Are they well organized? Are they on-time or have a tendency to be late? Are they detail oriented and perfectionistic? How responsible are they? Are they good at managing their own work? Can they manage their time appropriately? How disciplined are they? Do they create systems for getting stuff done?
Understanding others’ character through the lens of these five attributes will put you in a significantly better position to make a good judgment call about them. Furthermore, the idea of using the structure of personality to catalog and therefore understand behavior is an important one. Have you ever tried to move tall, heavy piles of papers by grabbing each pile one at a time, holding it in your arms and carrying it where it needs to go? Quickly you find that you’re carrying too many papers and they begin to fall, so, to make things easier, you put them into large, cardboard file boxes.
Once they’re boxed up, you can do whatever you want with them easily and efficiently. Transporting them, categorizing them, arranging them and, ultimately, making meaning from them becomes infinitely more manageable. Having this personality framework to understand others allows you to organize insights based on scientifically determined attributes, which leads to a much more accurate read on people and better leadership decisions.
