Management and Leadership: Big Five Personality and Emotions

This report examines the crucial role of emotions in the workplace and their impact on leadership effectiveness. The author, after taking the Big Five Personality Test, analyzes their scores for Openness, Consciousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, discussing how these traits influence their leadership potential. The report differentiates between emotions and moods, providing personal examples of experiencing various emotions and moods in the workplace, and detailing how these experiences affected their work performance. The analysis concludes with a reflection on the course, highlighting key lessons learned about leadership, personality traits, and the importance of self-awareness in becoming an effective leader. The report also acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses revealed by the personality test and suggests areas for personal development to enhance leadership capabilities.

Running head: MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 1
Management and Leadership
Name
Institution

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 2
Management and Leadership
Part 1
A) I know that leadership is not a simple task that can be performed by everyone. Not
everyone can be a leader because it is challenging and has lots of duties and
responsibilities to execute. At the same time, a leader should possess certain attributes
that, unfortunately, cannot be found in all the people. In order to determine if I have the
right leadership traits, I had to undertake the 10-minute Big 5 Personality Test. Here, I
tested my Openness (O), Consciousness (C), Extraversion €, Agreeableness (A), and
Neuroticism (N) (Stajkovic, Bandura, Locke, Lee & Sergent, 2018).
B) The following were my test scores for the Openness (O), Consciousness (C),
Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A), and Neuroticism (N)
C) Each of the ratings that I obtained shows that I can be a good leader. As clearly-outlined
in the graph, there are areas in which I score highly. There are also others in which I
score dismally. Each of these can have a positive or negative impact on my performance.
The traits that can hold me back are those for Neuroticism and Extraversion in which I
scored 40% and 62.5% respectively. Meanwhile, the openness, consciousness, and

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 3
agreeableness can improve my performance as a leader (Stajkovic, Bandura, Locke, Lee
& Sergent, 2018). Hence, to make the best out of myself, I have to improve on my weak
areas and capitalize most on my strong ones. I can achieve this by becoming more
extroverts and exercising a high degree of self and emotional control.
Part 2
A) There is a mistake that many people make. They believe that emotion and mod is one
thing. This is, however, not true since there is a big difference between mood and
emotion. One of the most outstanding defences is that while emotions have known causes
and last for a shorter duration, the moods have no known causes and last quite longer
than emotions (Pardey, 2016). Meaning, unlike emotion, a change in mood can have a
long-lasting impact on an individual.
B) Personally, I am just like any other human being who experiences changes in mod and
emotion. I can remember several occasions when I have experienced them in the
workplace. I have experienced the negative emotions of sadness, anger, and fear. I have
also experienced the positive emotions of trust and joy (Northouse, 2018). At the same
time, I have also experienced different changes in mood that include calm, cheerful,
amusement, and disappointment.
C) All these have been caused by the pleasant and unpleasant experiences I have had in the
workplace. For example, annoyance by the colleagues made me to have negative moods
and emotions (Mayer, Caruso & Salovey, 2016). On the other hand, I was happy,
confident, fulfilled, and content on the days I was appreciated, promoted, and given
salary increment.

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 4
D) The changes in my mood and emotions had direct impacts on my work. The positive
changes in mood and emotion changed me for better because I felt motivated, inspired,
contented, and fulfilled. For example, promotion not only made me happy, but boosted
my morale to continue serving my boss loyally. On the other hand, negative changes in
mood and emotion interfered with my performance. They made me to be discouraged,
demotivated, and unhappy (Petrides, et al., 2016). The end result I that my performance
deteriorated.
Concluding Analysis
I would like to begin this analysis by expressing my satisfaction with this course. Indeed,
this is one of the most informative courses in which I have learnt lots of useful information on
management and leadership. One of the most outstanding lessons that I learnt is that leadership is
not a simple task. It is a challenging endeavor that requires lots of dedication, commitments, and
sacrifices. I also learnt that for one to successful serve in a leadership position, one needs to
possess certain attributes. However, for this to happen, one must have a sound knowledge of
their leadership capabilities.
My participation in the Big 5 Personality Test was a life-changing experience. It made
me to learn a lot about personality and leadership. For example, during the 10-minute long test, I
got to know about the five fundamental traits that define a leader. These are Neuroticism (N),
Agreeableness (A), Extraversion (E), Consciousness (C), and Openness (O). When I took the
test, I realized that I have different traits. As clearly-illustrated in the above graph, I scored
highly in different area including Openness (87.5%), Consciousness (83%), Extraversion
(62.5%), Agreeableness (79%), and Neuroticism (40%). Each of these scores says a lot about me
as a leader. For example, my high scores in openness depict my image as a leader who creative

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 5
and can use his critical thoughts to confront real life challenges and come up with practical and
feasible solutions no matter how challenging the situation might be (Stajkovic, Bandura, Locke,
Lee & Sergent, 2018). For me succeed as a leader, hence, I need to nurture such traits because
they can make me to be an ideal leader who can be relied upon to lead a team and be able to
make rational decisions for the benefit of the organization.
Apart from learning about my leadership competencies, the exercise also accorded me an
opportunity to learn about the weaknesses that hinder me from serving as a good leader. From
the test, I scored dismally in the Extraversion (62.5%), and the Neuroticism (40%) categories.
For someone of my caliber, I should not entertain such scores. They are discouraging and destroy
my leadership potential. For example, low scores in extraversion demonstrate that I am an
introvert. Meaning, I prefer solitude, hates becoming the center of focus, thinks a lot before
uttering words, tend to be antisocial, and reluctant to initiate conversations (Anglim & Grant,
2016). The same applies to my low neuroticism scores which imply that I have some challenges
when it comes to emotional intelligence management. That justifies why I tend to experience
mod and emotional swings when interacting with my peers in the workplace (DuBrin, 2015).
These are weaknesses that I should not entertain because they cannot benefit me in any way
whatsoever.
In conclusion, this was a valuable exercise that gave me a platform to learn insightful
lessons on leadership and management. Initially, I was not aware of the main traits that define a
leader. Now, thanks to the exercise, I am aware that leadership capabilities are defined by the big
five traits which are Neuroticism (N), Agreeableness (A), Extraversion (E), Consciousness (C),
and Openness (O). The test made it possible for me to know my leadership strengths as well as
the weak areas in which I need to adjust for me to become a perfect leader.

MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP 6
References
Anglim, J., & Grant, S. (2016). Predicting psychological and subjective well-being from
personality: Incremental prediction from 30 facets over the Big 5. Journal of Happiness
studies, 17(1), 59-80.
DuBrin, A. J. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.
Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D. R., & Salovey, P. (2016). The ability model of emotional
intelligence: Principles and updates. Emotion Review, 8(4), 290-300.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Pardey, D. (2016). Introducing leadership. Routledge.
Petrides, K. V., Mikolajczak, M., Mavroveli, S., Sanchez-Ruiz, M. J., Furnham, A., & Pérez-
González, J. C. (2016). Developments in trait emotional intelligence research. Emotion Review,
8(4), 335-341.
Stajkovic, A. D., Bandura, A., Locke, E. A., Lee, D., & Sergent, K. (2018). Test of three
conceptual models of influence of the big five personality traits and self-efficacy on
academic performance: A meta-analytic path-analysis. Personality and Individual
Differences, 120, 238-245.