Linking Big 5 Personality Traits to Professional Success

This essay examines the correlation between the Big Five personality traits—extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism—and professional achievements. It highlights how these traits influence an individual's career trajectory, decision-making, and overall success in the workplace. The essay discusses how traits like conscientiousness are strong predictors of job performance, while others, such as extraversion, correlate with leadership potential. It also addresses how neuroticism can impact stress levels and health, ultimately affecting professional life. By analyzing these relationships, the essay concludes that understanding and leveraging one's personality traits is crucial for achieving professional goals. Desklib offers this essay along with a wealth of study resources, including past papers and solved assignments, to support students in their academic and professional pursuits.

Table of Contents
Executive Summary....................................................................................................................... iii
The Big 5 Personality Traits............................................................................................................ 1
Professional Achievements.............................................................................................................. 2
Relationships between Big 5 Traits and Professional Achievements..............................................3
Prediction in Job Performance......................................................................................................... 4
Conclusion....................................................................................................................................... 5
References....................................................................................................................................... 6
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Executive Summary
The Big Five personality traits are called extraversion, agreeableness, openness,
conscientiousness, and neuroticism (Lim, 2020). Each of these traits represents a continuum.
Every human has his own character that is distinguishable from one to one. The character is
simply sum of all the traits a person carries in himself. A person’s action, decision making is
influenced by various level of personal traits he carries. Hence, education, career and even
health of a person can be explained by these personal traits.
“Achievements are things that you have done has alasting impact for your company or client.
This is a result that one person personally brings about while fulfilling a particular role”
according to an article by International Hellenic University.
Usually these are things that a person has created, built, designed, sold or initiated. This is not
the responsibilities that come under a job description, as this description is going to be remain
fixed, does not matter who has been assigned for that specific job.
A person’s decision making, leading capability, actions is the steps that shape the way of his
professional achievements or success. So, professional career is also depended on the
volume, balance of these 5 personal traits. Ultimately, it can be said that a relation lies
between achievements of a person’s professional career and the big 5 personal traits.
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The Big 5 Personality Traits
The Big Five personality traits are called extraversion, agreeableness, openness,
conscientiousness, and neuroticism (Lim, 2020). These Big Five traits remain relatively
stable throughout most of the time of one’s life. They are influenced significantly by both
genes and the environment, with an estimated heritability of 50%. They are also known to
predict certain important life outcomes such as education and health.
Personality has seemed like an easy concept to many. Personality is what makes them unique
and differentiable from others. This is what explains a person, determining his habits,
decision making, way of thinking, way of doing something.
(The Big Five Personality Traits from PennState, by R. Gray, 2017)
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In the world of psychology research, personality is not a simple thing to argue with. The
definition, examples of psychology varies from research to research.
According to the researchers at the Personality Project, personality is described as “the
coherent pattern of effect, cognition, and desires (goals) as they lead to behavior” (Revelle,
2013).
Professional Achievements
Professional accomplishments are work achievements performed by a person in his career
that is both measurable. These professional achievements are unique to their experience as
well. Accomplishments of one professional’s career are not what is written in the job
description.
The duties and responsibilities mentioned in any job role are always the same. This is not an
achievement. Rather different than duties or responsibilities what a person or professional has
done that is measurable and unique is his accomplishments.
Actually, the duties and responsibilities are virtually the same for any employee in a similar
job role. For example, the territory manager role of a company has some specific duties. This
applies to all the territory manager of this company. Hence, it is not something that can
distinguish one territory manager from another.
In reality, a territory manager can distinguish himself from other territory managers of his
company by doing or achieving something that is not mentioned in the job description. It is
something that is unique and at the same time measurable as well.
For instance, a territory manager can actively work for his improvement. By improving
himself, his company gets better quality even if the company does not mention that specific
improvement. That manager can also do something unique that contributes to the productivity
of the company. That is how professional achievement is explained.
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Relationships between Big 5 Traits and Professional Achievements
As mentioned earlier, professional achievements are being measured, there lies a relationship
is lying between the big 5 traits and professional achievement. All the big 5 traits’ volume
can determine one’s personality.
On the other hand, these 5 traits determined different qualities that determine professional
achievements. If we talk about openness, if a person has a higher openness score, the person
is curious, which means he is open to learning something new all the time. He wants to
explore new things. He is also more likely to take an independent move in business. This type
of behavior is seen among very risk-taking successful entrepreneurs.
On the other hand, the opposite scoring person is more likely to be strict and is going to be
following the traditional approach in his career in different job roles.
Openness to experience has a positive relationship with individual proactivity but negatively
related to team efficiency as well (Neal et al., 2012).
For both of these cases, there is a good chance to accomplish professional achievements. As
these both has its advantage, indifferent sector both type of person will achieve something.
These two don’t indicate the whole success or failure thing.
Conscientiousness is the strongest trait among the 5 big traits to predict job performance
(John & Srivastava, 1999). A good score in conscientiousness indicates higher job
performance in one’s career. Hence, this trait score often referenced to predict a person’s
productivity in many places.
A leader is always a strong position holder in any organization. Extraversion volume
determines if a person is more likely to be a leader or a follower. That’s why the relation
between extraversion and leadership quality is quite strong. Prentice defined leadership as
“the accomplishment of a goal through the direction of human assistants” and a successful
leader as one who can understand people’s motivations and enlist employee participation in a
way that marries individual needs and interests to the group’s purpose (2004).
If an employee has this trait in a positive way, he is more likely to get a leadership position
sooner or later in his career. Nowadays, a good leader is a very vital role for any organization.
Organizations are looking for good leaders but the market has less option to offer. It is said
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that Extraversion is a predictor of leadership, as well as success in sales and management
positions (John & Srivastava, 1999).
Agreeableness and individual proactivity are related to inversely. Openness to experience has
a positive relationship with individual proactivity. On the other hand, it is negatively related
to team efficiency (Neal et al., 2012).
Neuroticism trait is a measure of an individual’s emotional stability and self-confidence.
Those who score better in neuroticism are more likely to be more easily upset and less
comfortable. On the other hand, those who score lower in neuroticism measure test usually
likes to be more secure and tempered. Neuroticism tends to leads to a higher level of stress
and worry. Hence, a person like this usually seems to be stressed out in his work life. They
tend to
Neuroticism is seen as a risk factor for many individual’s health problems. These health
problems include depression, schizophrenia, diabetes, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, and
heart disease (Lahey, 2009).
On the other hand, people with higher scores in neuroticism seems particularly vulnerable to
various mood disorders such as depression. Low agreeableness is linked to higher chances of
health problems as well (John & Srivastava, 1999).
Prediction in Job Performance
Conscientiousness is the strongest trait among the 5 big traits to predict job performance
(John & Srivastava, 1999). A good score in conscientiousness indicates higher job
performance in one’s career. Hence, this trait score often referenced to predict a person’s
productivity in many places.
However, the other 4 traits have been shown to explain more specific aspects of job
performance. For example, to predict better performance in jobs where teamwork is involved,
agreeableness and neuroticism can be handy and be very specific. These to explain the way of
work so that one can estimate the performance of an individual in teamwork.
On the other hand, agreeableness is related to individual proactivity inversely. Openness to
experience has a positive relationship with individual proactivity but negatively related to
team efficiency as well (Neal et al., 2012).
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This is to say agreeableness has affected individual proactivity in a negative way.
Extraversion is a predictor of leadership, as well as success in sales and management
positions (John & Srivastava, 1999).
Conclusion
Achievements can be accomplished practicing specific way in specific sector of life. Same
goes for the professional career. In order to get the taste of professional achievement traits are
essential. Specific trait score indicates specific way of thinking and performing an action.
All the 5 traits shape a person’s characteristic that ultimately leads to something. This
something can be successful or failure in professional life. That means, success or failure
depends on the ranking of different traits and its sum.
If all the traits are shaped according the goal, a professional will acquire achievements.
Inversely, a professional may not get his desired result by doing more than what a role just
demands generally from anyone. That’s how the relationship works between the big 5
personal traits and professional achievements.
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References
1. Lim, A (2020, June 15). The big five personality traits. Simply Psychology.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html.
2. How to write Achievements in your CV. (n.d.). Retrieved from
http://ecs.ihu.edu.gr/co/employment-cvcletter/how-write-achievements-your-cv
3. Revelle, W. (2013). Personality theory and research. Personality Project. Retrieved from
https://www.personality-project.org/index.html
4. Gray, R. (2017). Big Five Personality Traits. Retrieved from
https://sites.psu.edu/leadership/2017/09/02/the-importance-of-personality-trait-screening-
for-todays-organizations-application-of-the-five-factor-model-ffm/.
5. John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big-Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement,
and theoretical perspectives. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of
personality: Theory and research (Vol. 2, pp. 102–138). New York: Guilford Press.
6. Neal, A., Yeo, G., Koy, A., & Xiao, T. (2012). Predicting the form and direction of work
role performance from the Big 5 model of personality traits. Journal of Organizational
Behavior, 33(2), 175–192. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.742
7. Prentice, W. (2014, August 01). Understanding Leadership. Retrieved from
https://hbr.org/2004/01/understanding-leadership
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