The Big Five Personality Traits

The understanding of one’s personality type is of strategic importance with respect to identifying the perfect career, role at the workplace, how to relate with others and so forth. Personality entails a number of personal traits and characteristics that underline our uniqueness from others. One of the structured methods of determining personality types in psychology is the use of the Big Five Personality Traits criteria, which scientists believe can be effective in deconstructing one’s personality. It consists of five measures that include openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism (Myers & Dewall, 2016). While organizations have used this criteria to test in hiring and assigning roles, scores from such tests only indicate personality types and not levels of performance as no personality is better than the other. When I went through the test, my scores came back as follows: Openness to experience 50, Conscientiousness 44, Agreeableness 34, Neuroticism 30, and Extraversion 27.  In this paper, I reflect on these results for increased self-awareness as well as identification of strengths and weaknesses for change purposes.

There are several ways in which the above scores help me further self-awareness. First, it is accepted both scientifically and logically that self-knowledge is difficult to fully attain (Myers & Dewall, 2016). However, the above test results help to bridge this gap by offering mathematical values that can empirically be used to describe my personality. The information is quite reliable and can help me understand situations where I fit best within my current job as a coach and a fundraiser. The information also reinforces existing knowledge about my personality with a more comprehensive outlook. It covers areas I have not reflected on before such as emotional stability (neuroticism). Though I am fully aware of my slow temper, I did not have broad range knowledge of my emotional behavior as unearthed by the test. The neuroticism score meant that I not only had a good temperament but I am also self-conscious, worried less, and quite secure (Myers & Dewall, 2016). Therefore, the test not only offered reliable information on my personality but also envisaged the richness of data priory missing.

Consequently, there are strengths and weaknesses emerging from the test that can be capitalized for change. I demonstrated high scores in openness to experience and conscientiousness which are significant strengths. The former denotes that I am open to a variety of interests, original and imaginative, daring, and can fit in different contexts. This implies the possibility of job flexibility and other positive career possibilities such as travelling around the world. A high score on conscientiousness on its part suggests that I am a planner, hardworking, persevering, and energetic which means I can fit well in leadership positions (Kandler et al., 2014). I look forward to offering leadership at both my present position at work and in future leadership positions as I complete my course. The low score on extraversion, however, implies that I am relatively unsociable and have low energy which is undesirable of team builders, certain kinds of leaders, and even my work as a coach. I will need to find a way around my introverted nature to prevent it from hindering my delivery at the workplace.

It must be appreciated that personality types play a big role in understanding roles and furthering self-awareness. With the understanding of my various traits under the Big Five criteria, I look forward to building more self-knowledge and using the same to offer solutions while improving in areas of weakness. 

References

Kandler, C., Zimmermann, J., & McAdams, D. P. (2014). Core and surface characteristics for the description and theory of personality differences and development. European Journal of Personality, 28(3), 231-243.Myers, D. G. & Dewall, N. (2016). Exploring psychology. (10^th ed.) Macmillan