Personality: How to reshape employees’ traits?

People often think that character depends on selection and ability depends on cultivation. The second half of the sentence is certainly true, but can character really only be determined by selection? Can we develop character in our employees?

My tutor is a major expert in the field of personality research in China. He once surveyed a graduating class of college students and found a very interesting phenomenon. Before graduation, students from Guangzhou scored higher on the openness test in personality tests than students from Harbin. This is easy to understand. After all, the Pearl River Delta is more international.

Continue to follow up the investigation. Some students from Guangzhou went to work in a state-owned enterprise, and some students from Harbin went to work at Microsoft. Note that this was more than ten years ago, and Microsoft was a very strong foreign company. After one year of work, the students were measured again and found that the openness scores of Harbin students exceeded those of Guangzhou students by a lot.

There is much similar evidence. Our personality is not determined when we reach adulthood. The impact of our first job may be greater than the impact of our family of origin, place of origin, and regional culture.

The latest research in organizational behavior found that human personality is like a river. After adulthood, although the width will not change much. However, the direction of the river changes. Regarding a specific personality, your tendencies are changing.

Back to the original question. If personality changes, can companies reshape employees' personalities through training? Can you find the key factor and use it as a starting point?

Let me introduce to you an important behavioral theory called situation theory. It was proposed by British cognitive scientist Walter Mischel. The phenomenon of "delayed gratification" that we are familiar with was proposed by Michel.

We often say that growth will affect a person's personality, but this is not specific. What inspires your character? Michelle said it was the situation. Situation is not general life or work, it is the interaction between specific actions and the environment.

For example, if you work as an air traffic controller at an airport, your sense of responsibility will increase. But air traffic control is not a situation; paying attention to details is a situation. At the Capital Airport, a flight arrives and departs every 45 seconds. What really increases your sense of responsibility is keeping an eye on the radar screen and the runway, for fear that you might miss details and cause a plane collision.

For another example, telephone customer service is not a situation, but dealing with customer anger is a situation, which will make you more easy-going; being a writer is not a situation, but dealing with a deadline for manuscript submission is a situation, which will make you more Not easily nervous, etc. Companies can use the work situation as a starting point.

But this is not enough. Enterprises cannot wait for it to happen naturally, but must speed up the process. This is the purpose of employee training. Can it be done?

Let me introduce to you a concept called "situational intensity", which is the focus of today's lecture. It refers to the extent to which the norms or standards of the situation dominate our behavior. Why is “situation intensity” important? I will introduce it to you in detail with an experiment.

We all know that the military is a melting pot of individual personalities. Serving for a long time or going to the battlefield will change a person's personality. But in 2012, Jackson, a behavioral scientist at the University of Washington, conducted an experiment jointly with the German Ministry of Defense. They spent 6 years measuring the changes in the personality of conscripts and found that the process of the army reshaping the personality of soldiers is much simpler than we thought, and it does not take too long at all.

How does the army build soldiers? Let's take a look. Jackson picked Germany for a reason. First, German conscripts only served for nine months. One more thing, this is in line with the scope of our investigation. After all, 9 months is not a long time for the company.

The second point is more important. German soldiers are divided into professional soldiers and compulsory soldiers. Professional soldiers go into battle, while conscripts are a bit like military training and do not participate in combat missions. This is particularly critical as it insulates the individual from the effects of combat trauma.

The experiment adopted the internationally recognized Big Five personality model, which is defined by the five elements of responsibility, emotional stability, agreeableness, openness, and extroversion. Personality.

The experiment was conducted three times, before joining the army, after retirement, and four years later, when entering the labor market. It was found that although 9 months was short, the soldiers' agreeableness still changed significantly, and it was not temporary and still existed 4 years later. In layman's terms, they become more aggressive.

This change is unusual. Conscripts only serve for nine months, and the army does not assign them combat positions. Jackson observed that they only performed some very basic duties, including standing guard, guarding telephones, etc., and were not exposed to any bloody or cruel scenes at all.

So what makes them more aggressive? Jackson said the only thing that matters is tactical training, such as shooting and assassination subjects. This type of training is very basic and simple, but it plays a key role in character building. Why? Because its situational intensity is extremely high.

Situation intensity theory is the latest development in the field of personality research. The first factor that forces an individual's personality to change is not the complexity of the situation or its duration, but its intensity.

We use four aspects to summarize: clarity, consistency, binding, and severity.

See how the military uses the simplest training to create high-intensity situations.

Jackson found that every command given by the instructor was extremely clear. For example, when you face a simulated enemy, usually a sandbag, the instructor will not talk about it, but will only say one word: stab. Or to be more specific: a stab in the heart. There are many similar examples. Shooting, climbing over obstacles, throwing grenades, the requirements for all offensive tasks are very clear, even down to the movement of a finger.

Soldiers’ tactical training has very consistent character requirements, and there is nothing that requires you to be pity or easy-going. This even exceeds that of a real battlefield, where there will also be situations where wounded soldiers are treated and the masses are protected.

In military training, not only wrong behavior can lead to danger, but rewards and punishments are also very clear. If you don't follow the order, you will be imprisoned immediately, which is very serious.

Jackson pointed out that we often think that what changes the character of soldiers is bloody storms. In fact, this is not necessarily the case. It is likely to be simple military training, but please note that the intensity of the situation is extremely high. This paper was later published in the top academic journal "Psychological Science" in the United States. Jackson gave it a very interesting name, "It is the man who creates the army, or the army who creates the man."

After talking about this experiment, let’s look at why the first job is so important? This is largely because first jobs are often situationally intense and leave individuals with low options. So what does this mean for managers?

Many people think that we should select the personality of employees and then develop their abilities. In fact, both ability and character can be cultivated, and it doesn’t take long. You can take some unnecessary costs out of the recruitment process and use them in training.

How to do it specifically? First of all, you can break down employees' tasks and find situations that are highly related to personality. There is a term for this, called task personification. Then, you can work on clarity, consistency, restraint, and severity to create strong situations to help him improve his personality.

For example, when you find that a person is not innovative enough, you can ask him: While others think of one plan, you have to think of three, and include them in the assessment.

In 2011, I collaborated on a project with a supermarket. They found that cashiers were not very friendly. At that time, we listed all the conflict situations that a cashier might encounter, and then developed unified and simple response rules. For example, there is a rule that no matter what you do, you must keep smiling. Then all specifications are included in the assessment. Within half a year, the improvement was very obvious.

Well, having said all that, let’s go back to our starting point. Characters are not static. Only when you realize that these lowest-level, seemingly unchanging things are complex can you realize the complexity of management.

1) Even as an adult, his personality can change;

2) The key to changing personality is the intensity of the situation;

3) Enterprise If you want to improve employee personality, you can start from the four dimensions of situation intensity: clarity, consistency, restraint, and severity.

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