Reflection 3: Big 5 Trait Theory

After working for a month in my internship at O’Neill and Associates, I have had the opportunity to get to know my supervisors better, which has allowed me to observe how their personality traits influence their leadership styles. These observations have reminded me of the “Big 5” trait theory that we learned about in Theories and Models. In this post, I will evaluate my direct boss, Jen, using the Big 5 trait approach. 

Jen is very high in extroversion. In both our team meetings and meetings with clients, she is often the person who is in charge of leading the meeting, so she is obviously a skilled public speaker. She tends to direct the conversation in most meetings that I have been in with her, although not in an overly controlling way. 

Jen is fairly high in agreeableness. She is always willing to help me if I run into any problems while completing an assignment and responds very quickly when I have questions. From what I have observed, she gets along very well with people both on our team and in the company as a whole. She is also very accomodating of commitments outside of work and respectful of people’s time. 

Jen is very high in conscientiousness. She was an intern at O’Neill and Associates when she was in college, and so is very understanding of what it is like to be an intern and not entirely understand how things work, and conscious of the fact that working remotely has made it more difficult to learn the ropes of the organization. She has created a spreadsheet that contains all of the tasks that currently need to be done for various projects, and the spreadsheet is color-coded based on the urgency of the task, which I think demonstrates both her strong organizational skills and commitment to her work. 

Jen is low in nueroticism. She does not act anxious or impulsive. Although she is very organized and clear about what needs to get done, she does not behave in a controlling manner and trusts others to get their tasks done in the way they see fit. 

Lastly, Jen is very high in openness. Her primary role is to help clients navigate the bureaucracy and unpredictable nature of the government, so she must be very comfortable working with uncertainty. In the month that I have been working with her, there have been several occasions where she has had to change her plan or adjust her goals based on circumstances beyond her control, and each time she has adapted very well to these changes.