Week 10 - Personality

Week 10 – Personality

Nature vs Nurture -

Personalities are something that everyone has, and everyone’s personality is different. There are two approaches to personality, one suggests that we are born with certain personality traits (nature) and one suggests that we our personality reflects on how we are raised (nurture). Many studies and researches have been carried out on this topic and opinion is still strongly divided. To expand, nature is in your genes. Some believe that personality traits are determined by your genes, and that they will stay the same irrespective of where you were born or raised. The nurture argument refers to your childhood and how you were bought up. Some believe that if you were happy as a kid and well looked after, then the likelihood of you having a better personality than someone who was abused or neglected is more likely. 

Nomothetic and Idiographic –

There are two different views as to whether all traits exist in all people –

Idiographic suggests that everyone has unique personality structures and that some traits are only found in one person, this would mean that it’s impossible to compare one person to others. The idiographic approach also suggests that traits found in people differ for person to person. This approach to personality traits uses case studies, bibliographical info and diaries etc.

The nomothetic approach looks at comparability among individuals but also focuses on people as unique in regards to their different combination of traits. This approach states that traits have the same meaning to everyone, but that trait can differ in people and some can have more of one trait than others. This is how people are unique. This approach uses personality questionnaires and factor analysis etc.

My view on the nature vs nurture debate is that I do believe people are born with certain traits that are in their genes that have been passed down from their parents. However everyone can change and learn to develop their personality traits and thus wean out undesirable traits and work on more desirable traits. This could be done through there upbringing or even when they move out and start to work and live in different environments. 

I carried out a personality report in order to determine my strong and weak points of my personality. The results are as follows –

SHL Great 8 Competency areas
	1	2	3	4	5
Leading and Deciding
Supporting and Cooperating
Interacting and Presenting
Analysing and Interpreting
Creating and Conceptualising
Organising and Executing
Adapting and Coping
Enterprising and Performing

The results have clearly outlined two strong areas, leading and deciding and interacting and presenting. I have also scored poorly in three areas (Supporting and cooperating, organising and executing, enterprising and performing). And I scored moderately in three areas as well (highlighted in yellow on the table). I will now analyse my strong points and weak points.

Strong points -

Leading and deciding - I scored a 4 for this category which would mean that I am able to make difficult decisions and take responsibility for them. This type of personality trait could be associated with leadership and management.

Interacting and Presenting - Scoring highly in this trait means that I could be suited to a sales role, I can make good first impressions, I'm confident, convincing and have good presentation skills. Interacting with others is no problem for me and I can build relationship and appropriately deal with and disagreements or conflict.



Weak Points -

Supporting and cooperating - I think I scored lowly in this trait because I'm not the best at responding to peoples problems, if an employee came to me with a non-work related problem I would struggle to deal with it, I need to work on this trait if I want to be able to work well in a team. I could do this by being more patient with people that have problems.

Organising and executing - I scored lowly in this category because I tend to be quite unorganised, I occasionally miss deadlines due to either forgetting about them or getting distracted and carrying out other tasks instead of the important ones. I will need to improve in this category by getting more organised, I have already done so by inputting all important dates and events into my phone and setting reminders to make sure I don't forget about these important tasks. 


Enterprising and Performing - I know I scored badly in this category because I don't always perform to the best of my ability, occasionnaly I just get the task done so it's out of the way as opposed to doing my best at it. I need to motivate myself more, next year on my business studies course counts towards my final grade, so this will definitely be motivation for me to succeed and get a good grade by handing in assignments on time.

Conclusion - This blog has looked at personality in relatively great detail, from the nature to nurture discussion in which I believe both theories work together in conjunction to create someones personality, from both their genes and past experiences. The personality test has also helped me to idenitfy my flaws and has made me aware of areas in which I need to improve on.