Intelligence And Personality In Achieving Work Success

Do Intelligence And Personality Explain Achievement In Work?

Intelligence refers to the ability of an individual to understand and simplify complex ideas, to obtain knowledge and learn from past events, make reasonable judgements and to overcome several life challenges through thinking (Legg & Hutter, 2007). Intelligence manifests itself in several ways in the human life span that includes ability to acquire knowledge and apply the same in reasoning logically, mental alertness as well as ability to make adjustments in new and challenging situations. Intelligence is based on emotion, growth and emotion, which are the main concepts that provide broader definition unlike in situations where individuals give partial explanations by failing to include these three basic concepts. Life experiences and past influences have a greater hand in the development of the intelligence, whereby, it is observed in in instances where individuals solves their future problems (Furnham, 2008).  

Personality refers to the individual’s behaviour and reactions to various situations that they encounter. The personality of a person dictates their behaviour, and current as well as the future relationship with other colleagues in the work place (Higgins et al. 2007). Team building is always one of the major personality results since it ensures the smooth running of the organization’s activities. Examples of the personality types include the social, action-oriented and supportive personalities among others.

Achievement in work place refers to the attainment of goals through mutual contributions of individuals. Every organization sets their own goals, and when these goals are met, the company employees view it as an achievement. Also, promotion of individual employees from one level to another within the organization, ability to come up with new ideas and learning new things are part of the achievements in work place. Not all the workers or employees value achievements. This variation in perspective of achievements forms the bases for the employee contribution at work. Those employees who value achievement will work hard to meet the goals set be recognized, while those who does not value will never mind, and their productivity will just be at average.

A collection of different personality types working in a common environment will ensure successful operation of an organisation. All of the members play critical roles necessary for the growth and development of the company. Social people create a conducive environment, where individuals express their ideas and complaints without fear, which is crucial for the development and general growth and performance of the organisation. The supportive people provide necessary assistance to the rest of the colleagues and are dependable. These individuals ensure that there are minimal conflicts that are detrimental to the progress. A collection of all these personalities will suppress their weaknesses and at the same time, capitalises on their strengths to provide quality services and achieve success. With good personality, there is good communication across the entire working force which will reduce confusion. Personality ensures that the workers respond positively when approached, and the director or the supervisors offer instructions through proper channels and in an appropriate manner. Choice of words during communication process with all the organization’s staff will ensure that there is efficiency, no victimization due to complaints raised by the employees, and that flow of valuable information necessary for growth. Personal tests improve the output of the employees which is seen in their ability to perform quality work. With human resource management and senior staff having a good personality, good employees will be assigned to departments and roles that suit them best.

Achievement

According Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the personality of an individual develops following series of stages that are usually influenced by internal psychological conflicts. It argues that the id, ego, and superego are the major parts that control the human behaviour. The unconscious psychological conflicts shape the behaviour, as well as the personality and the process undergoes five psychosexual stages. The ability of human beings to balance the three given structures will determine their personality (Hjelle, & Ziegler, 1992). How individual balance the “desires” of ego, id and superego determine the conflict resolution approaches they will possibly utilize. The “Id” structure will require an individual to take an immediate action without reasoning whether that action is right or wrong. This section is the most primitive part, and it is entirely unconscious. The “superego” takes care of the social morals and rules. It is the conscious part of the personality where the right or wrong balancing of decisions is made. The “ego” section is the rational part of the human personality, and is also less primitive. It balances the needs of both, the Id and superego since it has two characteristics, that is, partly unconscious and partly conscious.  The balance of these three characteristic traits will ensure mutual cooperation of individual since they have better understanding of each other. Interaction of people with good personalities enables them to share ideas and have a better understanding of individual’s contributions. The good interpersonal relationship created by all the members ensures effectiveness and smooth running of the operations of the work place. Also, this interaction builds teamwork, reducing clashes while working which is always the cause of inefficiency. This will eventually lead to achievements of the goals set by the organization.

Intelligent people are known to be creative and vibrant with a pool of ideas (Furnham, 2008). These individuals though, are known to be slow in delivering their conclusions. The reason to this is that they always want to produce quality ideas through a conceptual combination of thoughts. Their result ideas and findings are always noble and with lasting solutions to problems at hand. Intelligent individuals at work place provide combinations of ideas that suit the current process, enabling the management to spend less.  These creative individuals will help the organization or company to achieve success by offering quality products and services to clients. According to Triarchic theory, intelligence is the mental activity that seeks to shape and develop an individual to adapt the surrounding environment (Sternberg, 1997). He views the intelligence that humans possess as talents. According to his studies, intelligence is a composition of three factors:

Personality and Work

Experiential intelligence- this refers to the ability of an individual to solve problems by generating new ideas and solutions.

Creative intelligence- it is the ability and capacity of an individual to solve current problems utilizing the skills gained in the past as well as the current experiences.

Practical or the contextual intelligence- defines the ability of an individual to cope with the dynamics of the situations. Therefore, according to the Triarchic theory, intelligent individuals will be creative, problem solvers and with capacity to cope with the changing trends of the current technology. Therefore it can be concluded that intelligence dictates performance of the employees in the work place.

A healthy diet contributes to intelligence in human, and specifically the nutrient lutein (Van Hooren et al. 2007). The nutrients improve the one’s ability to utilise the acquired knowledge and skills. With the ageing individuals, one may tend to forget what happened in their lives previously, and therefore dealing with the current challenges or problems similar to what had happened may seem difficult. Keeping healthy through eating food rich in nutrients will boost and preserve the crystallized intelligence in individuals. The accumulation of lutein nutrient in the grey matter of an individual ensures that there is a healthy brain function during the entire life span, despite the old age. According to Gottfredson & Deary (2004), there exists a direct relationship between the amount of accumulation of the grey matter and the crystallized intelligence. Healthy diet makes individuals to keep this crystallized intelligence which helps boost the performance of an individual at work place, which directly corresponds to performance.

Contrary to the above arguments, that personality and intelligence define achievement in the work place, both of these traits may not exactly define achievement due to the fact that;

Personality is affected by several factors that include culture, environment, adaptations, and evolution characteristics among others which will contribute to changes or stability of personality. The productivity of the individuals is not directly dependent on their personality or personalities of the rest of the staff members. Maturity, and better organization of employees will bring success. Temperament, a major constituent and contributor to personality observed at early childhood can also be observed at the later age of over 20 years (Wilks, 2009). Consistency is observed which proves that there exist some links, thus the presence of stability in personality traits throughout the lifespan of an individual. Personality is largely linked to traits other than the environmental factors that may cause influence to personality. The stability nature of the personality will mean that individuals will always remain with similar characteristics and nature, which is not conducive for the development and growth of the organization. Individuals should instead, be flexible to the changes in the internal and external environment for them to make achievements. Therefore, personality may contribute less to the achievements in work place.

Intelligence and Work

Also, Intelligence changes with time (age). According to (Wicherts et al. 2004), the intelligence of a person increases steadily for the first 20 years, which is the peak, before falling for the entire lifetime. This is the fluid intelligence which is associated with one’s ability to recall past events and thinking as well as responding quickly. If this theory holds, then intelligence will not directly represent achievement in work, since most of the individuals working will have a falling graph of intelligence growth. The statement places other factors, apart from intelligence as contributors to achievements.

Conclusion

Personality and intelligence boost the overall performance in the work place, which will mean better achievements. The manner in which a person generates ideas, and putting them into action will depend on their level of intelligence. Personality, on the other hand, dictates how the individual will relate with other participants in the organization. The individuals with good personality will collaborate with others and always shares ideas with the rest of the members. Emotional intelligence has a greater impact on how the personality of an individual will be reflected. Personality has always been regarded as an inborn; the emotional intelligence helps individuals in recognising their behaviours, and to be able to manage them with regards to various situations. The social personality will ensure that there is a good interpersonal relationship, while intelligence, on the other hand, ensures that individuals display good morals and behaviour that will ensure high productivity in work place. This will result to proper work-flow that will ensure complex task completion on time with minimum disruption.

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