Reference no: EM132205124
Review the “Building Managerial Skills”
Exercise Overview Interpersonal skills refer to the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate individuals and groups. Implicit in this definition is the notion that a manager should try to understand important characteristics of others, including their personalities. This exercise will give you insights into both the importance of personality in the workplace and some of the difficulties associated with assessing personality traits.
Exercise Background You will first try to determine which personality traits are most relevant for different jobs. You will then write a series of questions that you think may help assess or measure those traits in prospective employees. First, read each of the following job descriptions:
Sales representative: This position involves calling on existing customers to ensure that they are happy with the firm’s products. It also requires the sales representative to work to get customers to increase the quantity of your products they are buying, as well as to attract new customers. A sales representative must be aggressive but not pushy.
Office manager: The office manager oversees the work of a staff of 20 secretaries, receptionists, and clerks. The manager hires them, trains them, evaluates their performance, and sets their pay. The manager also schedules working hours and, when necessary, disciplines or fires workers.
Warehouse worker: Warehouse workers unload trucks and carry shipments to shelves for storage. They also pull customer orders from shelves and take products for packing. The job requires workers to follow orders precisely and has little room for autonomy or interaction with others during work.
Exercise Task Working alone, identify a single personality trait that you think is especially important for a person to be able to effectively perform each of these three jobs. Next, write five questions that, when answered by a job applicant, will help you assess how that applicant scores on that particular trait. These questions should be of the type that can be answered on a five-point scale (for example, strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree, strongly disagree).
Exchange questions with a classmate. Pretend you are a job applicant. Provide honest and truthful answers to each question. Discuss the traits each of you identified for each position. How well you think your classmate’s questions actually measure those traits?
Conclude by addressing the following questions:
How easy is it to measure personality?
How important do you believe it is for organizations to consider personality in hiring decisions?
Do perception and attitudes affect how people answer personality questions?
is to (first) select one of the three jobs and then identify a single personality trait that is critical for a person to effectively perform that job. Next, develop five three (3) questions for the applicant that will help you assess that particular trait for each applicant. The questions must be of the type that can be assessed by a Likert Scale (usually strongly agree, agree, neither, disagree, strongly disagree). Your classmates will comment on the questions you have created for your trait and we will all discover how easy – or not – it is to assess personality.