Case Incident 1

THE NICE TRAP

I. Background

Research shows that one downside of agreeableness is that agreeable people tend to have lower levels of career success. Agreeable people tend to perform less on their jobs compared to the more aggressive and goal oriented disagreeable employees. Agreeable employees earn less money, and are less aggressive in negotiating starting salaries. Yet there is clear evidence that agreeableness is something the employers value. Employers want agreeable employees even if they are not better job performers compared to disagreeable employees for the reason that agreeable employees are more pleasant to be around.

II. Study/Analysis

Study Questions:

1. Do you think there is a contradiction between what employers want in employees (agreeable employees) and what employees actually do best (disagreeable employees)? Why or why not?

According to studies agreeable or nice employees are less competitive than disagreeable employees. Disagreeable employees tend to perform best in their jobs and delivers quality outputs. Yet according to Thaler & Koval (2006), employers tend to consider agreeableness as one of the criteria for hiring employees. Employers tend to value nice employees over the more focus and goal oriented non agreeable employees.

Based on the assumptions stated above there is a slight contradiction between what the employers want from their employees against what their employees can do. For employers there is a need for them to hire as much as possible the best of the best employees in order for them to deliver quality services to their clientele. But yet that’s not the case of what’s really happening in terms hiring new employees because some employers tend to hire the more likeable applicants even if their performance are not that good compared to the non likeable applicants.

According to Forbes, new research shows that 88% or majority of employers are looking for a cultural fits over skills when they hire, so they favored more on agreeable employees because they provide cooperative working environment to better communication.

For employers non disagreeable employees may have far better ideas and have the nerves to push and insist them, yet sometimes this could be a threat to them because this could create a non harmonious relationship in the workplace. Non agreeable employees tend to be more focus and engage with their work but they are cold, aggressive and reserve compared to the more flexible, pleasant, warm, tolerant and agreeable employees.

2. Often, the effects of personality depend on the situation. Can you think of some job situations in which agreeableness is an important virtue? And in which it is harmful?

In every organization it is important that all its members must possess likeable qualities. It helps the organization in handling important decisions. On which in every decision making, a good communication among members and team work could yield a productive outcome.

There are some jobs requires agreeable qualities. These jobs are the following;

Social workers

Nurses and Doctors

Primary school teachers

Customer service assistants

These jobs require friendly approaches and nice personalities, because it deals with providing services to the public.

According to Ruparelia (2011), there are jobs that only the nice can accomplish, because smart, talented, hard working people often don’t get the breaks, simply because they don’t got the likeable factor.

“Regardless of how talented you are, how smart you are and how committed you are, if I don’t like you, theres a good

chance that: I won’t buy from you, I won’t refer you, I won’t hire you, I won’t promote you” Ruparelia added.

There are also some times that being too agreeable is not good. It is when the nature of the job is too harmful and competitive in which the situation is that to kill or to be killed, to eat or to be eaten. These are the jobs that need concrete and firm decisions. Examples of these are;

applying for a job as a sales person working to earn the highest return on a seldom sold luxury items

the head of a public organization or a labor union negotiating with the government leader

the head of a military unit task to capture insurgent in order to maintain peace

These are the kind of jobs on which you are not allowed to show your weaknesses, because showing your weaknesses means failure.

3. In some research we’ve conducted, we’ve found that the negative effects of agreeableness on earnings is stronger for men than for women (that is, being agreeable hurt men’s earnings more than women’s). Why do you think this might be the case?

There’s a difference how men is perceived between women. Men are known to be strong, naturally born leaders and head of the society. Hence men need to maintain the degree of masculinity in order to gain the respect of the society. That’s the reason why men tend to be more disagreeable that women.

While women are being more communicative and social than men and the society perceived women as more agreeable than men. Agreeableness may be looked as a feminine feature thus a man tend to show more agreeable traits may perceived by others as feminizations and it decreases the degree of being a man.

So if a man land into a low paying job because of too much kindness it shows that that the degree of his masculinity is in questioned. That’s how the society sees it, because for them men should earn more than

women. And men should hold more power than women. This only shows the degree of being agreeable really hurts men because of the misconception and judgments of the society.

III.References

http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/04/top-five-personality-traits-employers-hire-most/

http://www.careerealism.com/power-nice-kindness-leadership-trait/

http://www.careerhubblog.com/main/2011/02/the-likeability-factor-5-traits-of-likeable-people.html