Four Personality Types in the Workplace

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Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to examine and analyze four of the main personality profile types, compare competing or complementary personalities, make recommendations concerning alterations in management styles, adoptions of certain beneficial personality characteristics and institutional policies to create and follow. The four personalities that will be examined are as follows: Machiavellianism, Narcissistic, Proactive and Self-Monitoring. Each personality has its own section devoted to a thorough examination of its makeup. This makeup consists of definitional meanings, characteristics, intrapersonal relationships responses, and actions common to the specific personality. This is followed by the aforementioned organizational recommendations to take advantage of the benefits to each personality and mitigate the damage each negative effect could have on productivity or organizational citizenship.

Machiavellianism

        Machiavellianism (Mach) is named after Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolo Machiavelli (Robbins and Judge 2015). It is described as the degree to which an individual is pragmatic, maintains emotional distance and believes that ends can justify means. Machiavellianism is one of the three traits that make up the Dark Triad, due to its negative nature and negative personality traits.

Traits and Characteristics of Machiavellian Leaders

Machiavellian leaders have several different traits and characteristics that definitively separate them from other types of leadership styles. These include being duplicitous, cunning and even narcissistic (8 Characteristics, 2013). They are deceitful with their words and actions, often using the craftiness techniques of willingness and trickery. Many of their actions are part of one big game they are playing. This includes actions in the workplace, to their careers and goals to various interactions or situations these leaders come in contact with.  Much of their behaviors are part of colossal master plans to manipulate employees to either gain power or maintain power and influence.

        Machiavellian leaders excel in manipulation and control. If an employee is not doing what the leader wants, they will be doing it soon somehow. They know the right buttons to push and push until the employee eventually gives in. Sometimes, it happens so fast, the employee does not even know why or how they agreed. The employee starts to feel a little self-doubt and worthlessness about themselves because they make them feel that their skills, thoughts and abilities are only used to make the manager happy and successful.

Machiavellian leaders focus on themselves and how outcomes affect them. They are focused on what sort of advantages they will get out of a situation, hence why they never reveal the whole or actual reason why they are doing something.

High and Low Mach Scale Comparisons

Christie and Geis (1970) developed a series of instruments called Mach scales to measure a person's level of Machiavellianism. The scale measures how much deceit and manipulation someone will approve and condone in order to achieve an end goal. The continuum measures from being highly manipulative to being highly submissive. It ranges the Machiavellian personality trait from High Mach to Low Mach.

High Mach’s are leaders who are thought to be profoundly manipulative and not easily convinced (Hartnell 2016). In most cases, they do convince others more than low Mach’s. High Mach’s are inclined to win more often and are greatly effective at obtaining goals. Leaders with a high Mach personality tend to be calm, unattached, calculated and look for ways to exploit loose vulnerable and defenseless people. High Mach’s excel in face-to-face settings where there are given no rules or any procedure to follow and when the outcome they are trying to achieve has nothing to do with the emotions or lack of, they show. Keeping this in mind, high Mach’s will work best in a professional where they are rewarded for their 'do whatever it takes' state of mind, such as sales or jobs that offer commission for outcomes. These characteristics as well as their tendency to gain control in group situations suggest a potential to perform effectively as leaders in task oriented groups.

        Low Mach’s are on the complete opposite side of the Mach spectrum and are distinguished as being highly submissive. (Drory, 1980). Those individual people with a low Mach orientation are eager to accept direction given to them and thrive in highly organized situations. While high Mach’s are motivated my status, power, competition and even money, low Mach’s are not stimulated by any of these rewards. Winning isn't everything for low Mach’s. Their ethical standards they set for themselves are set way higher than their high Mach companion. A few other qualities and characteristics low Mach’s possess include being powerless to others opinions, appearing unreasonable in negotiations, believing others ought to act in certain ways and making gross consumptions about content (Franklin, 2016).

High Mach leaders have demonstrated to have a wider range of appropriate practices than the low Mach leaders. However, the high Mach leaders are found to be consistently less worried about their group members' feelings and emotions. Therefore, we can question if whether high Mach’s would be able to address employee needs when the circumstances arise (Leow & Belschak, 2011).

Few studies have investigated the association between Machiavellianism and destructive leader behaviors. However, one thing we can do is look to the General Aggression Model (GAM; Anderson & Bushman, 2002) as a frame of reference to clarify the direct correlation between Machiavellianism and abusive supervision. The GAM model states that certain traits make leaders have aggressive behavior and aggressive thoughts (Anderson & Bushman, 2002). Machiavellianism leaders purposely increase the accessibility to aggressive thoughts and behavior making them conduct more hostility toward others.

J.J. Dahling et al. 2009, found that individuals high in Machiavellianism are more prone to participate in counterproductive work behaviors, which includes unsafe interpersonal acts connected to abuse (Kiazad, Restubog, Zagenczyk & Tang, 2010) Machiavellianism has been linked to workplace bullying, school bullying and to intimidating their employee (Rayner & Hoel 1997).  Supervisors with higher levels of Machiavellianism to be more likely to behave in situations that their employees interpret as and will report as abusive.

Positive and Negative Aspects of Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism can be each positive and negative in organizations depending on how it is used. When Machiavellianism is selected to develop workplace effectiveness by providing much needed direction to employees to accomplish complex goals, it is a positive attribute. Once Machiavellianism is used for private gain at the expense of employees, it is extremely negative.

Machiavellianism is closely related to and is frequently compared to another leadership characteristic; the style of self-monitoring. According to Ickes, Reidhead and Patterson (1986), one would believe that a positive correlation between self-monitoring and Machiavellianism would exist because both involve the use of impression management. However, Ickes et al., was unable to find a relation between these leadership styles and Ickes recorded only a low positive correlation between the Mach Scale and Snyder's Self-Monitoring scale (Fehr, Samsom & Paulhus, 1992).