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Employees
Who Can't Get No Satisfaction
It
is not real work unless you'd rather be doing something else.
J.M.
Barrie
My
husband has a friend who finds fault with every woman he dates.
He calls us up with stars in his eyes and announces he's found
Ms. Perfect. Six months later, the litany of complaints start;
she's divorced, she has children, she's too used to being single.
She's too possessive or she's not emotionally available. And the
20-year pattern starts again.
Apparently,
some people have the same attitude towards work. After struggling
for decades to understand job satisfaction, researchers have discovered
what human resource professionals have long known; some employees
will be unhappy with their job no matter what. What they've discovered
is that four personality traits - emotional stability, locus of
control, self-esteem, and self-efficacy - relate to both job satisfaction
and performance. Employees who are emotionally stable, have high
self-esteem, have high self-efficacy, and an internal locus of
control will be more satisfied with, and perform better at, their
jobs than employees without these traits.
This
isn't to say that job characteristics aren't important. Factors
such as pay, work relationships, and opportunities for advancement
are critical in keeping motivated employees motivated. But this
finding also implies that there are certain employees who are
predisposed to job dissatisfaction (and to giving their managers'
headaches), and interviewers who know how to screen them out during
the job interview will save their company time and money.
So
how do you figure out in a 30 minute interview whose got a the
right stuff to be happy at work? Let's look at each of these four
personality characteristics and clues interviewers can gather
to tease them out before they're hired.
Self-Efficacy:
Your Confidence is Highly Overrated
Self-efficacy
and confidence are often confused. Unlike self-efficacy, confidence
refers to the strength of a belief but does not necessarily specify
what the certainty is about. For example, I can be supremely confident
that I will fail a test. Self-efficacy, on the other hand, refers
to the belief that a person can perform at a certain level; in
other words, self-efficacy means a person's self-perceptions of
his or her competence.
But
doesn't the interview situation itself encourage a person to exaggerate
his or her self-efficacy? Certainly, asking a candidate "how confident
are you that you can perform the job for which you are interviewing"
is not likely to engender an honest response. However, questions
that elicit beliefs about the specific tasks the person will be
engaging in on the job are much more likely to shed insight into
the person's self-efficacy. This is particularly true if the questions
are followed up with role-playing scenarios that actually force
the candidate to put those beliefs into practice.
Practical
application: Conduct skills analyses on all your positions
and ask for specific examples that reflect those skills. For example,
if you are interviewing someone who will be working on a team,
ask for stories about past experiences working in a team, question
the person about how well s/he handles interpersonal conflict,
and then have the candidate do a role-play to see how s/he performs.
The more specific you can be about the necessary skills, the more
accurately you can assess the job-candidate's work-related self-efficacy.
Locus
of Control: Who's to Blame?
A person's
locus of control is basically the explanation s/he gives him or
herself for what happens in his or her life. Someone with an external
locus of control sees fate, chance, luck or other outside events
as responsible for his or her life circumstances, while a person
with an internal locus of control takes responsibility for what
befalls him or her. Obviously, in a work situation, a person with
an internal locus of control, i.e., a person who believes s/he
can have some impact on the quality of his or her job, is likely
to be more satisfied than someone who feels at the mercy of his
or her boss, workload, or schedule.
Practical
application: When interviewing a candidate, listen for the
explanations s/he gives for past job experiences - both positive
and negative. Does s/he take responsibility for mistakes? Does
he or she take credit for success? You want an employee who does
both.
Predicting
the Highs and the Lows
Self-esteem
is probably the most popular buzzword in popular psychology. In
a nutshell, it is composed of two factors - how much we value
ourselves, our self-worth, and how much competent we think we
are. Not surprisingly, it impacts virtually everything we do,
what we believe, and how we feel. In particular, our self-esteem
impacts how we relate to others. When our self-esteem is high,
we are able to set appropriate limits and boundaries with others,
to hear feedback without feeling threatened, and to respect and
value differences. If our self-esteem is low, we feel vulnerable
and are likely to either aggressively protect ourselves (alienating
others in the process) or feel victimized and powerless. Neither
of these, of course, bodes well for a happy job.
Practical
application: Clues to self-esteem are often found in how candidates
have responded to new and/or challenging work situations in the
past. For example, ask for past experiences with negative feedback
or criticism from a boss or coworker; how did s/he respond? Did
the candidate quickly dismiss it, think about it for days on end,
or was s/he able to listen and evaluate it objectively? How has
the candidate handled his or her mistakes? Someone else's? The
key is to look for a candidate who takes responsibility of his
or her actions and feelings without trying to control others,
is open to feedback but can't be easily manipulated by others,
and sets appropriate limits without feeling guilty or taking advantage
of others.
Emotional
Stability: Is Your Candidate Grounded?
We
all have our emotional ups and downs. Our ability to manage our
moods in the face of everyday stresses is one of the secrets to
job satisfaction. Emotional stability is the ability to handle
pressure and stress, to consistently carry out responsibilities,
and self-discipline. Sounds like a great employee - now how do
you find him or her?
Practical
applications: Emotionally stable employees are able to maintain
a problem-solving attitude when dealing with a wide range of stressful
work conditions. Ask your candidate about past experiences with
stressful work conditions including interpersonal conflict, time
pressures, unrealistic deadlines, and/or an inept boss. How does
your candidate describe these situations? How did s/he cope with
the increase in stress? Know the stressors inherent in the position
your candidate is interviewing for, and look for a candidate who
has handled these successfully in the past.
In
closing, while there's no surefire way to hire a happy employee,
there are clues in the interview that can point you in the right
direction. In fact, while "he's got a great personality" may still
be a hint that your blind date is no Antonio Banderas lookalike,
at work they may be the magic words that your job candidate is
the right person for the job.
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WORKRELATIONSHIP
TRIVIA: : Does your workplace violence policy have a clause that
specifically addresses domestic violence spillover at work? Homicide
by domestic partners accounts for 20 percent of all deaths among
women in the workplace compared to 11 percent of worker-on-worker
homicides.
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