The most important requirement for managers: self-reflection
Probably everyone claims to have the ability to self-reflect. A personal example shows that this is not necessarily the case: Last Thursday, after five years, I happened to meet a schoolmate, Johannes, when we were traveling to a career fair with Echometer (see our Linked-In Post). After a short conversation it came out of him:
“Last week I talked to Lukas about you. I made fun of your speaking style. You used to talk so choppy at school … like staccato. ”Thank you, Johannes. Good to see you. I found it funny. And he also immediately forwarded: “Now you don’t talk like that anymore.”
The interesting thing about the whole thing: I was not aware at school that I was perceived in this way, nor did I notice any change over the years. And there we are in the middle of the topic.
How well can I actually assess myself, with regard to things like personality, performance and intelligence? In the work context, this question is very relevant - and certainly a particularly important requirement for managers. Studies show:
The better a manager can assess himself, the better the performance, social behavior and loyalty of an employee.
Whittington, Coker, Goodwin, Ickes, & Murray, 2009; Fleenor, Smither, Atwater, Braddy & Sturm, 2010
One thing in advance: what are correlations?
In order to answer the question about the accuracy of self-assessment, e.g. with regard to personality - and thus the question about the most important requirement for managers - it helps to understand what correlations are. A correlation is a statistical measure of how strongly two variables are related. It can range from -1 to 1, with a negative number implying a negative relationship. The closer the correlation is to 0, the weaker the relationship.
These examples should make it clearer: Identical twins have the same genetic requirements. So if one of the twins is very intelligent, the other is probably also (correlation: 0.81; Loehlin, 1992).
Another example: Those who are intelligent are also more educated (correlation: 0.70). Or: The poorer someone is, the more likely he or she is to commit criminal offenses (correlation: 0.25; Hsieh & Pugh, 1993). In the latter example, the relationship is already significantly lower. Related to this: The examples show that a correlation is not always synonymous with a causal relationship (!) best agile metric in this.
But how high is the connection between mine assessment my personality and mine actual Personality?
Requirements for managers: connection between self-perception and external perception
Quite little. The following graphic shows the relationships.
What does that tell us? That our self-assessment - our self-image - is relatively inaccurate. Not only good managers, but also Scrum Masters or coaches should be aware of this phenomenon and constantly practice self-reflection. But not only that - obtaining regular feedback is also helpful. Jean discusses what can help with this and why we are so bad at assessing ourselves in this blog post.
If you want to speed up the reflection process and thus a very important requirement for managers, it is worth taking a look at our 360º feedback tool, 360-degree feedback can be observed if some central rules are observed (see also another blog article from me) - be well suited to stimulate our self-perception through reflection. And in the end, possibly even provoke behavioral changes in individuals.
Requirement for managers - Sources
Atwater, L., Waldman, D., Ostroff, C., Robie, C., & Johnson, KM (2005). Self – other agreement: Comparing its relationship with performance in the US and Europe. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 13 (1), 25-40.
Asendorpf, JB (2015). Person-centered approaches to personality.
Fleenor, JW, Smither, JW, Atwater, LE, Braddy, PW, & Sturm, RE (2010). Self – other rating agreement in leadership: A review. The Leadership Quarterly, 21 (6), 1005-1034.
Harris, MM, & Schaubroeck, J. (1988). A meta-analysis of self-supervisor, self-peer, and peer-supervisor ratings. personnel psychology, 41 (1), 43-62.
Hsieh, CC, & Pugh, MD (1993). Poverty, income inequality, and violent crime: a meta-analysis of recent aggregate data studies. Criminal justice review, 18 (2), 182-202.
Loehlin, JC (1992). Genes and environment in personality development. Newbury Park, CA: Sage
Whittington, JL, Coker, RH, Goodwin, VL, Ickes, W., & Murray, B. (2009). Transactional leadership revisited: self – other agreement and its consequences. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 39 (8), 1860-1886.
Title picture designed yanalya / Freepik.
