Successful managers must deal with employees with different personalities and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses to enhance workplace success. Employee personality is vital for managers because it determines how they respond to their challenges (Atef & Bakhsh, 2020). Therefore, managers must understand the character of each employee to choose the most effective leadership style that they will adopt. This study will evaluate different personalities in the workplace, their most preferred type of leadership, and conflict resolution methods, which will help managers adopt practical management skills.
Employees with various personas have different ways of receiving and reacting to information. Those with extraversion and openness preferred transformational leadership from their managers. Transformational managers have a strong relationship with their employees, encourage teamwork, set collective goals, and have personal attention to each employee (Simic et al., 2017). Therefore, they act as coaches, cheerleaders, parents, and counsellors to the employees. For instance, employees expect a transformational leader to support them achieve the organizational goals without putting punishments on the various milestones that employees should achieve. If sales employees do not achieve their target, they expect the manager to find the problem, adjust it, and not punish, giving them warnings or dismissing them.
This form of leadership works well when there is openness between the employees and the managers. Therefore, the employees can communicate with the managers about the various challenges they experience at work (Atef & Bakhsh, 2020). By addressing these challenges, the employees get motivated and work hard towards the organizational goals. For instance, if the sales employees told the manager they could not reach their targets due to a lack of coupons to give their customers, they may implement coupons because they trust the employees. On the other hand, the employees will feel that it is their personal responsibility to achieve the set targets since coupons have been introduced. Therefore, employees will be self-motivated to reach the set sales target.
Employees with neuroticism and conscientiousness prefer their managers to use the transactional leadership style. This leadership style is called managerial leadership, whereby the leader sets the goals, controls situations, and assures employees of rewards if they are successful (Simic et al., 2017). Managers should apply this type of leadership if they have different personalities from their employees. In this case, the employees do not admire the manager’s traits, and therefore there is no mutual relationship between them (Atef & Bakhsh, 2020). This leadership mainly involves starring roles such as team captain, fortune teller, political analyst, and spokesperson. The manager needs to be the team captain by coming up with goals that the employees should achieve. They should be able to predict future market trends and make amendments where necessary as fortune-tellers and political analysts. Similarly, the manager should represent the organization professionally because the relationship between the manager and employee is based on compensation.
Managers adopt transactional leadership when the organization wants to succeed quickly. In addition, it helps achieve fairness in the workplace because there are standardized regulations in the organization that direct the course of action (Atef & Bakhsh, 2020). In the example of sales representatives not meeting their targets, transactional managers would use the company’s policies on employees who do not meet their targets. For instance, the employees may be given a warning or dismissals from the workplace. However, this method is most effective when used in the manufacturing industries, where the processes are standardized, and most of the decision-making is made by top management. In this case, the employees would require guidance from their managers to work effectively. Therefore, the employees are willing to obey all manager’s rules and guidelines, and if they do not obey them, they may face the consequences. In this case, managers do not have to counsel or parent employees because their relationship is professional.
Other than leadership roles, managers undergo much conflict resolution in an organization. When people work together, conflict is inevitable, and therefore the manager must know the most effective way to control conflict in an organization (Md Sabri et al., 2021). There are three types of conflict that managers may encounter situational, functional, and interactive. Situational conflict exists from external circumstances, while functional dispute arises from the organization allowing employees to voice their opinions (Md Sabri et al., 2021). Interactive conflict occurs when employees have different incompatible goals, and each one wants to pursue their goals.
Although conflicts are productive for an organization, the manager should ensure that conflict does not lead to negative effects in the workplace. In conflict, the manager should act as team captain, news reporter, detective, and referee. As the team captain, the manager should take control of the employees involved in the conflict and remind them why they are in the organization. Communication is essential in conflict resolution; therefore, the manager should act like a news reporter by communicating with both teams to seek an amicable solution. The manager can adopt a detective identity and identify the causes of the problem, then finally, as a referee, call time out and seek resolutions for the conflict.
Therefore, managers use these methods to ensure that they skillfully manage their employees. One of the important takeaways is that the managers have to understand the personalities of their employees to know the most effective leadership style to use in managing them. The best method for open employees and extroverts is transformational leadership, while those with neuroticism and conscientiousness prefer transactional management. Finally, the managers should adopt different strategies to solve conflict because it is a common issue in organizations.
References
Atef, A., & Bakhsh, S. (2020). Diverse effects of employee personalities in the organization. Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research, 79, 395–400. Web.
Md Sabri, S., Musairah, S. K., & Jelani, N. D. (2021). Exploring the conflict management process: A case study of the department of labour in Malaysia. Jurnal Intelek, 16(1), 7–16. Web.
Simic, J., Ristic, M. R., Milosevic, T. K., & Ristic, D. (2017). The relationship between personality traits and managers leadership styles. European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research, 11(2), 194.