Individual Differences

Consequences of Individual Differences

What makes people different from each other
Attitude and Ability, Personality
Emotional Intelligence
Physical Ability
How does attitude impact on Individual?
 People show substantial ID, or variations in
how they respond to the same situation
based on personal characteristics.
 Behavior is, therefore determined by the
effects of the individual and the environment
on each other.
 Have direct effect on behavior
 People with different attitudes respond
differently to directives
 People with different personalities interact
differently with bosses, coworkers,
subordinates, and customers.
 Some employees will be productive only if
they are closely supervised, while others will
be productive if they are not.
 People differ in productivity.
 Quality of work varies because people vary in
their propensity for achieving high-quality
results.
 Empowerment is effective with some workers,
but not with all.
 Workers vary in their level of self esteem that
in turn influences their productivity and
capacity to take on additional responsibility.
 ID in hereditary and diversity factors,
personality, ability and skill, perception and
attitude will affect work behavior like
productivity, creativity and performance.
 Demographic characteristics are the
background characteristics that help shape
what a person becomes.
 Important demographic characteristics for the
workplace are gender, age, race, ethnicity,
and able-bodiedness.
 GENDER
 No consistent differences between men and
women in problem solving abilities, analytical
skills, competitive drive, motivation, learning
ability and sociability.
 As compared to men, women are more
conforming, have lower expectations of
success, have higher absenteeism and lower
earnings.
 AGE
 Older women are often stereotyped as
inflexible.
 They sometimes complain that their
experience and skills are not valued.
 ABLE-BODIEDNESS
 Despite evidence of effective job
performance, most disabled persons are
unemployed.
 Most disabled persons want to work and
more firms are likely to hire disabled workers
in the future.
 RACIAL AND ETHNIC GROUPS
 Differences in job performances and behavior
of racial and ethnic groups are usually
attributable to culture rather than ethnicity
itself.
 APTITUDE AND ABILITY
 Aptitude is a person’s capability of learning
something.
 Ability is a person’s existing capacity to
perform the various mental or physical tasks
needed for a given job.
 It includes relevant knowledge and skills.
 Intellectual Ability is the capacity to do
mental activities.
 Intelligence contains four sub-parts;
cognitive, social, emotional, cultural.
 Groups of Mental Abilities
 VERBAL FACTOR- comprehension of verbal
relations, words and ideas.
 SPATIAL FACTOR- involved in any task in
which the subject manipulates an object
imaginatively in space. It can also refer to
how people perceive the object in front of
them.
 NUMERICAL FACTOR- ability to do numerical
calculations rapidly and accurately.
 MEMORY FACTOR- involves the ability to
memorize quickly.
 WORD FLUENCY FACTOR- involved whenever
the subject is asked to think of isolated
words at a rapid rate.
 INDUCTIVE REASONING FACTOR- the ability
to draw inferences or conclusions on the
basis of specific instances.
 DEDUCTIVE REASONG FACTOR- is the ability
to make use of generalized results.
 PERPETUAL FACTOR- is the ability to perceive
objects accurately.
 PROBLEM SOLVING ABILITY FACTOR- is the
ability to solve problem with independent
efforts.
 MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES
 LINGUISTIC INTELLIGENCE- good at using
words well, both when writing and speaking.
 LOGICAL-MATHEMATICAL INTELLIGENCE-
good at reasoning, recognizing patterns and
logically analyzing problems.
 MUSICAL INTELLIGENCE- good at music,
musical composition and performance.
 BODY-KINESTHETIC INTELLIGENCE- good at
body movement, performing actions and
physical control.
 SPATIAL INTELLIGENCE- good with directions,
maps, charts, videos and pictures.
 INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE- good at
understanding and interacting with other people.
 NATURALIST INTELLIGENCE- more in tune with
nature, interested in nurturing, exploring the
environment and learning about other species.
 INTRAPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE- good at being
aware of their own emotional states, feelings and
motivations.
 PHYSICAL ABILITIES- the capacity to do tasks
demanding stamina, dexterity, strength and
similar characteristics.
 EXPERIENCES- no one has had the same
experiences in life. Not one person. Everyone
experiences variations in their day, even
when they are working at the same place or
spending time together.
 PERCEPTION- accounts for how we
experience things as well as how we think
and feel, so it plays a huge part in what
makes a person unique.
 BELIEFS- what you believe is what you
perceive to be true based on what you have
experienced in life.
 CREATIVITY- everyone is creative in our own
little way, but there are many different
creative talents that we can have.
 GENETICS- a change in one thing can change
how our genes are used or even expressed.
Without getting too technical, it is apparent
that no one is alike in their genetics.
 BODY- everyone carries their weight
differently and comes in different shapes and
sizes.
 RELATIONSHIPS- have a big influence over
our lives. They influence how we think about
ourselves and how we interact with the world
around us.
 HOBBIES- we all have different hobbies, and
even if we do have the same hobby as
someone else, we often approach it in
different ways.
 INTELLIGENCE- stems from many things,
including our beliefs, social aptitude,
emotional awareness, experiences and the
health of our brain.
 SENSING THE WORLD- we all have 5 dominant
senses. We all see different things, which
affects how the other senses are used.
 TASTE-what we grow up on we tend to favor
because we have grown accustomed to the
tastes in foods.
 PERSONALITY- temperament, attitude,
thoughts, beliefs, behavior, character.
 COMMUNICATION HABITS- the way we
communicate reflects our thoughts, beliefs
and personality.
 HUMOR- relates to what we have experienced
and how we perceive life.
 GOALS- different desires in life.
 INTUITION- helps them decide what they
want to do in life.
 WILLINGNESS TO BE YOURSELF- to be who
they are and stand out from the crowd.
 An aptitude is a component of
a competence to do a certain kind of work at
a certain level.
 An aptitude may be physical or mental.
Aptitude is inborn potential to do certain
kinds of work whether developed or
undeveloped.
 Ability is developed knowledge,
understanding, learned or acquired abilities
(skills) or attitude. The innate nature of
aptitude is in contrast to skills and
achievement, which represent knowledge or
ability that is gained through learning.
 Emotional intelligence (EI), emotional
leadership (EL), emotional quotient (EQ)
and emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ), is
the capability of individuals to recognize their
own emotions and those of others, discern
between different feelings and label them
appropriately, use emotional information to
guide thinking and behavior, and manage
and/or adjust emotions to adapt to
environments or achieve one's goal(s)
 Empathy is typically associated with EI,
because it relates to an individual connecting
their personal experiences with those of
others.
 Emotional intelligence has been defined as
"the ability to monitor one's own and other
people's emotions, to discriminate between
different emotions and label them
appropriately, and to use emotional
information to guide thinking and behavior"
by Peter Salovey and John Mayer.
 This definition was later broken down and
refined into four proposed abilities:
perceiving, using, understanding, and
managing emotions.
 Emotional intelligence also reflects abilities to
join intelligence, empathy and emotions to
enhance thought and understanding of
interpersonal dynamics.
 Self-Awareness
 This is how aware you are and how accurately
you can assess your emotions. Most of us are so
busy with the daily grind that we rarely take a
step back and think about how we’re responding
to situations and how we come across. The other
source of self awareness is recognizing how
others respond to us. This is often challenging
because we tend to see what we want to see. And
we tend to avoid the uncomfortable action of
asking others for feedback.
 To grow in your self awareness, consider
building time for reflection into your day.
Also consider getting into the routine of
collecting specific feedback from people who
will be honest and whose ideas you value. A
large study that compiled thousands of data
points found that leaders who sought
out negative feedback were much more self-
aware and effective than those who sought
out positive feedback.
 Self-Management
 Self-management is your ability to control
your emotions. This component also includes
your transparency, adaptability, achievement,
and optimism. A key factor is whether you
react or respond to situations. Answer these
questions:
 When you get an irritating email, do you write
back right away?
 Do you sometimes find yourself regretting
how you handled yourself, wishing that you
had been more calm and poised?
 Do you lose patience or rush others?
 If you said yes to any of these questions, you
may be in the habit of reacting rather than
responding. When you react, you do what
comes naturally, which is going with the
emotional part of your brain. When you
respond, you act against what is natural,
which is why it is difficult. You engage the
rational part of your brain and select the best
response.
 Social Awareness
 Your organizational awareness, focus on service,
and level of empathy compose your social
awareness. Improve your organizational
awareness by fine-tuning your radar for the
emotional climate in groups, and recognizing
power dynamics.
 Improve your service orientation by fine-tuning
your radar for your customers’ or clients’ needs.
Do this by first and foremost, always taking
personal responsibility even when things aren’t
going well. Other strategies to enhance your
service orientation include being as available and
responsive to your customers as possible, and
coming up with a system to regularly gather
feedback.
 Relationship Management
 Developing others, serving as an inspiring leader and
catalyst for change, collaborating with a high-
performing team, and managing conflict are part of
relationship management.
 You are high on this characteristic if others perceive
you as likeable and you’re able to work well with
diverse groups, even in the face of stress and
conflict. As you can imagine, to do this requires the 3
characteristics we just discussed, plus finesse in
dealing with others.
 If you can create and communicate an inspiring vision
and help them to do difficult things, such as embrace
change, you are definitely high on this characteristic.
 How do you fare and what can you further develop to
enhance your EI and career performance?
 One aspect of employees' attitude
is the impact it can have on the people
around them. ... Attitudes may affect both the
employee's work performance and the
performances of co-workers. Attitude:
A person's attitude can be influenced by his
or her environment, just as a person's
attitude affects his or her environment.