Primax International Journal of Commerce and Management Research

Transcription

1 PERSONALITY PROFILING OF MANAGEMENT STUDENTS : AN IMPERATIVE Prasad V. S. V 1 Dr. P.RaghunadhaReddy 2 Abstract That very statement, whether one questions the percentage or not, and the fact that there are such comments from industry bodies, public personalities shows the dire need for some changes in the management education in the country. One of the often suggested actions is to revamp the management education in the country to produce employable output i.e., students who become employable after completing the management program.however, a deeper issue that needs to be addressed is the suitability, propensity and the aptitude of the student to the stream of management he/ she selects, the process of such selection and how the basic personality of the student is used in identifying the stream. This is amply substantiated by the statement When you do what you love to do, you don t have to work. A precursor to such identification is the Personality Profiling of individual students to clearly spell out their strengths, weaknesses, preferred behavior and proclivities as a foundation exercise.this paper aims to cover some of the existing options available in this field and how they can be leveraged and combined to draw up a Personality Profile of the prospective / current management student to enable him / her to choose the right stream and hence be able to absorb information, develop the critical thinking abilities that jell with his / her core personality. Introduction: A personality profile is a knowledge management tool used to provide an evaluation of an employee's personal attributes, values and life skills in an effort to maximize his or her job performance and contribution to the company.in this case, we substitute the word employee with student and job performance with aptitude identification and potential contribution areas. Historically, personality profiling has been used for evaluation of employee performance, reward, incentive, promotion and progression, succession planning at higher echelons of the companies etc. Even this day, not many companies employ the profiling techniques at entry level (apart from brief psychometric tests) and many depend solely on their internal Performance Management System for job promotions, career succession plans, without consciously involving the personality profiling as a tool. That said the task of identifying a suitable tool or a set of tools to profile a management student s personality become onerous. 1. Research Scholar,Dept. of Management Studies, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati. Andhra Pradesh. 2. Professor, Dept. of Management Studies, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 1

2 Some of the traditional profiling tools are DiSC profiling, Thomas International Personality Profiling, Personality Type (MBTI), Orpheus, 16PF, OPQ, Insights Discovery, Kiersay Temperament Sorter, NERIS Type Explorer, NLP based Personality Profiling and Handwriting Analysis to name a few. DISC based Profiling Tools: The initial DISC model comes from Dr. William Marston, a physiological psychologist, in a book entitled Emotions of Normal People, published in DiSC Profiling: DiSC is a personal assessment tool used to improve work productivity, teamwork and communication. DiSC is non-judgmental and helps people discuss their behavioral differences. If you participate in a DiSC program, you'll be asked to complete a series of questions that produce a detailed report about your personality and behavior. The DiSC model provides a common language that people can use to better understand themselves and to adapt their behaviors with others. This can be within a work team, a sales relationship, a leadership position, or other relationships DiSC Profiling mandates a participant to choose options on a 5 point scale and then processes the responses to generate a profile that can be used in decision making. Thomas International Personal Profile Analysis (PPA): PPA provides an insight into how people behave at work and helps individuals to become more aware of their own work style and that of others. PPA is used for a variety of purposes: recruitment, retention, development, management, career guidance, benchmarking, appraisal and team analysis. 3 Thomas International also uses the DISC Model in its PPA and is used by many corporate across the world. A standard PPA form has 24 questions with options to choose Most and Least for a particular trait. It is one of very robust tools to assess the current state of mind of a prospective employee, employee to find the suitability to a particular job. The HJA (Human Job Analysis) tool helps the management in deciding the ideal personality for a job and then matches the candidates profile with the standard HJA for that job. Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 2

3 Thomas Profiling also provides interview questions to be asked based on the profile apart from many training inputs that can be decided for an individual. Personality Type (MBTI): The purpose of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ) personality inventory is to make the theory of psychological types described by C. G. Jung understandable and useful in people's lives. The essence of the theory is that much seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgment. 4 "Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills." 5 MBTI sorts for preferences and does not measure ability, trait or character of an individual. It is a self selection tool and the final selection of the 4 options from the 8 available choices (below) gives a predetermined personality type. There are 16 Personality Types which typify an individual s behavior. MBTI asks participants to choose between the options below: Favorite world: Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? This is called Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I). Information: Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning? This is called Sensing (S) or Intuition (N). Decisions: When making decisions, do you prefer to first look at logic and consistency or first look at the people and special circumstances? This is called Thinking (T) or Feeling (F). Structure: In dealing with the outside world, do you prefer to get things decided or do you prefer to stay open to new information and options? This is called Judging (J) or Perceiving (P). A final selection of four letter combinations viz., INFP, ESTJ, INFJ etc., (a total of 16 possible combinations) determines the Personality Type of the individual. Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 3

4 The second ingredient in the Fourmula for Career Satisfaction is understanding which aspects of your personality are strongest and which are weakest. Although all of your preferences play important roles, certain preferences within each personality type are more powerful than others. Since you want to operate from a position of strength while you re at work, it makes sense for you to identify carefully which preferences you use most easily and most successfully. 6 The basic premise of MBTI is that when people are consciously aware of their innate strengths they can effectively make career choices. The tool itself suggests different options available to a student with positives and negatives of each choice. NLP based Personality Profiling: NLP is Neuro Linguistic Programming described by Richard Bandler (the originator of NLP) Neuro-Linguistic Programming: "a model of interpersonal communication chiefly concerned with the relationship between successful patterns of behaviour and the subjective experiences (esp. patterns of thought) underlying them" and "a system of alternative therapy based on this which seeks to educate people in self-awareness and effective communication, and to change their patterns of mental and emotional behaviour." 7 In order to operate on the world we all make maps of what is going on out there with our sensory apparatus, our eyes, ears, noses, mouths, and bodies. We also make maps of those maps, or models of those models, with our language systems. We call this a Meta Model, a model about modeling. 8 By using the Meta Model to identify the maps, thinking patterns, typical reactions of students to situations in real life we can correlate the areas of business management that a student can be well suited. NLP Personality Profiling test: This personality assessment identifies your dominant orientations in key Meta Programs those characteristics which influence how you respond to and plan your world. Metaprograms are systems that our mind uses to filter information. 9 By studying the metaprograms of an individual, we can identify their traits, tendencies and preferences. Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 4

5 Handwriting Analysis Handwriting analysis has many names. It is not generally known that Edgar Allen Poe, the great American poet, analysed handwriting and published his analysis. He employed the term autographery. Monks practised the art of telling character by handwriting, and two French priests, Abbe Flandrin and his student, Abbe Gene Hyppolyte Michon established some basic rules for determining specific characteristics. They coined the term graphology, the art of knowing men by their handwriting. 10 Handwriting analysis is of necessity classified as a clinical test. There have been many books and papers written by different psychiatrists. However, as with any testing device, the psychologists and psychiatrists have found evaluating its accuracy extremely difficult. My personal experience (having analysed hundreds of handwriting samples), is the response from the client How did you know all that about me? Just from Handwriting? with an accepted accuracy (by clients) of 80% or more. Handwriting could actually be called brain writing. When you first began to form letters, you had to think about how to make each one of them; they were somewhat shaky. It is something like learning to drive a car. Initially, you had to be aware of each step in shifting the gear, pressing the clutch, releasing it, etc. However as you practise, you become unconscious of the process but are able to change gears smoothly, without even realising it. And it becomes a subconscious activity. The same is true of handwriting. Hence, handwriting could be called brain writing. And since handwriting is subconscious, it can capture the subconscious behavior, traits and preferences of individuals almost 90 varieties (obviously, all will not be present in one individual). Various traits that can be identified include: introversion, extraversion, secretiveness, ability to persist, listening skills, stubbornness, individuality, independence, initiative, philosophical inclination, physical challenges (Yes, health issues can reflect in handwriting) and many more. Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 5

6 How to Profile Management Students? Some Key Considerations in Profiling Management Students: a. Ease of administering the profiling process: While almost all the profiling techniques are fairly easy to administer, some of them like Thomas Profiling, MBTI need an indepth training with access to computers and internet to complete the selections by students. (While internet availability is taken for granted these days, it could still be a question in some places). The question of supervision self administered vs. monitored by a trained person would also be valid. Two of the easily administered profiling tools are Handwriting Analysis and NLP Personality Profile (these do not need access to computers, can be easily administered and taken by participants). b. Cost implications: Many of the profiling tools above need to be paid for and the costs can be prohibitive for many students in the tier 2 / 3 cities. Least cost would be Handwriting Analysis (a one A4 page sample of English, cursive handwriting, is sufficient to give a fairly comprehensive personality profile) and NLP Profiling is about a questionnaire administered by a trained professional (could eventually be some faculty members themselves). c. A common template for identifying the traits required for each / major stream of management study viz., marketing, hr, finance. These templates could be generated by the faculty in consultation / active participation of industry members. Such generic templates can easily be used across colleges and geographies. d. Training of the manpower to administer this process and decision on when is the ideal time to do so: When the basic tools of Handwriting Analysis and NLP Profiling are used, the training requirement is 3 5 days each. Thereafter, it is a matter of the rigor and regularity of practise by the tool administrators which would deliver the value to the students. e. The ideal time to administer the tools would be the semester in which the students have to select their specialization. The colleges would of necessity, have to design their course capacity based on the output of this profiling exercise rather than make students choose based on a predetermined capacity (viz., Marketing 50 seats and Finance 30 seats etc.,). Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 6

7 A suggested combination of the profiling tools: Handwriting Analysis (using a standardized one page, English text template to identity personality traits, without the conscious involvement / deliberate projection of traits by the student). Followed by a MBTI Selection (a simple selection of options based on standard template picked by students as to what they think about themselves in certain situations / thought process). Finally NLP Profile Analysis using a standard questionnaire that enables the NLP Practitioner identify critical personality traits of the student. The combined profile generated through the 3 instruments / tools above can then be used to identify the most suitable specialization / branch of management that a particular student can be expected to do well. Bibliography and References: Personality Profile: Definition ( DiSC Profile: ( Thomas International, PPA: MBTI: ( MBTI: MBTI Manual: A Guide to the Development and Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 4 Excerpt from Who s on First? Identifying Your Innate Strengths Do What You Are Paul D. Tieger & Barbara Barron, 4th Edition, March 2007, Little, Brown and Company, NY. What is NLP? : ( Robert Dilts quoted in Richard Bandler s Time for a Change NLP Personality Profiling: ( Vol. No.4, Issue No.1 April- June 2016 Page 7