(What Are Yours?)
There are a handful of weeks left before the U.S. national presidential election of 2020. It is a very important election and each vote matters. If you are unsure of your choice for president, the model offered here is often used in selection processes and may help you clarify your decision between the two presidential candidates and how they lead.
Leadership has two active components. One part consists of what decisions a leader makes and the other is the way they are made. After the election our president will decide on a great many life-changing issues: policies, the quality of life of our nation’s people, affordable healthcare, accessible education, economic recovery, systemic racism, our environment, our judiciary. A vital part of the outcome of those decisions will be how those issues will be accomplished, as exhibited by the leader’s choice of behaviors that make up his process of that decision-making. Leadership in our democracy requires intelligent decision-making behavior. Intelligent behavior is critical and is shown by how a leader builds relationships to support our national and world interests, how he keeps us safe and informed, and how he communicates and if that is honest and backed by evidence. Past behavior shows us who the leader really is, what kind of person he really is, and what we can expect in the future. Before we vote for our next leader, we can use a way to gauge the candidate’s personality traits the candidate has already exhibited and use that to help us decide whether he is the kind of person we need for our democracy.
Each of us has personality traits that are our preferred ways to behave. Personality traits have been researched for many years and findings show they convey important information that are useful in selection decisions. The astronaut selection process, for example, is complex and considers several factors, among them are the tasks, skills, knowledge, duration and distance of the mission profile, and–personality traits. Who will go to space is a critical decision: Who will fly to the International Space Station or to the Moon? What are they like? How will they interact with others? The right stuff for space missions today need to count on the strengths from each individual: Their success, resilience, and survival depend on it. Who among us, as a crew member in space or a citizen of this nation, would want to work or be led (and for a long time) by someone who’s emotionally cold, easily perturbed, or negative? (Think of a time you sat next to someone like that at a dinner function. Now think of being next to them for a very long time with no escape.) I propose that traits used to help guide astronaut right stuff selection could help guide us on who to select as the right stuff to go to the White House.
The factors that help guide many selection processes are from the Big Five Model. The model includes five basic personality traits. Each trait resides on a continuum from low to high that indicates an individual’s personality preference. Individual preferences are ranked on a scale between the two extreme ends. Here are the Big Five:
Openness to Experience: prefers routine, practical v. imaginative, spontaneous
Conscientiousness: impulsive, disorganized v. disciplined, careful
Extraversion: reserved, thoughtful v. sociable, fun-loving
Agreeableness: suspicious, uncooperative v. trusting, helpful
Neuroticism: calm, confident v. anxious, pessimistic
The model’s list of traits, referred to as OCEAN, is a compilation of several personality factors and is a widely used and accepted theory.
This diagram provides more information about the Big Five Model:
More information can be read here: https://www.simplypsychology.org/big-five-personality.html
Basically, the model measures how a person prefers to behave. Knowing the ‘how’ about a person can provide a way for us to decide who should lead. For example, when we look at the kind of leader we want to represent us, do we want a leader who is uncooperative working with others and impulsive as a communicator, or empathetic, dependable, and
trustworthy? Unstable or calm? These attributes have a profound bearing on how communication plays out on national and international stages, on us, our children, and the world.
It is a model that can also be used to help teach students on how to work together. Research shows that there is about a 50/50 split on how we acquire each personality trait we exhibit: We are born with them and yet they can be developed. This gives parents and educators an opportunity to provide Big Five Model lessons to teach our children lessons and help them optimize team behavior and build the next generation of great leaders: This is what I have proposed to STEM education at AIAA that may offer a program to youth: https://www.aiaa.org — the world’s largest aerospace technical society.
Want to measure your own traits? (It’s free with no registration needed and takes 10 minutes):
November 3rd is coming.
Vote for the candidate that you believe is the kind of leader
you would want your children to grow up to be like.
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MJ Marggraff
September 2020