After a large-scale study of the effects of personality on job performance, researchers zoomed in on one personality trait—kindness—and found that it has a desirable effect on hundreds of physical, psychological, and occupational metrics that influence not only job performance, but overall success at work. life.
Michael Wilmot, assistant professor of management at the University of Arkansas, and Deniz Ones, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota, examined a wide variety of variables, from psychological and physical health to interpersonal relationships, and from leadership effectiveness to academic and organizational performance. settings.
To better understand the impact of kindness, the researchers summarized the results of 142 meta-analyses reporting effects for 275 variables. In total, the results include more than 1.9 million participants from approximately 3,900 studies. Meta-analysis is a process used to systematically merge multiple independent findings using statistical methods to calculate an overall effect.
Wilmot and Ones found that kindness had a desirable effect on 93% of the variables and outcomes.
“We wanted to provide a quantitative summary and synthesis of what we learned about relationships between kindness, one of the so-called Big 5 personality traits, and its consequences,” Wilmot said. “We know this is important—perhaps now more than ever—because kindness is the personality trait primarily concerned with helping people and building positive relationships, which is not lost on organizational leaders.”
In their previous study, Wilmot and Ones combined multiple meta-analyses of the five major personality traits—conscientiousness, extroversion, openness, and neuroticism, in addition to kindness—and examined their effect on job performance. They found that the relationships between personality traits and performance varied widely across nine major occupational groups.
To clarify and emphasize the importance of kindness, the researchers classified the 275 variables into broader conceptual categories. These include physical and psychological health, performance, motivation and success.
Wilmot and Ones also synthesized eight themes that captured the characteristic workings of kindness across all variables and categories. The themes illustrated the essence of how kindness is beneficial to both individuals and organizations.
Self-transcendence – Have aspirations for self-directed growth and motivation to show concern and concern for others.
Satisfaction – Accepting life as it is, and the ability to successfully adapt to new contexts and settings.
Relational investment – Motivation to cultivate and maintain positive relationships with others.
Teamwork – Empathic ability to coordinate goals with others and the ability to collaborate effectively, regardless of role, to achieve collective goals.
Investment in work – Willingness to put effort into tasks, do quality work and demonstrate responsiveness to the work environment.
Lower emphasis on results – A generally lower emphasis on goal setting and producing individual results and a tendency to judge the performance of others more leniently.
Social Norm Orientation – Greater sensitivity to and respect for behavioral compliance with social norms and rules and avoidance of rule violations and misconduct.
Social Integration – Capacity for successful integration into social roles and institutions and a reduced risk of delinquency, antisocial behavior and turnover.
“Overall, the interaction between the themes became clear,” Wilmot said. “Kindness was characterized by work investment, but this energy was best directed toward helping or collaborating with others. In other words, teamwork.”
