Humility and Honesty Best Predictors of Job Performance

What is the key to high job performance? The answer might shock you. Try honesty and humility.

A new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences is the first to link honesty and humility to better job performance. Researchers from Baylor University found that honesty and humility are positively related to high ratings of job performance from the employee’s supervisor.

I Hate My Job. What Should I Do?

In an article in CNN online today the author, Anthony Balderrama from CareerBuilder.com, writes about hating your job after two weeks. The article describes what you should do when you feel like you’re at the wrong job.

The article mentions asking yourself the following questions:

1. Can I afford to quit?
2. Did I do the right research?
3. Are things as bad as they seem?

This article describes the importance of the process of self-reflection and awareness in job hunting. Finding the right job that is a good fit for you is not a simple process of just going impulsively by gut feeling. Understanding yourself and what you need out of a job and what you expect from a job are crucial to making sure that you will still like the job two weeks later and on.

Are Happier Workers More Productive?

In hiring for fit, how do we achieve positive outcomes for each party, the individual and the organization?  Are there shared pathways to these positive outcomes that simultaneously enrich the life of the individual and lead to a successful organization?

As organizations are fundamentally, as their name implies, made of people, the solution to mutual positive outcomes concerns the happy-productive worker theory.

Autonomy: An Important Factor In Employee Satisfaction

In a recent book, Human Autonomy in Cross-Cultural Context: Perspectives on the Psychology of Agency, Freedom, and Well-Being, the authors Marylène Gagné and Devasheesh Bhave from Concordia’s John Molson School of Business in Montreal, Canada discuss the role of autonomy in the workplace.

Keeping a Pulse on Employee Engagement

In the Washington Post Business section, there is an interesting article regarding monitoring employee satisfaction.

The article states that employee satisfaction is key to employee retention. However, it is not just how satisfied they are but if satisfaction is rising or if it is dropping.

Work Orientation: Job, Career, Calling

People in similar jobs can bring very different approaches and attitudes to their work.  This is known as work orientation.  What researchers have found is that generally people orient themselves towards work in three ways

1. Job
2. Career
3. Calling (Wrzesniewski, et al., 1997)

Psychological Needs in the Workplace

Psychologist Henry Murray described something called manifest needs which are psychological needs that are observed in people’s behavior (Murray, 2009).

Murray’s developed a model which showed  24 needs, both latent (hidden) and manifest (exhibited). Below are some of the needs Murray described:

How Google Can Succeed with Groupon by Hiring for Psychological Fit

There was a very interesting article in Business Insider last Wednesday titled Here’s The Problem With Google Buying Groupon: A Massive Culture Clash.

The article discusses Google’s most likely acquisition of the rapidly growing social networking meets local advertising company, Groupon. The author, Dan Frommer, warns that if Google acquires Groupon it could ruin Groupon by trying to make Groupon googly.

Character Strengths

When we think about strengths, what comes to mind?

Do you think of strengths of the heart, strengths of character, maybe physical strengths, or skills?

One of the major undertakings in positive psychology research has been to create a methodology for identifying what is right with people  (Peterson & Seligman, 2004).

Introducing Psychological Capital

Psychological capital, huh? Sounds interesting, but what is it?