Leadership - Industrial/Organizational Psychology
About I/O Psych
Industrial-organizational psychology or I/O psychology is the study of psychology in the workplace. Specifically, how coworkers interact, how to improve job satisfaction, how people perform their jobs, and how people behave at work. Leadership is a core focus in I/O psychology. During the class, which I took my second semester of sophomore year, I learned several different theories of leadership as well as what makes someone a good leader. The trait theory of leadership focuses on identifying personality traits associated with good leaders, such as conscientiousness. The behavior theory involves identifying the behaviors associated with good leaders, such as speaking clearly and directly. What makes a good leader in a particular role can be examined through an organizational assessment, which occurs when an I/O psychologist examines a workplace and conducts leadership training. This involves an assessment of the workplace environment in different departments and meetings with supervisors to ensure support for assessment, training, and transfer of training.
In Class Example
While the class was lecture-style, we were instructed to do an activity that taught me about myself and my role as a leader. The Big Five or OCEAN (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) is what psychologists have agreed on as a summary of personality traits that every human has some degree of. For homework in my I/O psychology course, I took a quiz to determine how my personality appears on the Big Five (my results shown to the right). In class the next day, we discussed how these traits can correspond to good leadership. My professor noted that there are not many direct correlations with the exception of conscientiousness and leadership. That is, those with higher conscientiousness levels are more likely to be good leaders. This is because individuals high in conscientiousness correlate with reliable, hardworking, organized, disciplined, and ambitious behaviors. Taking this quiz was helpful because it identified my strengths. Just that awareness helped me when I was in an executive position for my sorority the following year. I always tried to hold myself to a high standard, be consistent, and organized. I will continue to do my best to follow the behaviors associated with conscientiousness as I believe that they are traits anyone desires to see in their leader.
My Big Five Personality Test Results
Leadership in a Women's Fraternity
From the entire year of 2018, I was Vice President of Member Development (VPMD) in Pi Beta Phi Fraternity. This position is concerned with the academic, personal, and intellectual development of the organization's members, which was 72 members during my time. Because I learned what can make someone a bad leader in my I/O class (e.g. laziness, not following the rules, a lack of self-discipline), I wanted to make sure I never embodied these traits. I made an effort to treat everyone equally and to hold my self accountable for my actions and mistakes. As VPMD, I implemented and oversaw Leading with Values, a values-based member development program. To the left is an example of a Leading with Values I did my last semester. A lot of the information was given orally which is why the slides appear quite empty. Because I presented to my peers, I tried to incorporate fun gifs, which appear as images here.
As VPMD, I was in charge of determining which value to discuss in a Leading with Value. One of the values in Pi Beta Phi is sincere friendship. I used the one to the left as an example, because during that time in our chapter I felt like tensions were high and morale was low. What is not shown in the powerpoint was the discussion that we had during the presentation. People felt free to share both their grievances and personal insights. We finished with a better feeling in the chapter. It was an example of problem-solving and conflict resolution that I was proud to implement.