On Agreeableness in the Workplace and Its Impact on Team Decisions
The fourth of the big-five personality traits is agreeableness. A mnemonic for the big five traits is OCEAN that stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. While displaying high levels of agreeableness, a person is usually being empathetic, cooperative, and considerate by taking the views of others. Although called agreeableness, a person high in the trait does not necessarily agree with everything, however, they tend to go with the flow especially when they can see that in an overall sense it is more helpful than harmful. The key aspect there is the evaluation of the pros and cons of the proposed idea with respect to impact-on-others. The popular notion is that people showing high agreeableness overall are generally warm, friendly, and easy to get along with, as opposed to being competitive, skeptical, or critical of others.
In the workplace, when agreeableness is displayed, people prioritize social harmony and seek to avoid conflict whenever possible. In particular, there is more trust and cooperation in the workplace relationships. Although, this is considered an extremely welcome trait for leaders, a case can be made for the opposite trait where the leader is assertive, independent, and self-directed, hence more willing to take risks or challenge the status quo. In fact, many leaders especially in the tech industry can be thought of as low in the agreeableness trait. However, it is important to note that not all successful leaders exhibit low levels of agreeableness. There are many effective leaders who are also known for their empathy, compassion, and collaborative approach to leadership. Having said that, the focus of this article is about team-decisions.
One of my favorite topics many years ago in a high-school just-a-minute round was a quote that is a beautiful analogy. While I try not to use poop references, this was hard to keep in (no, that is not the analogy, regardless of how anal it sounds!). Not sure who said it but the quote is:
A committee is like a commode (i.e. a toilet). First there is a sitting, and then a loud noise, and the matter is dropped!
We have all been in team meetings where there is a whole lot of discussion and people stick to the status quo in the end. This is mostly because we could not agree on a new direction. On the contrary, we have also been in team meetings where something is proposed, there is no discussion, and the motion is passed (if you are still thinking of the poop analogy, turns out it ended a while ago). Many times these group decisions depend on how the agreeableness trait plays out.
Before discussing the impact of agreeableness on team decisions, let us reiterate some important aspects that are common to all big-five personality traits. First, this is not zero-one, i.e. at any point of time one can be anywhere in the continuum of 0 to 1 in the agreeableness personality trait. Second, the agreeableness trait can change over time across circumstances. Sometimes that is because people can exhibit behavioral flexibility, which is a key aspect of social and emotional intelligence. Other times it may just be due to the context or what the situation demands (and how they align with our values or purpose). For example, consider a team meeting where a team wants to decide whether to replace the conventional coffee maker with a Keurig cup. If you are not a coffee drinker, you may just go with the flow, but a die-hard environmentalist may not do so.
Now, let us discuss work-related recommendations made as a group. Examples could include hiring, promotion, choice of software use, and project selection, to name a few. How does varying degrees of agreeableness affect the outcome of the decision? On one hand, people displaying high degree of agreeableness trait may tend to be empathetic, cooperative, and considerate. On the other hand, people with low degree of agreeableness trait may tend to be more cut-throat, assertive, and focussed. It is the responsibility of the one seeking the recommendation (or the chair of the group, or the one that called for the meeting), to obtain a strong recommendation. Whether there is consensus or not, here are some things to consider.
Should we go with a majority vote?
Although it sounds like the most democratic thing to do, here is a scenario to consider. Say that of the 7 people in a group, 3 are displaying low agreeableness (2 are for a recommendation, one is against) and 4 are displaying high agreeableness trait. Seeing the 2–1 split during the discussion, the four displaying high agreeableness may tend to want to go with the flow of the majority. However, if the four had to vote without hearing the others, they may have gone against the recommendation being the more compassionate thing to do. In these situations, getting the pulse about where the agreeableness needle stands for each person could help guide discussions, maybe a vote is not necessary after all.
In what order should people speak?
Oftentimes we bring an issue or decision to the table and ask for reactions or opinions. Some people with strong opinions tend to go first, thereby sometimes giving a first-mover advantage (studied in game theory). In fact, many times people high on agreeableness tend to not go first as they are trying to assess the opinions of everyone to attain the social harmony they seek, thereby avoiding conflict. The people responsible could determine the order in which people speak. If it is not possible to get a pulse informally and ask the ones high on agreeableness trait to go first, asking people to not make a recommendation in the first round but just put down the pros and cons that come to mind would be useful.
What if there is no consensus?
Many times there could be two winners. Of course, if it is not a winner-takes-all situation, then if feasible, we could declare both as winners (for example offering a job or promotion to both by making a case for an extra head count). Other times, we would have to make a tough call of selecting exactly one, especially in the software choice and project selection cases (assuming we do not have the personnel to take up more than one project). In this situation it would be extremely useful to ask the folks displaying high levels of agreeableness to understand what they think would be the more empathetic thing to do and why. The why is extremely important because everyone would not have considered all the reasons.
At the end, being open and transparent about the final recommendation would also be valuable to the group.