A review of the personality literature offers general guidelines that can lead to ef-
fective job performance. As such, it can improve hiring, transfer, and promotion
decisions. Because personality characteristics create the parameters for people's
behavior, they give us a framework for predicting behavior. For example, individ-
uals who are shy, introverted, and uncomfortable in social situations would prob-
ably be ill-suited as salespeople. Individuals who are submissive and conforming
might not be effective as advertising "idea" people.
      Can we predict which people will be high performers in sales, research, or
assembly-line work on the basis of their personality characteristics alone? The an-
swer is No. Personality assessment should be used in conjunction with other in-
formation such as skills, abilities, and experience.⁸⁸ But a knowledge of an indi-
vidual's personality can aid in reducing mismatches, which, in turn, can lead to
reduced turnover and higher job satisfaction.
      We can look at certain personality characteristics that tend to be related to
job success, test for those traits, and use the data to make selection more effec-
tive. A person who accepts rules, conformity, and dependence and rates high on
authoritarianism is likely to feel more comfortable in, say, a structured assembly-
line job, as an admittance clerk in a hospital, or as an administrator in a large
public agency than as a researcher or an employee whose job requires a high de-
gree of creativity.

EMOTIONS

Can managers control the emotions of their colleagues and employees? No. Emo-
tions are a natural part of an individual's makeup. Managers err if they ignore the
emotional elements in organizational behavior and assess individual behavior as
if it were completely rational. As one consultant aptly put it, "You can't divorce
emotions from the workplace because you can't divorce emotions from peo-
ple."⁸⁹ Managers who understand the role of emotions will significantly improve
their ability to explain and predict individual behavior.
      Do emotions affect job performance? Yes. They can hinder performance, es-
pecially negative emotions. That's probably why organizations, for the most part,
try to extract emotions out of the workplace. But emotions can also enhance per-
formance. How? Two ways.⁹⁰ First, emotions can increase arousal levels, thus act-
ing as motivators to higher performance. Second, emotional labor recognizes
that feelings can be part of a job's required behavior. So, for instance, the ability
to effectively manage emotions in leadership and sales positions may be critical
to success in those positions.
      What differentiates functional from dysfunctional emotions at work? While
there is no precise answer to this, it's been suggested that the critical moderating
variable is the complexity of the individual's task.⁹¹ The more complex a task, the
lower the level of arousal that can be tolerated without interfering with perfor-
mance. While a certain minimal level of arousal is probably necessary for good
performance, very high levels interfere with the ability to function, especially if
the job requires calculative and detailed cognitive processes. Given that the trend
is toward jobs becoming more complex, you can see why organizations are likely
to go to considerable efforts to discourage the overt display of emotions-espe-
cially intense ones-in the workplace.