The relationship between personality preferences, self-esteem and emotional competence

Abstract

The factors that hinder or help the development of emotionally competent behaviour in leaders appear to be varied and complex. The role of personality variables such as personality preferences and self-esteem in influencing the development and demonstration of emotional competent behaviour has not yet been well researched. The general aim of this research was to investigate whether a relationship exists between personality preferences, self-esteem and emotional competence, and to determine whether the variables personality preferences and self-esteem can predict the demonstration of emotional competence.

Personality preferences were studied from the Analytical Psychology paradigm. Jung's Psychological Types and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator theory of Personality Types provided a theoretical understanding of individual differences in emotional response behaviour. Based on the Humanistic and Social Psychology paradigms, the construct self-esteem was explored from a multi-dimensional perspective with particular emphasis on individuals' self-evaluative views and feelings of self-worth, self-acceptance, sense of belonging and sense of psychological well-being within the particular socio-cultural domain in which these aspects manifest themselves.

Emotional competence was studied from the paradigmatic perspectives of the Cognitive Social Learning theories. Emotional competence was viewed as the workplace application of emotional intelligence abilities, which are developable and can be learned. In this regard, emotional competence was described as the demonstration of self-efficacious behaviour in emotion-eliciting social transactions. Emotional competence implies a sense of psychological well-being (a positive inner state of being) and an ability to skillfully, creatively and confidently adapt in an uncertain, unstructured and changing socio-cultural environment.

An empirical investigation was conducted to analyse the responses of a randomly selected sample of 107 South African leaders in the manufacturing industry to measures of these three constructs. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the Culture-free Self-esteem Inventories for Adults (CFSEI-AD), and the 360° Emotional Competency Profiler (ECP) were administered. The MBTI extraverted-thinking and extraverted-intuitive personality preferences were associated with the CFSEI-AD social, general and total self-esteem scales. In terms of the ECP emotional competence self-evaluations, self-motivation was associated with the MBTI extraverted-judging, extraverted-thinking and extraverted-intuitive preferences, while interpersonal relations was associated with the extraverted-intuitive and extraverted-feeling preferences. The MBTI introverted-sensing, introverted-judging and introverted-thinking preferences were associated with the ECP emotional literacy scale, and the introverted-judging, introverted-sensing and introverted-thinking preferences were associated with interpersonal relations in terms of the emotional competence other evaluations. The MBTI introverted-thinking preference was associated with the ECP self-esteem/self-regard other evaluations and the CFSEI-AD personal self-esteem scale. The ECP total emotional competence scale was associated with the MBTI extraverted-intuitive preference (in terms of the self-evaluations) and the introverted-judging and introverted-thinking preferences in terms of total emotional competence other evaluations.

The CFSEI-AD general, personal and total self-esteem scales were associated with the ECP change resilience, self-motivation, self-esteem/self-regard, interpersonal relations and total emotional competence scales. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the ECP emotional competence construct is closely related to the affective component of the CFSEI-AD self-esteem construct, particularly one's sense of psychological well-being which is related to feelings of self-worth. The empirical results confirmed the effect of self-esteem on the self-evaluations of raters exposed to multi-rater assessments such as the 360° Emotional Competency Profiler, namely that self-raters with very high self-esteem may tend to over-inflate their self-evaluations. The CFSEI-AD total self-esteem scale also appears to be a more reliable predictor of emotional competence than the MBTI personality preferences. The results contributed new knowledge about the relationship between individuals' self-esteem, personality preferences and emotional competence and added perspective on the interpretation of individuals' self-ratings, particularly with regard to 360° emotional competence assessments.

Recommendations for Industrial and Organisational Psychology practices regarding leader development are formulated, as well as recommendations for future research in the field.