Following the rules once made you the perfect employee - now it could doom your career. Here's why 'openness to experience' is a key trait for success.
- Conscientious employees - people who are organized and hardworking - may lose their edge in the coming years.
- That's according to an article by Jerry Useem in the Atlantic.
- Useem used a story about sailors being asked to hold several roles on a ship to illustrate his point.
- Instead, employers want people who think on their feet and generate outlandish ideas - and in some cases are easily distracted.
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Perfect employees - the kind who follow rules, submit assignments on time, and never have a harsh word for their office mates - are doomed. Maybe.
Convincing arguments are being made that the workplace of the future demands a different kind of worker. This person thinks on their feet. They come up with outlandish ideas. And they have no problem bending the rules to get their work done.
A growing body of evidence suggests that "conscientiousness," a personality trait marked by crossing every "t" and dotting every "i", may not be such a strong predictor of job performance anymore. Exploring new ideas may instead be the defining characteristic of successful workers - showcasing a trait known as openness to experience.
'Learnability' may be more important than conscientiousness at work
Scientists have long understood that conscientiousness, is one of the few aspects of personality that help people achieve regardless of their context - as evidenced by dozens of studies over decades of research. "Being on top of deadlines is almost universally a good thing," University of Minnesota-Twin Cities researcher Richard Landers previously told Business Insider's Drake Baer. In addition to that, doing thorough work, hitting goals, and acting thoughtfully toward coworkers were thought to help you succeed in any workplace.
In some work environments (and for certain tasks) that may still be true.
But a recent article by Jerry Useem in the Atlantic suggests the situation is more nuanced. Useem detailed his experience on a US naval ship, where the crew had been whittled down to just 40 people (compared to 350 on a World War II fleet). Each sailor held multiple roles - think scanning the sea for hazards and also cooking meals - and were encouraged to constantly expand their skill set.
Useem uses the naval ship to illustrate what the future workplace will look like, whether you're a sailor, a lawyer, or a data scientist. That's because experts say the future workplace will be characterized by rapid technological change and a relative lack of clear instructions. If you want to succeed, you'll need to be something of a professional chameleon, willing and able to adapt to new circumstances.
Research on West Point students suggests the Navy could be moving in the right direction. One 2013 study, published in the International Journal of Selection and Assessment, found that the willingness to explore new possibilities (and other related traits) was a stronger predictor of leadership abilities than academic achievements.
In the language of personality psychology, this openness to experience is a matter of being intellectually curious, creative, and imaginative. It has to do with the brain chemical dopamine: people with higher openness get a greater reaction and bigger reward from learning new things compared to those who score lowly on the measure. As such, they tend to be deeply engaged in all sorts of things, from art to thought to emotions - driving the well-roundedness that Useem values.
This dovetails with a hot new buzzword in the the corporate world, necessitated by the retraining that automation and other forces are mandating upon workforces. That's, per the recruiting firm Manpower, a little thing called learnability. Learnability describes "the ability and desire to quickly grow and adapt one's skill set to stay employable for the long term." According to Manpower's research,, it's the No. 1 skill employers will be looking for in the next decade.
Regardless of the specific nomenclature, this isn't the kind of trait that you either have or don't have. If you want to succeed in this new environment, you can behave differently, pushing yourself toward new ideas or away from set rules. If you're, say, interviewing for a new job, you can flaunt the ways you've demonstrated "learnability" in the past, like by taking a class on programming or project management to round out your skill set.
Too much conscientiousness can backfire
Research on the limitations of conscientiousness isn't new. But it's more relevant than ever, now that the workplace is changing so quickly.
In the Atlantic, Useem cites a study led by Michigan State University professor Zach Hambrick, which found that sailors high in conscientiousness performed relatively poorly on a multitasking-type exercise in which the rules changed midway through, a microcosm of the future workplace.
Meanwhile, Arizona State University professor Jeffery LePine found that the people who performed best on a decision-making exercise, similar to Hambrick's, scored higher on openness to experience. People high in conscientiousness did worse.
Other research, beyond that mentioned in Useem's reporting, helps explain why conscientious folks aren't necessarily the ideal employees.
One study, for example, published in 2011 in the Journal of Applied Psychology, suggests that too much conscientiousness can backfire. Researchers compared employees' scores on personality tests and their job performance, as rated by supervisors. The conclusion: A moderate level of conscientiousness may be preferable. The authors speculate that people high in conscientiousness may be considered "rigid and inflexible," and may not take on responsibilities outside their formal job description.
There's also reason to believe that a certain type of conscientious person may fare better than other types. People who are highly achievement-oriented tend to be very creative, while those who are highly dependable are markedly less creative. And according to a World Economic Forum report, creativity will be newly important to traditionally "technical occupations" as soon as 2020.
The bottom line here isn't that you should stop showing up to meetings on time, or start refusing assignments from your boss. That rarely goes over well. But rather, cultivate openness or learnability. Like Steve Jobs observed, if you have different experiences than everyone else, you'll have different ideas than everyone else.