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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today I'd like to talk to you about the Big five model of personality, and why I want to talk about this, because recently I was introduced to this model and it's very helpful. And I'm not talking as a psychologist because I'm an engineer, but this model helped me a lot to understand which kind of personality behavior do I need in a different project or in a different effort? And the name Big Five, because it related to five traits. And many people call also ocean model and ocean because o c e a n are the initials of each of the five traits. And it's a simplification of the personality. It was, of course, look, if we go back and try to understand how far this go, hundreds of years ago, psychologists, philosophers were trying to understand and trying to create a taxonomy to help us to identify psychological traits. But Louis Goldberg in the 90s was the one bringing this to the mainstream with the concept of the Big Five. So let's go on each and try to make sense on how do they appear and how to identify them. First one, it's called openness or open. And what is that? It's a person or a trait that loves experimentation, open to new things, rich vocabulary, rich ideas. It's someone that loves exploring things, love to see new things, to identify, new things to explore, to go to unconventional paths, to discover something different, to have a breakthrough thought, not follow too many patterns.
Someone that is very comfortable with abstract thinking, not necessarily concrete thinking. The second one is consciousness. Sorry for my. My English here is very hard for me to pronunciate but what is that? It's our ability to self-discipline to plan. So this trait is a very clear on most of the stereotypes of project manager. So someone that is always prepared, pay attention to the details, love the plan, it's punctual, stays on time. Think about delivery. And there is a YouTube video that I really love. When I was preparing for this podcast that I saw a people in a desert island and they just jump and open was skin to discover, Look, we are in a desert island, let's go to different places, let's visit different places, let's meet different people. And the consciousness person, it's, Oh, we need to get rid of this. We need to prepare fire, we need to find food for us. We need to identify a way of preparing a sign so ships can find us quickly. Did you see the two difference? The third one is extrovert. It's someone that is extremely comfortable in public, talking to people, interacting with different people. You know, it's usually someone that talks a lot that is not introvert at all. Someone that loves a party, loves to be with people, loves to connect with people. The fourth one is agreeable and the agreeable trait is someone that cares about the others, has true interest in others, in people, in their feelings, know how to manage and understand that people may think different, want people to feel comfortable, to feel supported.
And last but not least at all, is the neurotic. And the neurotic is someone that gets ultra stressed out, worry about things. You know, it's someone that easily get angry, depressed. And this I'm talking again as a stereotype because in reality, when I talk about being open, looking for creativity, trying to track and feel inside a track, in a plan like consciousness or talking to people like extrovert or being soft light and care about the others, like the agreeable and stress it out as the neurotic. But none of us are 100% on open or 100% or extrovert or 100% neurotic. All of us, we are a mix of this. Some of them, it's like, imagine you're cooking something and you have different spices and depending on your personality, you have more of extrovert, less of openness, more of agreeable, less of neurotic. And each individual has a different preparation of that. And why I really like this because it's. A simple way for me to, for example, set up a project team because, for example, if I'm using a highly innovative project where I really want to break boundaries, someone with a strong trait of openness will be extremely helpful. Someone that's curious, right? Imagine if I have someone that is extremely consciousness doing that, and it's something like, I need a plan.
We need to create this new painting or this new artwork, but we need to get it done in half an hour. It doesn't work like that. So it depends on each type of project. Even the neurotic is a human trait that, for example, combined with consciousness, can produce someone that is very keen to work in extremely sharp tasks where you really cannot miss the deadline. Otherwise people die. So these kind of neurons, you know, getting really concerned is an asset for these type of project. For example, when you have an accident, when you are in a crisis management mode and you need really to stop bleeding and these kind of feeling is an important one. And you can do this test online. There are many, many, many free online tests. I did it before of recording this podcast so you can do and see if it matches on how you know you. And finally, this is not perfect. I know that this process has a lot of criticism because many psychologists, they think that our psyche is far more complex than these five boxes. And I agree with them. Yes, but sometimes you need to have tools that will help you to navigate this complexity. And these Big five is a very decent tool and very easy. For example, if I'm recruiting someone to my project, I know, look, I want someone that has this extrovert approach because I need to interact with a lot of people.
So this person would be extremely helpful for me on that. But maybe, you know, I don't need someone that is very agreeable on that type of project because I need to disrupt something. So these kind of mix is very useful and there is a lot of criticism on that. So please, I don't want to finish this podcast without mentioning that some people feel that these are very obvious ones and these are very useful for you to identify and recognize strangers. But when you get to know people, you may identify other traits that are not very visible. Some people talk that this has some bias and cultural influence because being extrovert in in the US, maybe it's made different from China for example just using as an example. So but at the end it's a good tool. And I think that us, for example, like myself as an engineer, it will help me, for example, in an interview, understand, look what type of professional I'm looking for for that specific role in my project, and maybe it will be this combination, this ocean, this combination of openness, consciousness, extrovert, agreeable and neurotic. And this is the big five. I would recommend that you take the test. It takes some like 5 to 10 minutes and it will help you to understand and maybe this could be helpful in your work in delivering projects. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
