The OCEAN factors that contribute to successful personality traits

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek rather what they sought.”
— Matsuo Basho, Japanese Edo era poet.

“Tell yourself what to do and stop waiting for others to lay it all out.”
— Tim Grover, CEO of ATTACK Athletics.

Many people complain that instead of telling them exactly how to do something, or even what to do, I focus on teaching the fundamentals and the metacognitive skills of learning how to learn and self-motivate on the path to success. There is a simple reason for this: You are not me, so what works perfectly for me will imperfectly work for you. 

As anyone with grown children can attest, the job is to show the way and help, but not lay it out step by step in all ways, because that does not prepare them (or you) for what is to come. Their success (and yours) is as individual as each of us, so the planning and execution to achieve this success must be personally developed as well.

There are many factors at play in “success.” Three major components critical to achieve your goals include:

1. The IKEA effect.
2. Big five personality traits.
3. Environment.

Let’s start with the IKEA effect, which shows we tend to like things more if we’ve expended effort to create them. This is partially due to the sunk cost bias that makes something more valuable to us if we work for it and there is more emotional attachment from the effort. 

Think about Grandma’s homemade cookies baked with love, or the bookcase you put together for your first real apartment that you kept for way too long because you were emotionally attached to it. There is pride in making something yourself. Your goals, as well as your plans for achieving them, are stronger if you develop them yourself instead of having your manager or I dictate those plans and goals to you.

So instead of me telling you to do $500,000 of production this year, let me ask you: How much production would excite you and meaningfully improve your life? Don’t just blurt out the answer; think about it and calculate the numbers for a few minutes. The extra effort will make that number more meaningful to you because you derived the goal. 

An internally generated goal is more achievable and desirable than anything externally imposed, such as a sales quota. This is where my goal of attaining 5,000 newsletter subscribers came from: not because it’s a round number, but because it directly aligns with things I want for my children and myself. Thus, it becomes a huge buy-in. Designing your goals this way and having clients do the calculations with you for their goals gives your clients more buy-in and increases the probability that they will work with you to follow through on their goals.

From a biochemical point of view, having that goal you developed — a goal that is meaningful and exciting, plus slightly scary — means you have flooded the brain with dopamine and norephedrine. You have a cocktail of desire coursing through you and rewiring your brain, increasing the chances of long-term success. In general, this is great, but on an individual basis it might not be, because of our individual psychological traits. Decades of longitudinal studies have boiled down almost all successful personality traits to five key factors known as OCEAN:

Openness
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism

My favorite test for the Big Five is https://bigfive-test.com as it deeply dives into the constituent subtraits in addition to being quick and free. You might want to take the quiz.

Two of these five OCEAN traits carry a disproportionate weight for achievement in our realm: Conscientiousness (the way in which we control, regulate and direct our impulses) and Neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative feelings). 

Here are definitions taken from my own Big Five report.

I am almost off the chart for Conscientiousness. This has contributed to my discipline that leads me to run ultramarathons, but don’t put a Boston cream donut in front of me as even I have my limits. If you have a lower Conscientiousness score, you need to rely more heavily on procedures and external reinforcers than someone like me, since I will toil away constantly as that’s how I’m wired.  

If you know someone who is addicted to work, chances are they have a very high Conscientiousness score. Of the Big Five, Conscientiousness has the highest correlation with success in any endeavor.

If you are not as driven and are less willing to sacrifice sleep or parties in order to work, internal motivators are less effective than the external structures we will address soon. But understanding how your own psyche is set up is critical to pushing your own buttons for success (to paraphrase Grover again).

The other main trait from the Big Five is Neuroticism. I am extremely low in this. I feel no shame, as anyone who has hung out with me at a conference can attest, and I am totally willing to embarrass myself for a laugh or a donation to a cause I support. I DGAF about the opinion of 99.9+% of the world, and so I can repeatedly fail without  it bothering me.  

Are you at this level? If not, what I do won’t work for you, but aspects of it can, albeit at a lower risk level that insulates the ego more. The more sensitive you are to others’ feelings and judgments, the more their opinion matters to you and the less you are willing to push. Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs is a good example, as his otherworldly self-confidence and infamous Reality Distortion Field made him comfortable with what would make most people cringe.

How comfortable are you with being uncomfortable? And I’m not talking about ice baths but about exposing yourself emotionally and professionally. My insane tolerance for risk and my ability to not take essentially anything personally inoculate me from fear. If you have a higher Neuroticism score, you are more concerned about what others think of you. You’re probably not great at asking for introductions or dialing for new appointments out of concern for what people might say to you. Your body is probably more freeze- or flight-oriented than fight-oriented, and the norephedrine of huge goals scares you and makes you skittish.  

If you are always worried about what others say, you exhibit anxiety. Exposure therapy (increasing levels of that which scares you or makes you worried, so you become comfortable in the uncomfortable) is one treatment you can self-administer. As the adage for phoning dictates: Do that which you fear until you fear it no more. It applies to asking for introductions or larger checks, for example: you build up a tolerance for that which would have previously overwhelmed you. As influential scholar Joseph Campbell observed: “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” 

Understand your fear and start facing it head on. A great way to do this is to be in an environment that develops and supports facing and overcoming your fears and has a culture of success, which is where the third major component comes in. As General James Mattis (also known as “the warrior monk”) said: “Courage is contagious.”  Setting up your office and processes so that they compensate for your weaknesses is natural, as humans have always used tools to survive and thrive in a dangerous world. We can’t fly like birds, so we build airplanes. If you aren’t naturally emotionally courageous, you can use other tools to get you to fly high in your business.

A key to support success is to use less emotional energy and reduce the negative inputs that can key off anxiety (which is often exhibited as avoidance behavior like spending time on the computer instead of reaching out to potential clients). The following activities have all worked.

If you are sociable (a high Extraversion score on the Big Five), do a dialing session with another agent each week so you have a cheerleader and accountability partner to make those 30-plus dials. The social aspect will be more powerful than the anxiety. When you make this a regular occurrence (such as weekly), the dopamine hit that comes from the expectation of fun with the friend will counter the stress and increase your success. Having food with it further enhances the social aspect and turns it into a “dialing for dollars party.” Just remember to actually pick up the phone instead of talking with your friend the whole time. This is similar to going for a run or to the gym with a buddy.

Maybe instead of picking up the phone to call clients, you spend the time it takes you to drink a cup of coffee each morning sending LinkedIn messages to clients (“Hey, I notice you are connected to Bud Grant and Frank Tarkenton. Any reason I shouldn’t reach out to them?”) and then to their people (“Bud, Alan Page said we should talk. To make it easy for you, here is my Calendly link. Let’s grab a half-hour when it is convenient for you”). Note the use of technology to asynchronously communicate, thus reducing the potential for negative immediate feedback. 

Another tactic is to shift the burden off of you and onto the client, relieving you of negative emotions and anxiety. If you have a good relationship with the client, ask them to send a mutual introduction direct message or text to the client to open the door. After the other person responds, it is easy to continue the conversation. This method has an above-average success rate with extremely low emotional risk.

Manipulating your processes and environment in this way reduces your exposure to negative energy. The tools described above are time-efficient mechanisms for increasing productivity with zero cost. They can be layered on top of what you are already doing, even if you have a low Neuroticism score, to further enhance your production.

Remember: You are not me, and so you shouldn’t try to walk in my footsteps, as your journey and goals are different from mine. But you can learn about yourself and create your own path to where you want to be. You need to understand yourself, tell yourself what to do and where to go, and then do it. And that is the best success of them all.

Joe Templin, MCEC, CEC, CLU, ChFC, CAP, is the author of Every Day Excellence and creator of the Financial Services Daily Drip-Every Day Excellence training email, https://www.salesactivitymanagement.com/everyday-excellence/. He is NAIFA New York State membership chair. He may be contacted at [email protected].