The document discusses personality issues in educational settings and ways to cope with negative personality traits in teachers. It begins by defining personality and the Big Five personality traits. It then discusses how personality can impact job satisfaction and stress levels in teachers. Several studies cited show teaching to be a stressful profession. The document next provides strategies that principals and leaders can use to cope with negative personality traits such as disagreeableness, unconscientiousness, neuroticism, and unopenness in teachers. These include listening, developing growth plans, giving important tasks, and allowing for professional development. The roles of principals in providing emotional support and coping with teacher grievances are also summarized.

1. Environmental Issues
Coping with Personality issues in
educational setting

2. definition
An individual’s personality is influenced by experiences,
environment (surroundings, life situations) and inherited
characteristics.
Rachel Robitz, M.D.
November 2018
American Psychiatric Association (APA)
Personality is defined as intellectual, affective, and
behavioral differences that distinguish individuals
from others.
Hockenbury & Hockenbury, 2010.

3. The environment in which an employee works has a major
impact on not just job satisfaction but also on the ability to do
the job well and the desire to continue to remain in the job
and the profession.
Emma García and Elaine Weiss • May 30, 2019
Personality can also be defined as distinctive and
characteristic patterns of thoughts, emotions, and
behavior that define the way an individual interacts
with the physical and social environment .
Atkinson et al., 1999.

4. However, in the recent years, teaching profession has been
considered as one of the most stressful profession.
Ravichandran & Rajendran, 2007.
In other study, Atan (1998) found that 39.7% of the respondents
were moderately stressful and 3% was extremely stressful.
Ghazali (2007) found that 38.7% of teacher in Malaysia have low
job satisfaction.
ANWAR FAIZ NOOR HAMDAN
UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA
2011

5. The five-factor personality model, which is
within the realm of the characteristic properties
theory, was regarded as a generally accepted
approach even though there are disagreements
about the fact that it was structured within the
framework of certain properties (Goldberg,
1990; Atkinson, Smith, Bem & Hoeksema, 1999).
One of the benefits of tackling personality with a
characteristic feature approach is that it makes it
easier to compare individuals (Burger, 2006).

6. The Big Five Personality Traits
• Agreeableness
It was emphasized that individuals with
high agreeableness personality traits are
easygoing, friendly, charitable,
compassionate, gentle, cooperative and
trustworthy, and individuals with low
agreeableness personality traits exhibit
skeptic, quarrelsome, contemptuous and
competitive behavior.

7. The Big Five Personality Traits
• Conscientiousness
It was stated that individuals with high
conscientiousness personality traits are
characterized by attentive behavior, high
self-discipline and consistent in
displaying similar behavior and
individuals with high conscientiousness
personality traits are characterized by
inattentive, unorganized, indecisive and
unreliable behavior.

8. The Big Five Personality Traits
• Extraversion
It was stated that the individuals with
high extraversion personality traits are
social, energetic, optimistic, warm-
blooded, amiable and sociable
individuals and those with low
extraversion personality traits are lonely,
independent individuals who act or
demonstrate slow behavior.

9. The Big Five Personality Traits
• Neuroticism
Individuals with high neuroticism
personality traits are extremely
scrupulous and anxious, pessimistic and
experience negative emotions such as
sadness, anger and guilt more intensely,
and individuals with low neurotic
personality traits are those who are
calm, agreeable individuals who are not
prone to excessive and disagreeable
reactions (Costa & McCrae, 1995; Burger,
2006; Ciccarelli & White, 2016).

10. The Big Five Personality Traits
• Openness
Individuals with the openness
personality trait are individuals who are
willing to try new things, open to
different experiences, versatile, creative,
susceptible to changes in the
environment, imaginative and risk-taking
individuals, and individuals with low
openness personality traits are more
conventional and individuals who prefer
to practice the known instead of trying
the new.

11. Pre-service teachers with high
extraversion, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness were observed
to have more intrinsic motivation
towards teaching (Jogovic,
Marusic, Ivanec & Vidovic, 2012).

12. According to Bandura's self-efficacy
theory, our motivation to succeed and
perform well in a variety of tasks and
situations depends largely on how
much we believe in our own skills.
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
(1986, 1989)

13. Coping with The Negative Personality Traits
• Disagreeableness
Confront, Listen, and Create a Plan
• Meet privately with the disagreeable
teachers to openly discuss this behaviour and
find out what the teacher's issues are.
• Listen without justify or defend the teacher
ideas or actions but used reflective listening
to ensure that the principal understood the
teacher’s perspective.
•Come up with a plan for how the teacher
would speak directly with the principal in the
future if he or she had concerns with him or
his ideas. The principal should be committed
to periodically checking in with the teacher to
assess how things were going.
John F. Eller and Sheila A. Eller, 2013

14. Coping with The Negative Personality Traits
• Unconscientious
•Give the employee an important task or job
that uses his or her particular skills or
passions. Or give the teacher a choice between
several tasks.
•Develop team projects that need everyone's
effort or attend meetings of the professional
learning community this educator belongs to
and ask questions designed to get him or her
involved.
•Develop a growth plan. Keep it focused on
building up the positive aspects of the
employee rather than making it a punitive,
experience.
John F. Eller and Sheila A. Eller, 2013

15. Coping with The Negative Personality Traits
• Inactive
•Consult with teachers on matters, such as
curriculum development or instructional
planning, which directly impact their
classrooms.
•Provide clear job descriptions and
expectations in an effort to address role
ambiguity and conflict.
•Establish and maintain open lines of
communication between teachers and
administrators to provide administrative
support and performance feedback that may
act as a buffer against stress.
Kyriacou (2001)

16. Coping with The Negative Personality Traits
• Neuroticism
•Seek adventure. Develop a discipline of risk-
taking, forcing yourself to do things you
wouldn’t do.
•Put it into words. Discuss their problems and
express their feelings to others.
•Develop a growth plan. Teacher training
would also mean that this would in turn
contribute to their positive attitudes towards
the profession.
• Get help. Get the necessary administrative
support.
Harrison J. Kell, 2019

17. Coping with The Negative Personality Traits
• Unopeness
•Try to find opportunities to go abroad for
educational and social purposes.
•Devote more time to particular tasks. Spend
at least one hour a week doing something for
themselves.
•Principal should allow for and encourage
professional development activities such as
mentoring and networking, which may
engender a sense of accomplishment and a
more fully developed professional identity for
teachers.
Hülya Küçükoğlu , 2013

18. References
• Rachel Robitz, M.D., What Are Personality Disorder, November 2018,
American Psychiatric Association (APA)
• Mehmet Üstüner, Personality and Attitude towards Teaching Profession:
Mediating Role of Self Efficacy, 2017, Faculty of Education, İnönü
University, Malatya, Turkey.
• Hülya Küçükoğlu, Ways to cope with teacher burnout factors in ELT
classrooms, 2013, Lecturer,Hacettepe Universitys,Ankara 06700,Turkey
• Harrison J. Kell, Do Teachers' Personality Traits Predict Their
Performance? , 2019.
• John F. Eller and Sheila A. Eller, Working with Difficult Staff, 2013.
• Anwar Faiz Noor Hamdan, Job Stress Among Secondary School Teacher: A
Study In District Of Perak Tengah, Perak Darul Ridzuan, Universiti Utara
Malaysia, 2011.

19. Leadership Roles in Coping with
Emotional & Grievances

20. Definition
Educational research shows that the most frequent sources of
support that teachers use are peers, followed immediately by
the school principal (Tatar, 2009).
Principals identified as providing emotional support to teachers
were able to help reduce the stress experienced by teachers
better than those providing other types of support
(Littrell et al., 1994).

21. The Nature of Emotions
Basic Emotions
Theory
(Ekman, 1992)
Natural, discrete and
automatic responses
Anger, fear, disgust,
happiness, sadness,
surprise
Cognitive Emotions
Theory
(Lazarus, 1991)
Influenced by
experiences
Trust, collaboration,
effectiveness, etc.

22. 22
Affective
Change
Process
Theory
(Fosha,
2005)
Listening has been suggested to be an important
managerial and leadership behaviour
(Kluger and Zaidel)
School principals who exhibited a deeper level of interest
in the parent’s emotions and who seemed to be listening
carefully were perceived as more respectful
(Robinson and Le Fevre)
Empathic listening is defined as a form of responsive
communication that indicates an understanding and
acknowledgment of another person's point of view
and emotions (Hampson)
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
2013
Manager’s listening and employee's
emotional reframing
2009
2011

23. 23
Affective
Change
Process
Theory
(Fosha,
2005)
Burleson defined comforting messages as "having
a goal of alleviating or lessening the emotional
distresses experienced by others"
Verbal persuasion resulting in empowerment is
said to be accompanied by positive emotional
change (Chiles and Zorn)
Leaders’ empowering messages express
confidence in subordinates and encourage them
to take initiative regarding the situation at hand
(Choi)
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
1994
Manager’s reframing messages and
employee's emotional reframing
2006
1995

24. 24
Affective
Change
Process
Theory
(Fosha,
2005)
Reframing messages can generate a psychological
mode that supports individuals’ tendency to
possess a positive self-view and attempt to self-
enhance it (Diener and Diener)
As such, the presence of empathic listening, which
is said to induce feelings of security and openness
(Myers)
For a successful personal change to occur during
interpersonal communication, individuals must
be in a “core state,” in which they feel calm and
authentic (Fosha)
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
LOREM
IPSUM
1996
Manager’s listening and reframing messages
2001
2000

25. Definition: Employee Grievance
The dissatisfaction of an employee with what he
expects from the company and its management. A
company or employer is expected to provide an
employee with a safe working environment,
realistic job preview, adequate compensation,
respect etc. However, employee grievance is
caused when there is a gap between what the
employee expects and what he receives from the
employer.
https://www.mbaskool.com/business-
concepts/human-resources-hr-terms

26. Grievance is a matter raised by employee to express
dissatisfaction with management behavior and is an
attempt to bring out changes (D’Cruz, 1999).
A substantiated grievance is a signal that a manager’s
behavior was in error or manager has breach worker’s
right (Meyer, 1994).
Grievance involves an individual’s claiming that he or
she has suffered or been wronged, often because of
the actions or decisions made by the manager acting
on behalf of the organization (Anderson & Gunderson,
1982).

27. How to Handle Employee’s Grievances
• Setting up the system
1. Grievances should be further recorded and
monitored to help them meet the desired
resolution collectively through teamwork.
2. Principal could further provide a special email
address dedicated for grievances , blogs, and
set up face-to- face session to accommodate
critical feedback from employees in a more
effective manner.

28. How to Handle Employee’s Grievances
• Be detail and cross-check for the facts
1. The information received should be cross-verified
for accuracy, to understand the hidden truth.
2. Things experienced by employees are often
conveyed from a single individual perspective,
which could mean it can be relatively subjective
and untruthful. Manager should directly
communicate and resolve the reasons timely.

29. How to Handle Employee’s Grievances
• Maintain an open door policy at work
1. Managers can talk to employees involved in
an issue or responsible for the complain to
spring up and seek valuable input before
arriving at a conclusive resolution to the
problem at hand.

30. How to Handle Employee’s Grievances
• Thank the employee
1. The principal should express your
appreciation for the person’s willingness to
communicate openly about problems. This
encourages even more open communication
in the future.

31. References
• Izhak Berkovich and Ori Eyal, The effects of principals’ communication
practices on teachers' emotional distress , 2011.
• Zulkiflee Bin Daud (PhD), Assoc. Prof. Khulida Kirana Yahya (PhD), Mohd.
Faizal Mohd. Isa, Wan Shakizah Wan Mohd Noor. College of Business
University Utara Malaysia 06010 Sintok, Kedah Malaysia, The Influence Of
Heads Of Department Personalities On The Selection Of Grievance
Handling Styles, 2011.
• https://www.hrinasia.com/, How to Handle Employee’s Complaints and
Grievances, 2016.
• https://leadershipmanagement.com.au/, 10 Techniques to Better Handle
Staff Complaints and Grievances , 2019.