Visualization vs. Personality Traits in Achievement

Can picturing the obstacles ahead actually help you reach what you set out to do? For plenty of people it does. Running those hurdles through your mind sharpens your resolve and makes the work in front of you feel urgent. The harder question is the one that sits underneath: why do some people reach their goals while others, with the same visualizing habit, fall short? Picturing yourself succeeding is one lever for building mental drive, but a plan that works comes from two things at once, the state of mind you bring to it and the way the plan itself is built and carried out.

Christian Jarrett takes up this idea in his article The Power of Positive Thinking. He describes how a person can tap positive thinking by imagining themselves getting past obstacles, and he argues this holds regardless of skill level. Where I part ways with him is on what he leaves out. Jarrett barely touches on how personality itself shapes a person's ability to set goals and then meet them. I do accept his points: positive feedback feeds positive thinking, and being honest with yourself about your goals raises your odds of reaching them. Still, you can't talk about who makes successful plans without talking about personality.

Try a simple question. What makes someone a high achiever? From a psychological angle, the answer keeps coming back to personality traits. Ask why one person hits their targets and another doesn't, and the traits are usually where the difference lives. People describe strong leaders in terms like confidence, assertiveness, and charisma. Younger professionals today will put it more plainly and say a good leader has swagger.

Psychologists have leaned on the Big Five model for decades to study how people behave. The five are extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, and agreeableness. Someone who scores high on extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness tends to stay focused, carry themselves with confidence, and build solid relationships both at work and away from it. Those same people absorb positive feedback well and tend to make level-headed decisions.

Qingguo Zhai and Mike Willis looked at exactly this in their article Big Five Personality Traits, Job Satisfaction, and Subjective Wellbeing in China. Working with colleagues, they surveyed more than 800 people in northwest China using the Big Five framework. Their finding was that people high in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness reported stronger job satisfaction and a greater sense of social wellbeing (Zhai, Willis et al., 2013).

So what about the people who aren't good at seeing obstacles before they start? There are supports for them. Many companies now fold sessions with a psychologist into their insurance plans, or keep a psychologist on site, as a way to keep productivity up. Where those resources exist, an employee can take time management training or other on-the-job coaching to get better at setting goals. Team building exercises help, and so does encouragement, whether it comes from a manager through positive reinforcement or from friends and family. All of that can lift your thinking, but none of it guarantees you'll actually reach the goal.

Self-help books on goal setting are another route worth using, and Amazon, eBay, and a long list of other sites have made them easy to find. Whatever method you pick, though, the first step underneath all of them is wanting the thing badly enough to chase it. Then you name the goal. Then you build a plan and work it.

You can't skip from A to C and leave B behind. Mapping out a plan begins with positive thinking, but it also demands that you look hard at each step and figure out how to carry it off. The first part is research, and research matters a great deal, but you have to know what you're looking for before you start. A doctor, broadly speaking, can't teach you to be a fashion designer, so go to the right people. This often means talking to and working alongside others who want what you want, which can show you steps you hadn't yet seen.

Second, make lists. Once you know what the goal requires, write down what you have to do, and split it into short-term and long-term items. Third, expect to fail at some point. Don't assume the first try lands where you want. Treat a failed attempt as a way to spot your mistakes, dodge the next ones, and surface obstacles you hadn't accounted for earlier.

- Heather Browning, MBA. Zhai, Q., Willis, M., O'Shea, B., Zhai, Y. (2013). Big Five Personality Traits, Job Satisfaction, and Subjective Wellbeing in China. International Journal of Psychology, 48(6).

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