Purpose

The Five-Factor Personality Model and the Numinous – An interview with Ralph Piedmont

Dirk Verburg1 Comment

Current thinking in Psychology is that there are five dimensions we can use to describe the most important personality dimensions. Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th one: ‘the Numinous’.

The five-factor model of personality (FFM) is a set of five broad trait dimensions or domains, often referred to as the “Big Five”: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism (sometimes named by its polar opposite, Emotional Stability), and Openness to Experience (sometimes named Intellect). The Big Five/FFM was developed to represent as much of the variability in individuals’ personalities as possible, using only a small set of trait dimensions. Many personality psychologists agree that its five domains capture the most important, basic individual differences in personality traits and that many alternative trait models can be conceptualized in terms of the Big Five/FFM structure (www.oxfordbibliographies.com).

Dr. Ralph Piedmont discovered the 6th factor: the Numinous.

During our conversation, Ralph and I discussed the following topics:

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‘Leadership and reputation management’ An interview with Matt Nixon

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‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology’.

With this quote from Edward O. Wilson 1929 Matt Nixon answered my question if our requirements about leadership have changed in the last decades. 

Matt Nixon has more than 30 years of experience as a management consultant and HR executive, working with CEOs and senior leaders around the world. An Oxford classics graduate, he was a partner in Towers Perrin in Chicago and London, and subsequently held the positions of Global Head of Organization Effectiveness for Royal Dutch Shell, and Managing Director, Group Head of Talent for Barclays, before returning to the consulting industry.

Nowadays Matt works as a partner in a specialized consulting boutique where he coaches and advises CEOs and other senior leaders during career transitions and other periods of change and transition.

Matt has written and taught extensively on hubris in executives.

During our conversation, Matt and I discussed the following topics:

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Your wellbeing: why a personal mission is more important than a position

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What do the notorious former marketing director of American Apparel, Ryan Holiday, and renowned Dutch reformed theologian Bram van de Beek have in common? They both have written a book about the danger of egocentricity. 

Social media…are not to blame

Social media offers endless possibilities to promote ourselves and serve as outlets for our vanity. It enables us to humble brag about our professional achievements on LinkedIn, share evidence of our successful ‘friends & family’ life on Facebook, and demonstrate our cutting-edge lifestyle on Instagram. 

However, looking at our current society and world history, it seems we as human beings always have been prone to self-centeredness and self-promotion. Social media therefore merely enables us to express something that is already deeply rooted in us.

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How to engrain ethics in your corporate culture? One decision at the time!

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Ethics deal with what makes something morally right or wrong.

Almost any sizeable company nowadays has a code of ethics. The main catalysts for these were the corporate scandals in the early 2000s (Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, and others). Also, in the last couple of years having a sense of purpose has become pretty much en vogue.

As a result, every year millions of employees now dutifully complete e-learning modules and sign declarations (‘To the best of my knowledge…’).

If you think about this on a philosophical level, it is actually quite sad. Apparently, companies need to invest millions of dollars each year because a shared understanding of what is morally right or wrong to do on behalf of the company, is not a given.

Obviously, from a pragmatic point of view, companies have no choice but to invest in this type of training. First of all, it helps individuals to avoid taking decisions that can create reputational and compliance-related problems for the company. The second reason is the need to demonstrate institutional compliance to governments, regulatory bodies and other stakeholders.

Limitations of codes of ethics

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