Can you imagine your life without GPS or similar mapping technologies? How would we get anywhere on time and without stress absent from these tools? How would we even find a store that sells physical maps, much less someone to help us read those maps?
It’s silly to even think about these questions given how present these tools are – tools that are likely programmed into the device you are reading this article on! Yet when it comes to the bigger picture, to our life and to how we envision success, we often find ourselves moving forward without a useful roadmap.
That’s the problem that Walton Assistant Professor of Management, Michael Wilmot, addresses in the study he conducted with Brenton Weirnik (University of South Florida) and Deniz Ones (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities). In “Mapping Domains of Life Success: Insights from Meta-Analytic Criterion Profile Analysis,” Wilmot and his coauthors create a taxonomy, or classification system, for the various domains of life success.
By summarizing results from 111 meta-analyses, which in turn pull from 3,330 studies and over 2.25 million participants, their goal was to develop a taxonomy of different categories of life success. To do so, they use initial studies and meta-analyses that focus on participant responses to the Big Five personality traits of emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness. First, they developed a rational taxonomy of 14 life success categories. But their work does not end there, as they eventually distilled the empirical evidence into an empirical taxonomy that that formed three large “meta-clusters” of contentment, agentic engagement, and self-transcendence.
Their research provides new “insights into the basic human challenges of coming to terms with the status quo, getting along with others, and standing out socially.” Big trips require big plans and good maps – thanks to this research, we may be able to make better big plans and clearer maps than ever before.
No Single Destinations or Simple Definitions
If you remember anything about your introductory philosophy courses from college, you probably remember how important the idea of a well-lived life of virtue, excellence, and purpose was to Aristotle and others. This fascination with a successful life seems practically ingrained into who we are as individuals. Equally ingrained is our ability to boil it down to a definition or shared idea (or outcome) of what success is.
The novel idea of Wilmot and his coauthors is that they conceptualize life success not as a single endpoint or outcome but as a multidimensional construct. In short, it’s less of an outcome and more about how you live, relate with others, and grow. Life success springs forth from “the accumulation of societally valued psychological, physical, relational, educational, and occupational assets and advantages that reflect effective attitudes, goal-relevant behaviors, and outcomes” over your entire life.
That shifting from an outcome-based view of life success to one that encompasses many domains, though, is only the start of their study. First, they classify some 200 variables associated with life success into 14 categories that fall into three bigger content domains. In the list below, the categories follow the larger domains:
- Individual: psychological health, physical health, and longevity (a long and healthy life)
- Interpersonal: interpersonal relations (both at work and at home), social environment, societal attitudes, collaboration, leadership (influencing skills), and family skills (marriage and childbearing/rearing)
- Institutional: ability to adjust to new contexts, how you perceive your job tasks, general work attitude, performance (at work, school, and in creative tasks and hobbies), and the presence of extrinsic rewards
These 14 categories across three bigger domains critically help us move past simplistic, one-size-fits-all notions of success to a more precise understanding of how life success's many forms operate and manifest themselves in our lives.
Creating Pathways to Success
Categories and domains are helpful, but they are less the map itself and more the legend that helps us understand the map. The map itself came from their synthesizing data from 111 meta-analyses that involved over 2 million participants. They didn’t just look at raw scores from the participants but instead conducted a Meta-Analytic Criterion Profile Analysis (MACPA).
Using MACPA meant that they looked at profile level effects (i.e., the average score across all Big Five traits for predicting a variable) as well as profile pattern effects (i.e., the specific pattern of “peaks and valleys” across these five dimensions for predicting a variable). Their analysis showed that that the way that these “peaks and valleys” are configured can show a more nuanced understanding of how personality traits contribute to life successes. For example, low neuroticism and high openness might predict one form of life success (i.e., contentment) whereas high extraversion and low agreeableness might predict a wholly different one (e.g., leadership).
Authors used cluster analysis to distill the data, a technique that sorts similar variables together in clusters, which, in turn, are distinct from other clusters. Overall, their empirical taxonomy consists of three major pathways, or meta-clusters, that comprise ten smaller life success clusters. These meta-clusters are contentment, agentic engagement, and self-transcendence. These meta-clusters represent the archetypal life success goals whereas the clusters that comprise them represent the archetypal means for realizing these different goals. For example, if a life of contentment calls out to you the most, focusing on gratification, the meeting of the demands of the current situation and finding general well-being may be an ideal pathway.
- Contentment denotes “a calm contentedness with the status quo and a disinterest in new, complex, and/or alternative circumstances.” Think of it as establishing predictability and order so as to better manage the challenges of uncertainty. Key components of this meta-cluster are gratification, balance, and deference; in short, anything that concerns maintaining psychological or social homeostasis and avoiding big changes.
- Agentic engagement instead prioritizes protecting and advancing one’s own goals and ambitions; it’s more about demonstrating individual excellence and increasing one’s social status and less about cooperation and coordination with others. Key facets of this meta-cluster are accomplishment, high performance, citizenship, ingenuity, and leadership; to put it simply, these all reflect various pathways to “getting ahead” by achievements, influencing and leading others, or by driving strategic innovations.
- Self-transcendence shows a “common other-oriented perspective” and privileges helping other and advancing collective goals via support and inclusion. The building and maintaining of positive relationships and supporting communal efforts; in short, “getting along” with others by taking care of your group or by welcoming in outsiders.
These meta-clusters represent the archetypal life success goals whereas the clusters that comprise them represent the archetypal means for realizing these different goals. For example, if a life of contentment calls out to you the most, focusing on gratification, characterized by the meeting of the demands of the current situation and finding general well-being, may be an ideal pathway for you. These pathways thus provide a way of (a) examining ourselves and our goals hitherto not available to us and (b) being able to actually do something with this useful self-knowledge.
Managerial Implications
This study demonstrates that life success is not a one-size-fits-all affair. My path to fulfillment and to a “well-lived life” may look different than yours, precisely because I may have different goals from you and different dominant personality traits driving me towards those goals. Understanding our personality profiles and developing greater self-awareness provides us all with a chance to be more intentional in our choices and strategies with regard to life success.
But that’s not all this study demonstrates. It also has key managerial implications that can reshape how we think about a variety of fields, from career counseling and talent management to organizational decision making. Career counseling professionals can go beyond generic (or even industry-trend based) advice and use personality profiles to better match individuals toward career paths and life goals where their dominant traits offer an advantage. It’s not a secret that conventional assessment models, while generally effective, sometimes fail to identify or misidentify suitable matches. Talent management professionals and recruiters can perhaps target individuals with greater accuracy. For example, a role requiring a significant amount of work with confidential and sensitive information may benefit from selecting someone with a “Citizenship” profile whereas a role requiring a high level of collaboration with clients may seek someone with an “Inclusion” profile.
Organizations that truly understand these archetypes may also be able to target and develop leaders who are best suited to specific organizational needs, from change management to fostering stability. Beyond that, organizations who understand these archetypes may also be able to provide goals to employees that align with their natural personality profiles and thus improve morale, productivity, and combat feelings of underappreciation.
If we accept the premise that “life success defies a singular, monolithic interpretation,” then the ball is in our court, so to speak. We have the opportunity to pursue the pathway that fits us best, set our own goals, and realize our full potential. What Wilmot, Wiernik, and Ones provide is a new map highlighting the best routes to use as we do so in our personal and professional lives.
Michael P. Wilmot
