Category: Life Events and Changes

 In an enlightening webinar titled “Unlocking Personalities,” Dr. Michael Johnson, the Boeing Company Endowed Professor of Business Management, explored how understanding the Big Five personality model can help us better comprehend our own and others’ behavioral patterns.   

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

From Dr. Michael Johnson’s ” Unlocking Personalities: Understanding the Big Five Model” webinar presentation, University of Washington, 2024

Openness to Experience

• Core Traits: Creative, curious, and receptive to change 
• Workplace Impact: Excel in roles requiring innovation and creativity 
• Career Implications: Strong tendency toward artistic and scientific fields 
• Professional Development: Best suited for roles involving innovation and strategic thinking

Conscientiousness

• Core Traits: Organized, reliable, and achievement-oriented 
• Workplace Impact: Strongest predictor of overall job performance 
• Career Implications: Lower rates of workplace deviance, higher task completion 
• Professional Development: Excels in roles requiring attention to detail and reliability

Extraversion

• Core Traits: Sociable, assertive, and energetic 
• Workplace Impact: Enhanced performance in sales and management roles 
• Career Implications: Natural tendency toward leadership positions 
• Professional Development: Thrives in roles requiring interpersonal engagement

Agreeableness

• Core Traits: Warm, cooperative, and sympathetic 
• Workplace Impact: Higher levels of organizational citizenship behavior 
• Career Implications: Strong team collaboration and support capabilities 
• Professional Development: Best suited for roles requiring interpersonal harmony

Neuroticism (Emotional Stability)

• Core Traits: Tendency toward emotional variability and stress sensitivity 
• Workplace Impact: Influences stress management and pressure handling 
• Career Implications: Affects decision-making under pressure 
• Professional Development: Benefits from roles with structured support systems 

Using the Big Five Model for Personal and Professional Development

Understanding your Big Five personality profile offers more than just self-insight – it provides a framework for personal growth, professional development, and building better relationships with others.  

Personal Growth 

Self-awareness: Recognizing one’s standing on the Big Five dimensions can lead to greater self-awareness. For example, if you know you are low in conscientiousness, you can focus on developing strategies to improve organization and reliability. Similarly, if you score high in neuroticism, you can work on stress management and emotional regulation techniques. 

Managing Strengths and Weaknesses: Each trait has potential strengths and weaknesses. High scores in a particular trait might lead to beneficial outcomes in certain situations and less so in others. For example, while high extraversion can benefit networking, it might also lead to overstimulation and the need for solitude for some people. Knowing these potential downsides enables you to manage and adapt your behavior effectively. 

Targeted Development: By understanding your personality profile, you can target specific areas for personal development. For example, those low in openness can consciously work on being more receptive to new experiences and ideas. Individuals can consciously work on their behavior and personality, such as becoming warmer or more assertive. 

Interpersonal Relationships  

Understanding Others: Awareness of the Big Five model can help you understand how others think and act. For example, if you interact with someone low in agreeableness, knowing they may “tell it like it is” can help you avoid taking their directness as a personal attack.  

Team Composition: Knowledge of personality traits is helpful in team composition and role assignment. Understanding that agreeable individuals are more likely to engage in organizational citizenship behaviors can help build teams. Placing an individual high in openness in a role that requires innovation can foster creativity.  

Effective Communication: The Big Five can affect communication styles. For instance, extroverts tend to be talkative and assertive, while introverts might prefer to communicate in writing or one-on-one settings. Recognizing these differences can lead to more effective interpersonal communication. 

Leadership: Extraversion strongly correlates with leadership emergence, and those high in this trait tend to be assertive and energetic. On the other hand, high neuroticism can negatively affect leadership effectiveness. Understanding these connections can help you recognize and develop your leadership skills and styles.  

Relationship Dynamics: Agreeableness is linked to increased organizational citizenship behaviors, and agreeable people are warm, cooperative, and sympathetic. However, very high agreeableness can sometimes be seen as naive. Effective interpersonal relations require a balance of agreeableness and assertiveness. Interpersonal traits such as extraversion and agreeableness are linked to cooperation, sensitivity, warmth, and social coordination behaviors. 

UW Resources for Personal Growth and Professional Development

Understanding personality traits is valuable, but putting this knowledge into practice often requires support and guidance. The University of Washington offers two key resources to help you on this journey. The Washington State Employee Assistance Program (WA EAP) provides PEBB-eligible employees and their household members with confidential support, including solution-focused counseling services. You can access up to 3 sessions per concern and use this benefit multiple times throughout the year as different challenges arise. 

For additional support in specific areas of life, UW WorkLife offers valuable resources for managing both personal and professional challenges. Whether you’re seeking guidance on workplace relationships, looking for work-life balance strategies, or needing support for caregiving responsibilities, these programs provide the practical tools and information you need to thrive both at work and in your personal life. All services are confidential and designed to support your overall well-being. 

If you missed the live webinar or would like to review the content, a recording is available on The Whole U’s YouTube:

Looking Forward

Dr. Johnson recommended completing a free Big Five assessment at bigfive-test.com for those interested in learning more about their personality profile. He also suggested further reading, including “Me, Myself, and Us: The Science of Personality and the Art of Well-Being.” by B.R. Little and “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.” by Susan Cain. 

As a tween or teen, it can be difficult to navigate the complexities of social media. These strategies can empower parents and caregivers to create a realistic plan for their family’s screen use.

Parents and caregivers of tweens and teens can’t fail to have seen—probably on social media—a recent report from the U.S. Surgeon General about the “profound risk of harm” to adolescents’ mental health and well-being caused by excessive use of social media.

“Parents tell me they watch their children retreat to their bedrooms and spend hours alone with their screens,” wrote the Surgeon General in the Washington Post, “exposed to an endless feed of flawless bodies and unrealistic ideals.”

The report substantiates what many researchers, doctors, parents and lawmakers have long suspected about social media use in youths, elevating the conversation of how to address the issue to the national level.

And it is indeed an issue: a 2022 Pew Research survey found that 95 percent of teens said they had daily access to a smartphone, while 35 percent said they were using at least one of the top five social media platforms (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook) “almost constantly.”

According to Screen Sanity, a national nonprofit focused on digital health for youth, 80% of teens check their phones throughout the night and respond to every notification.

That’s a lot of lost sleep.

Clinical diagnoses and self-reporting among adolescents of anxiety and depression, along with emergency room visits for self-harm and suicidal ideation, have risen in recent years in a seemingly parallel pattern with increasingly prevalent use of social media.

But the correlation between social media use and increasing rates of distress among young people is unclear.

Recent research considering the connection between social media and youth well-being has been consistently inconclusive, demonstrating both a positive and a negative effect: while excessive screen time of any kind disrupts sleep and can supplant activities like exercise, reading and other hobbies, social media use has allowed countless youths to connect with a community and express themselves.

There is a correlation between time spent on social media or in online gaming and monetary cost as well. Alexis Hiniker, associate professor at the UW Information School, has researched the prevalence in apps and games of “dark patterns”, interactive designs deployed in the ‘attention economy’ that encourage longer gameplay or reengagement with gameplay, ad viewing and making in-app purchases.

For kids who are still developing their digital critical thinking skills, coercive dark pattern design can result in hundreds of dollars spent on in-app purchases.

Earlier this year, the American Psychological Association issued its first-ever social media guidance recommendations, suggesting that parents and caregivers keep careful tabs on kids’ usage. The APA also suggested that tech companies producing apps like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat reconsider features like endless scrolling and the “like” button.

What can we do to help our kids have a healthier relationship with screens and social media?

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a leading child development expert and director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s, has said that screen time isn’t all inherently bad, and might even have some educational benefit for kids—as long as parents and caregivers are engaged in the curation and management of the content being consumed.

While this is particularly true for parents and caregivers of young children, engagement also goes a long way with tweens and teens.

Dr. Christakis suggests taking a highly active role in children’s media education by co-viewing programs with them and talking about them afterward—what was new, exciting or funny.

With older kids, playing video games with them and sharing fun and engaging apps and social media sites together—helping them to curate their feeds—goes a long way toward a healthier approach to its use.

It’s never a bad idea to remind kids that social media is a highlight reel

Of course, not all screen time is created equal. An hour spent watching a Minecraft gamer setting TNT on his opponent’s build, for example, is not equivalent to an hour spent video chatting with grandparents.

And for older kids, video chatting and text have become the standard means of socializing—so does that count as screen time?

“A lot of preteens and older adolescents do their socializing via screens,” Dr. Christakis said. “Texting and video chats have displaced talking on the phone, so I wouldn’t necessarily count that as screen time.”

Nonetheless, time spent socializing via a device is time not spent in healthy, face-to-face interactions developing real-life relationships—an essential skill for young adults.

Getting kids started with social media

For parents or caregivers considering when to allow their kids to begin using social media, note that the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prohibits companies from collecting data online from children under 13. Consequently, social media companies prohibit children under 13 from creating their own accounts.

Of course, the 12-and-under set can easily evade this rule by lying about their birth year—so it really is incumbent upon parents to help their kids navigate social media in positive ways.

Social media expert Devorah Heitner, author of “Growing up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World,” offers the following strategies in setting the ground rules for social media use for kids:

• Create a family media plan to set expectations and check in with that plan regularly. Check out a sample “Media Time Family Pledge” for online media use.
• Start slow: add new apps one at a time and give kids time to get the hang of how to use them and determine whether the app is a good fit for their personality and temperament.
• Keep mealtimes and in-person gatherings free of devices to promote family bonding, meaningful conversations and authentic engagement.
• Set time limits: when kids first get their own device, or first start using social media apps, don’t give them 24/7 access to it. Experts strongly discourage allowing devices in the bedroom at night, or phones used as alarm clocks—too much temptation.
  • You can set a limit via your own phone — on Apple look for the Family Sharing settings and on Android you can use an app called Family Link.
• Prevent unwanted downloads with an Ask to Buy setting on Apple phones that will send a request to the parent when kids want to buy or download a new item.
• Help your teen understand and curate their feed by encouraging them to like and follow a diverse group of role models—peers, celebrities doing good works, athletes encouraging positive change in the world.
• Talk to your kids about who they follow and why and share the same about your own social media accounts. Be sure they understand your boundaries around content and how—and why—to keep their personal information private.
• Define “sexting” to kids of all ages and make sure they know that it is never ok to send or receive pictures of people without clothing, whether they know the person or not.
• Resist the urge to take away their device or access to social media if they post something you don’t like, which can backfire if kids go “underground”. Instead, talk with them about deleting a poorly planned post and repairing any damaged relationships.
• For younger children, consider Pinwheel, a smartphone with multiple built-in parental controls, including the ability to monitor your child’s communications.

Helping teens wean off social media

What if your tween or teen already has a device and access to social media—and is one of the 35% checking apps “almost constantly” and suffering the negative mental and physical health consequences of it?

Much media coverage has been allotted to “tech’s toxic effect” on self-esteem—particularly for girls. Considerably less media suggest how parents and caregivers can help kids wean themselves off or cut back on social media—especially when social media platforms and apps are designed to be both addictive and deceptive.

Jean Twenge, a psychologist at San Diego State University who has extensively researched the effect of social media on teens’ mental health, has some suggestions for helping them cut back:

Set boundaries collaboratively by asking your child what kinds of changes feel manageable, such as cutting down on the number of apps available or limiting overall social media time. Consider using the American Academy of Pediatrics’ free tool for creating a family media plan.

Suggest a social media vacation: a day, a week, a month—any time off from social media can be beneficial to teens. Expect pushback, and be prepared to offer alternatives for the time they would have spent scrolling: a family outing, such as a special shopping trip or visit to a theme park or family fun center, might be just the thing.

Stay firm on your own rules around the amount of screen time teens are allowed, keeping screens out of the bedroom at night and turned off during mealtimes. Like any aspect of parenting, consistency is key.

Additional resources

Bright Horizons + Screen Sanity: UW WorkLife’s employee backup care provider, Bright Horizons, has partnered with Screen Sanity to offer a comprehensive webinar, Improving your family’s digital wellness, to empower parents and caregivers  to create a plan for their family’s screen use, introducing kids to smartphones and safely introducing social media.

• Q&A: As AI changes education, important conversations for kids still happen off-screen (UW News)
• Screen time and children (UW Medicine Health Library)
• What to know about ‘Devious Licks’ and other TikTok challenges (Screen Sanity)
• Common Sense Media is a nonprofit organization providing ratings on various media for categories including educational value, positive messaging and role modeling, violence, sexual content, consumerism and more.
• How to make your social media experience healthier (Devorah Heitner, PhD)
• Delving into devices: Children and screen time (WA EAP)

Looking for additional support navigating screens or social media with your family? UW’s employee assistance program, Washington EAP, has a variety of resources available to parents and caregivers, including parenting articles, webinars and counseling (available for both parents and caregivers and children).

What are my leave options?

Erin Rice, assistant vice president of UW Human Resources Campus Operations, says that parental leave is complicated by multiple overlapping state and federal laws, UW policies and union contracts that play into the amount of time you can take off and the means of getting paid during your leave.

“The good news,” she says, “is that there are a lot of options, and UWHR has resources and people to help you understand and navigate your options.”

Below, Rice and her team answer the most commonly asked leave questions.

What are the different components of parental leave?

Birth parents can take 6 to 8 weeks for temporary pregnancy disability, or as prescribed by a health care provider, immediately following the birth. Bonding leave starts after the disability period for birth parents, after birth or placement for non-birth parents.

What government policies affect my leave?

The federal Family & Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is a leave entitlement that provides job and health insurance protection when eligible employees take a leave of absence for a qualifying reason. Eligible employees have worked for the UW for at least 12 months and 1,250 hours.

The Paid Family & Medical Leave (PFML) program is a program of the state of Washington that provides partial wage replacement for employees on qualifying leave who have worked in the state of Washington for 820 hours during the “qualifying period.”

How long can I take leave?

Under UW policy, union contracts and civil service rules, parental leave (after post-birth parent disability) is 4-6 months, depending on which policy or contract applies to you.

For FMLA-eligible parents, the FMLA period (12 weeks minus any FMLA you have used within the last year) runs concurrently with pregnancy disability and parental leave. FMLA is not a separate leave period.

PFML-eligible birth parents can receive up to 16 weeks benefits (up to 18 weeks if you have pregnancy complications). Non-birth parents can receive up to 12 weeks.

Do I have to take leave all at once?

UW Parental Leave is generally taken as continuous (full) leave of absence or, if it meets business needs and has the approval of your unit, can be granted as intermittent leave or a modified work schedule.

Leave covered by PFML can be taken intermittently or on a reduced schedule for the 12 months following the date of a child’s birth, adoption or placement.

How do I get paid?

If you accrue paid time off, you can be paid while on leave by using your paid time off or through parental shared leave. For parental shared leave:

• Donations from other UW and state employees can be used once your Vacation Time Off and Sick Time Off balances in Workday are each reduced to 40 hours or less.
• Birth parents can use donated time during disability period + the following 16 weeks.
• Non-birth parents can use donated time for the 16 weeks immediately after birth or placement.

Faculty can use available paid sick leave to care for the birth parent by following the process to request leave to care for a family member.

It is also possible to take approved leave as unpaid time off.

Through PFML, the weekly benefit amount is generally up to 90% of weekly wages, with a $100 per week minimum and a $1,456 per week maximum (2024).

During a PFML leave, it is the employee’s choice whether to use accrued paid time off. Employees can receive both paid time off from the UW and the PFML benefit for the same period. This is called using “supplemental benefits.”

How do I maintain health benefits while on leave?

If you have worked for the UW for 12 months and 1,250 hours prior to taking parental leave, your health insurance benefits continue just as if you were working during FMLA and PFML.

After your FMLA and/ or PFML is exhausted, or if you are not eligible for FMLA or PFML, you will need to remain in “pay status” to maintain your benefits.

Pay status means that you either use eight hours of paid time off or work eight hours a month.

The UW Benefits office can help with additional questions regarding benefits. And UW WorkLife offers a wide range of other child care resources.

How do I request leave?

All staff and academic personnel complete and submit a parental leave form. Request the entire period you would like to take parental leave in Workday (see Leave of Absence – Sick/Injured or Becoming a Parent User Guide) at least 30 days prior to birth/placement. After approval, request time offs (sick, vacation, unpaid) for each day of your parental leave in Workday.

Parental shared leave is requested by checking a box on the parental leave form.

PFML is requested through the Employment Security Department.

Who can I contact for help with family leave?

Campus staff and academic personnel – hrleaves@uw.edu

Medical Centers staff – medctrfmla@uw.edu

Students – uwdrs@uw.edu/TitleIX@uw.edu

“The most important thing to know is that you should not hesitate to reach out to our leave specialists at hrleaves@uw.edu to discuss any of these issues and how they relate to your leave situation,” Rice says. “They can answer questions by email or over a meeting on Teams or Zoom. They want to help you get your questions answered so you can get on to enjoy being a parent!”

Online resources

UWHR – https://hr.uw.edu/ops/leaves/parental-leave/

Pregnancy Accommodation – https://hr.uw.edu/policies/pregnancy-accommodation/

PFML – https://hr.uw.edu/ops/leaves/paid-family-and-medical-leave-pfml/eligibility-and-benefits/

Academic Personnel – https://ap.washington.edu/ahr/working/leaves/leaves-for-becoming-a-parent/

Students – https://www.washington.edu/titleix/pregnant-parenting/

UW Benefits – https://hr.uw.edu/benefits/

UW WorkLife – https://hr.uw.edu/worklife/child-care-and-caregiving/

For more information, you can watch this new panel discussion on navigating leaves and benefits for new caregivers: