Big Five Personality Traits [OCEAN Model]: The Definitive Guide

Big Five Personality Traits [OCEAN Model]
The Definitive Guide

Welcome to the definitive guide on the Big Five personality traits! 

This is a psychological concept which coaches have relied on to better understand their clients for decades. 

My guide will tell you all you need to know about it, and how to best integrate it into your coaching practice.

So if you are looking to:

• Learn more about the Big Five personality traits
• Master a reliable method of understanding your clients
• Use it effectively to improve your clients’ lives

Then this is the guide for you. 

Let’s get started!

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Contents

Chapter 1
The Fundamentals

Chapter 2
Explaining the Big Five Personality Types

Chapter 3
Measuring the Big Five Personality Traits

Chapter 4
Long term#chapter4 implications of Big Five Personality Traits

Chapter 5
Considerations of the Big Five Model

Chapter 6
Using the Big Five Model as a coach

Chapter 7
Long term implications of Big Five Personality Traits

Chapter 8
Long term implications of Big Five Personality Traits

Chapter 1

The Fundamentals

Before I tell you how to best use the Big Five personality traits as a coach, let me take you through some basics first. 

In this chapter, I will answer some fundamental questions about the Big Five personality traits, including the definition of the model, its origins, and contemporary uses.

Let’s get started!

What is the Big Five personality model?

The Big Five personality model is derived from a psychological theory that identifies five basic dimensions of personality: 

• Openness to experience 
• Extraversion 
• Agreeableness 
• Neuroticism 
• Conscientiousness.

The Big Five model is also known as the Five Factor Model (FFM) among psychologists. However, many people find it easier to use the acronym ‘OCEAN’ or ‘CANOE’ to remember the traits.

For this definitive guide, I’ll call it either the Big Five model or the OCEAN model.

But before I dive deeper into each one of them in Chapter 2, let’s look at the origins of this model and why it remains popular among psychologists and coaches alike.

Origins and History of the Model

The OCEAN model is based on the psychological concept of trait theory, which asserts that a person’s personality is made of five broad identifiable attributes (or traits). 

Interestingly, the Big Five personality model, as we know it today, isn’t a brainchild of any one single person. The model is based on the works of multiple researchers, dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries.

In 1936, the psychologists Allport and Odbert identified 18,000 potential attributes of personality, and their successors have since narrowed them down to five prominent ones.

Multiple groups of psychologists from the 19th and 20th centuries have independently argued that there are five key traits of personality. 

While they all attached different labels to each of the attributes, it was psychologists Paul Costa and Robert McCrae who coined the five factors that we know today. 

Building on the work of psychologist Lewis Goldberg, who had popularized the term “Big Five” in 1993, Costa and McCrae developed the Five Factor Model in 2003. 

They are also the creators of the NEO Personality Inventory (or NEO-PI) as well as the Revised NEO-PI (NEO-PI-R) personality assessments,  the latter of which measures all of the Big Five traits in a person.

I’ll be exploring this in much more detail in Chapter 3. 

Before that, let’s delve into why the Big Five model has retained its popularity over the years.

Why is the Big Five personality model still used?

The Big Five Model gained popularity in the early 2000s, and has since become a staple in most corporate organizations. Many companies use it for recruitment purposes, including onboarding new hires. 

The model remains popular because scientific evidence suggests that it can be a good predictor of job satisfaction, performance in leadership roles, and even career success.

Of course, this powerful tool can also transform your coaching practice, as well as your clients’ lives. I’ll be telling you exactly how you can use it to your advantage in Chapter 6. 

For now, though, let’s identify and break down the five traits in the model.

Chapter 2

Explaining the Big Five Personality Types