Do You Make Things Happen?
The urge to change your surroundings instead of adapting to them - and where it pays off
Some people treat their situation as something to be changed; others treat it as something to work within. Organisational psychologists call the first tendency proactive personality, and it turned out to predict salaries, promotions and career satisfaction beyond many of the usual suspects. But the same research found that not every proactive habit is rewarded - one of them, speaking up, was linked to slower advancement. This test measures the disposition and four ways it shows up at work.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Answer about your working or study life as it actually is. If you are between jobs, think of your last one.
What it measures
The first bar is proactive personality, the relatively stable tendency to act on your environment rather than wait for it to change. The other three are behaviours that followed from it in a two-year study of employees: innovation, career initiative and voice. It differs from the leadership test on this site, which is about how you lead people; proactivity is about initiating change whatever your role.
Based on: Proactive Personality Scale (Bateman & Crant, 1993), with the career behaviours studied by Seibert, Kraimer & Crant (2001)
Possible results
Proactive disposition
Your general tendency to change situations rather than adapt to them.
Innovation
Coming up with better ways of working and getting them adopted.
Career initiative
Actively steering your career: training, contacts and planned moves.
Voice
Speaking up with suggestions and concerns, even when it is uncomfortable.
Common questions
Does being proactive really help your career?
On average, yes. In a survey of about 500 employees, proactive personality predicted salary, promotions and career satisfaction even after controlling for education, experience and other known factors. A follow-up study over two years found it worked through innovation, understanding how decisions are really made, and career initiative. Speaking up, however, was linked to slower progression - so the style of proactivity matters.
Is proactive personality the same as leadership?
They are related but different. In the original study, people with high scores were more often nominated by peers as transformational leaders. But proactivity is about initiating change, and you can do that as an intern, a freelancer or a volunteer with nobody reporting to you. Leadership is about influencing a group; the leadership test on this site measures that separately.
Can you become more proactive?
The disposition is fairly stable, like other personality traits, but the behaviours are learnable and depend heavily on the setting. It is also easier where trying things is safe and you have some say in how you work. Starting with one concrete behaviour - a single improvement you see through, or one contact you keep up - is more realistic than trying to change your personality.
Sources
- Bateman, T. S., & Crant, J. M. (1993). The proactive component of organizational behavior: A measure and correlates. Journal of Organizational Behavior. doi:10.1002/job.4030140202
- Seibert, S. E., Crant, J. M., & Kraimer, M. L. (1999). Proactive personality and career success. Journal of Applied Psychology. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.84.3.416
- Seibert, S. E., Kraimer, M. L., & Crant, J. M. (2001). What do proactive people do? A longitudinal model linking proactive personality and career success. Personnel Psychology. doi:10.1111/j.1744-6570.2001.tb00234.x
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Proactive Personality Scale, so scores are not comparable with published norms. That scale is one-dimensional: only the first bar corresponds to it. Innovation, career initiative and voice are related behaviours studied as outcomes of proactive personality, not validated factors of the scale. The core studies used North American samples, where initiative is prized; in other cultures and organisations the same behaviour can be read very differently.
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