Selflessness is a Dimension of Value orientation. It describes a person's tendency to place others' advantages above their own rather than to act for their own advantage (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003).
In doing so, you can see the individual selflessness of a person on a continuum between the two poles Act for your own benefit and Acting for the benefit of others Classify. The value of each person can therefore be located at one point on the following scale:
Act for your own benefit
People who are more interested in their own advantage primarily prioritize achieving their own goals.
In relationships with business partners, customers and colleagues, they try to maximize their personal advantage and the advantage of their organization.
In doing so, they make few compromises and the other person also has to back off from time to time.
Acting for the benefit of others
People who are more interested in the advantage of others primarily prioritize the well-being of the other person.
In relationships with business partners, customers and colleagues, they try to give their counterpart an advantage.
They want to achieve the best result for everyone involved, even if that means that there is significantly less left over for themselves.
Benefits in a professional context
As you can see, the right fit for a vacancy depends not only on the person's selflessness, but also on the characteristics of the vacancy.
Depending on the focus of the company, both a person focused on one's own advantage and one focused on the advantage of others may be the best choice. If the job focuses on maximizing one's own interests and not making any compromises, it is more necessary to act for one's own advantage. If, on the other hand, it is a question of everyone involved achieving the best result overall or caring for other people, you must also be able to act to the advantage of others.
With a value diagnosis, you can therefore reduce the risk of mis-hires and at the same time achieve greater diversity in the workplace!
How do you understand selflessness?
Want to assess selflessness in your applicants? Aivy is happy to help you with this!
Our mini game “Cooperation” offers users the opportunity to learn more about their individual Decision-making behavior find out.
Sources
- Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003). The nature of human altruism. Nature, 425(6960), 785-791.
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