ARE BOSSES UNIQUE? PERSONALITY FACET DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CEOS AND STAFF IN FIVE WORK SECTORS Kat Palaiou University College London Adrian Furnham University College London and Norwegian Business School This study compared the Big Five Personality facet scores of 138 CEOs compared with senior managers. The former were significantly less neurotic and had higher extraver- sion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness scores on both domain and facet scales. The results were then investigated in 5 work functions: engineering, legal, accounting/ finance, human resources, and marketing. Two traits showed very consistent results for all 5 functions: CEOs were less neurotic and more conscientious with Cohen’s d values between .30 and .85. Results were also examined at the phenotypic factor level to show a more detailed pattern. These results are consistent with the relatively few other studies on the personalities of CEOs. Implications and limitations are discussed. Keywords: five factor model, bright side, CEO, working norms Personality characteristics have been shown to play a significant role in work-related attitudes/ behaviors (Barrick & Mount, 2005). Consequently, industrial/organizational (I/O) researchers have turned their attention toward identifying the essence of the relationship and the mechanisms that underlie it (Barrick, Mount, & Judge, 2001). Researchers have noted that personality affects two main behaviors that are vital for an organization: employee performance and withdrawal (Li, Barrick, Zimmerman, & Chiaburu, 2014). The personality traits that are less associated with employee withdrawal are conscientiousness, emotional stability (opposite pole of neuroticism), and agreeableness (Barrick & Mount, 2005; Zimmerman, 2008). Five Factor Model and Job Performance/Career Success The five factor model (FFM) assesses five basic personality domains: extraversion, neuroticism or emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience (McCrae & Costa, 1990). The FFM is considered one of the most valid and reliable research models on personality and leadership (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2002; McCrae & Costa, 1997) for two main reasons. First, the five domains are extremely stable over the life span of an adult Kat Palaiou, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London; Adrian Furnham, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, and Department of Leadership and Organisational Behaviour, Norwegian Business School. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Adrian Furnham, Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, United Kingdom, WC1H0AP. E-mail: a.furnham@ucl.ac.uk This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research © 2014 American Psychological Association 2014, Vol. 66, No. 3, 173–196 1065-9293/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000010 173