Why Openness Distinguishes Managers Who Develop Their Teams
Management is often described as a technical skill, a set of frameworks and processes for planning, organising, and directing people toward objectives. But the most consequential management work, developing individual team members, recognising when an approach is not working and changing it, building a team culture that attracts and retains talent, and navigating the organisational complexity that increasingly defines senior management roles, depends heavily on intellectual openness. Openness to experience, the Big Five trait capturing curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, and the willingness to question established assumptions, is the trait that determines whether a manager grows into a leadership role or executes their initial management style indefinitely, regardless of whether it is working.
The research on management effectiveness and personality, including work derived from Robert Hogan's decades of leadership research through Hogan Assessments, consistently identifies openness as one of the distinguishing characteristics of managers who continue to develop across their careers rather than plateauing after the first promotion. The link is straightforward: managers high in openness are curious about what their team members need, interested in whether their management approach is producing the intended results, and genuinely open to the feedback that would allow them to adjust. Managers low in openness apply the management style they developed early in their careers, adjust it minimally in response to feedback, and produce results that are highly dependent on whether that style happens to match the specific team and context they find themselves in.
The Six Facets of Openness in Management Work
The NEO-PI structure of openness into six facets clarifies which specific aspects of the trait matter most in management contexts.
Fantasy. The capacity for imagination supports the manager's ability to construct alternative team structures, different ways of organising work, and future states of team capability that do not yet exist. The manager who can imagine how their team could function differently, before the structures that would produce that function are in place, is drawing on the fantasy facet of openness.
Aesthetics. Sensitivity to quality and craft supports the manager's ability to recognise excellent work and to articulate what distinguishes it from adequate work. Managers high in aesthetics have standards that are not just rule-based but perceptual: they notice quality. This produces the feedback conversations that help team members understand what excellent work feels like, not just what it technically requires.
Feelings. Receptivity to emotional experience supports the manager's attunement to team dynamics, individual team member states, and the emotional texture of the working environment. Managers high in feelings notice when someone is struggling before the struggle affects performance metrics. They read the team's emotional response to decisions, strategy changes, and workload demands. This information is among the most valuable a manager can have.
Actions. Willingness to try new approaches supports the manager's experimental orientation toward management practice. The manager who tries a different approach to team meetings after discovering the current format is not working, who tests a new performance feedback structure, and who is genuinely open to discovering that their current management approach is not optimal for this specific team, is drawing on the actions facet.
Ideas. Intellectual curiosity about the domains the team works in, the management literature, and the organisational questions their team's work raises, supports the manager's ability to add intellectual value to the team's work beyond pure coordination. Managers high in ideas engage with the substance of the work they manage, which supports the conversations that develop team members beyond their current skill level.
Values. Willingness to question established organisational assumptions supports the manager's ability to advocate for team working conditions, challenge processes that are not serving the team's effectiveness, and notice when organisational norms have become counterproductive. Managers high in values are more likely to push back against institutional inertia when it harms their team's performance.
The Management Work That Openness Specifically Supports
Individual development planning is the most direct application. The manager who approaches each team member's development with genuine curiosity, who asks what they want to grow toward rather than mapping them onto the manager's own career trajectory, and who is open to discovering that different people need fundamentally different support, is applying openness to the most consequential long-term management function.
Feedback receptivity is the second. The most effective managers seek feedback about their own management practice from their team members and act on it. This requires the intellectual honesty to accept that their current approach may have significant gaps. Managers high in openness are more likely to seek this feedback genuinely, process it without excessive defensiveness, and make the adjustments that improve team performance.
Organisational change navigation is the third. Management in most organisations now involves managing through regular change: restructuring, strategy pivots, process redesign, technology adoption. The manager who approaches each change with genuine curiosity about what it will require, who explores what it means for their team rather than reflexively defending the status quo, manages their team more effectively through the transitions that organisational change produces.
The Long-Term Compound
Openness compounds across a management career through the cumulative effect on team development and personal growth. The manager who keeps learning about management adds compound value to each team they lead, as the accumulated lessons from previous teams inform their approach to the current one. The manager who does not grow applies the same approach across a career, with results that depend entirely on whether the fixed approach happens to match each successive context.
If you want a calibration on your Big Five profile, particularly your openness score and the underlying facet pattern, take the Big Five assessment to see your openness alongside the other four traits, with diagnostic feedback on which facets (fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions, ideas, values) are your particular strengths and which would benefit from deliberate development across your management career.