Having a Conscience in Business: Guilt Proneness, Job Performance, and Leadership Potential

Overlooked in previous models of personality, guilt proneness is an important moral character trait that predicts job performance and leadership potential. We all make mistakes or fail to live up to our own or other people’s standards on occasion. People who are low in guilt proneness are not particularly bothered by mistakes or transgressions, and as such fail to take corrective action to fix them or avoid such behavior in the first place. The highly guilt prone, on the other hand, feel bad about mistakes and transgressions, especially when their actions negatively impact others. Moreover, they can anticipate such feelings before they occur and as a result behave more responsibly and ethically. In this chapter, I describe what guilt proneness is, how it can be measured, and provide evidence suggesting that individuals with higher versus lower levels of guilt proneness have better job performance and are better leaders, owing to their heightened sense of interpersonal responsibility. Individuals with higher levels of guilt proneness work harder at their jobs, commit less workplace deviance, do more organizational citizenship, and make more favorable impressions on negotiation counterparts, as compared to individuals with lower levels of guilt proneness.