

Having your workforce participate in an employee engagement survey can be a quick way to assess whether employees have an internal locus of control. By contrast, if you have people whose control orientation is far more internal, they probably won't need much (if any) external management to deliver the kind of organizational behavior that is consistent with high performers (and other successful people). If we have people who lack personal control and require external forces to keep them in line, then managers will have to work significantly harder to maintain order. Ponder this from the perspective of control theory, which is the idea that we either external or internal control systems are required to keep us from deviating from accepted behavior. In other words, people with a high internal locus of control are 136% happier with their career. As you can see in the chart below, people with a low internal locus of control rated that question 1.85 but those with a high internal locus of control scored a 4.37. We asked people to rate how happy they are with where their career is right now (on a scale ranging from zero to six). This matters because people with a high internal locus of control are far happier with their career. Having A Strong Internal Locus Means Employees are 136% More Likely To Love Their Careerīased on the Leadership IQ study we know that only 17% of people have a high internal locus on control, while about 29% of people have low or moderately low internal locus of control (aka an external locus of control).

By contrast, someone with a strong external locus will ascribe their career failures or problems to others and NOT take corrective action. In fact, research shows that internal locus of control predicts better health outcomes, work satisfaction, and academic success. Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that their interactions with their environment will produce predictable results (Li, Lepp, & Barkley, 2015). Overall, it incorporates the ability to take action, be effective, influence your own life, and assume responsibility for your behaviors. Internal locus of control can also be called “agency”. Overall Self-Engagement, like control belief, attribution theory, optimism, benefit finding, etc., did a better job of predicting employee engagement. Using regression analyses, we then compared the traditional employee engagement questions to the Self-Engagement questions to see which ones did a better job of predicting employee engagement. their dominant personality characteristic, like their perceived control, optimism, resilience, proactivity, assertiveness, ambition, etc., including using a modified version of Rotter's control scale). FIRST, respondents answered traditional employee engagement survey questions (about how managers engage employees), like: “My immediate supervisor recognizes my accomplishments” AND “My immediate supervisor thoughtfully considers my ideas.” SECOND, respondents answered questions about their mental health and personality (i.e. Leadership IQ, a research and leadership training company, surveyed 11,308 employees about their employee engagement, and compared traditional engagement survey questions with new personality and mental health measures to assess which questions were more effective at predicting overall employee engagement and inspiration.

By contrast, someone with an external locus of control might blame office politics, ruminate or no longer apply for promotions. Someone with an internal locus of control might acknowledge that they didn’t network well enough prior to applying and resolve to spend more time meeting with the company’s executives. Let’s imagine that we lost out on a promotion. By contrast, having a high external locus of control would mean that one attributes success or failure to factors outside of their control. People with a high internal locus of control believe that they control their own success or failure that success or failure is not the result of chance or fate. Rotter (1966) first defined locus of control as a person’s perception of his or her control over events and outcomes in their environment.ĭo you truly believe that you will succeed if only you work hard enough? Or do you feel like circumstances outside your control could derail your plans and prevent you from being successful? Locus of control is what an individual believes causes his or her experiences, and the factors to which that person attributes their successes or failures.
