Skills, motivation, personal characteristics: the equation that measures the secret of a successful performance

What makes an athlete an Olympic champion? What factors make a surgeon a leading expert? What is it that allows a craftsman to masterfully execute their work? What’s behind a successfully passed university exam successfully passed? It’s been a long time since work psychology, education studies and management are interrogating themselves on the factors that allow to perform well in any field.

After over 10 years of work, a research group led by Filippo Ferrari, professor at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna, was able to identify the factors that determine performance and quantify them with an equation that accounts for skills, motivation, personal characteristics, and external context.

The study – published on the Business Process Management Journal – shows that personal factors influence between 40 and 65% of the final performance outcome, while a share ranging from 35 to 60% is determined by external factors.

‘This equation provides an objective framework to measure factors influencing the employees’ performances, offering strategic insights for human resource management’, explains Filippo Ferrari. ‘This model helps organisations focus on specific skills that are more critical for performance, enabling targeted training while ignoring less relevant skills’.

But how does this equation work? Let’s look at an example. What makes Jannick Sinner a champion? First of all, he has a physique and a personality suited for the game of tennis (personal characteristics). Secondly, he possesses excellent levels of tennis technique (ability). Lastly, he trains and competes with intensity, tenacity and dedication (motivation). These factors are fundamental to any tennis player’s performance, even for a mediocre one. However, in Sinner, they are exceptionally high.

The same applies to university students: to successfully pass an exam they must have certain personal traits (intelligence, aptitude for the subject) – and these are personal characteristics. Then, they must work with consistency and intensity to prepare for and take the exam – and this relates to motivation. Lastly, they must possess specific skills: they should know how to take notes during class, be able to summarise texts and to use technologies that can help them study – these are abilities.

‘From a theoretical perspective, a deficit in one specific factor might be compensated by particularly high levels in other factors. however, from a mathematical point of view, the three factors cannot all simultaneously equal zero, otherwise performance would be impossible and would depend solely on external factors’, explains Ferrari. ‘In addition to skills, motivation and personal characteristics, many other situational factors such as leadership style or psychological climate can influence performance. This value needs to be included in the equation as well’.

Therefore, the equation allows to measure which part of performance depends on the individual’s abilities and which on the context,  ascribing the appropriate responsibilities to the individual and avoiding evaluating the performance for aspects that are beyond their control.

By connecting skills, motivation and personal characteristics, the model developed by researchers of the University of Bologna allows for the estimation of future performances and provides a more reliable method than measuring general cognitive capacities, which is often less accurate. In this way, the model enables an objective and efficient implementation of all the practices connected to selection, management, orientation and personnel development. This means that this model can contribute to create a performance evaluation system that is more just, reducing prejudices to minimum levels and improving organisational justice.

The paper was published on the Business Process Management Journal under the title ‘The employee-related antecedents of work performance: exploring a three-sided model for Human Resources Management’, and it is signed by Filippo Ferrari, professor at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna.