Does Workplace Connection Boost Performance? Research on Liked People

Workplace social connection performance — how well you are positioned within your professional relationships — may matter just as much as raw skill when it comes to career outcomes. Research suggests that two people with nearly identical abilities and work ethics can end up with very different evaluations, salaries, and promotion speeds, and a key reason may lie not in what they know, but in where they stand in the social fabric of their organization.

For a long time, the prevailing view in organizational psychology was straightforward: work outcomes are driven by personality and effort. More conscientious? Higher performer. More extroverted? Better networker. But a large-scale meta-analysis synthesizing data from 138 separate studies challenges that simple picture. The findings suggest that the position a person occupies in their workplace’s social network — not just their personality traits — plays a meaningful role in shaping how they are evaluated, how quickly they advance, and how much compensation they receive. This article breaks down what those findings mean for anyone trying to understand — or improve — their standing at work.

Once again, personality researcher and author of Villain Encyclopedia, Tokiwa (@etokiwa999), will provide the explanation.
※We have developed the HEXACO-JP Personality Assessment! It has more scientific basis than MBTI. Tap below for details.

Why Workplace Social Connection Performance Goes Beyond Personality

The Longstanding Assumption That Personality Decides Everything

The key insight here is that personality alone does not determine workplace outcomes. Decades of research in organizational behavior established strong links between certain personality traits — particularly conscientiousness — and job performance. That gave rise to a broadly held belief: hire for the right personality, and performance will follow. This view is not wrong, but it is incomplete.

What the 138-study meta-analysis revealed is that even after accounting for personality, the social position a person occupies at work carries independent predictive power. Think of a new employee navigating an unfamiliar team. Working alone, they may struggle for months. But if 5 experienced colleagues are willing to offer advice, share information, and vouch for their work, their output — and their visibility — climbs faster. The social network is not decoration around the “real” work; it is part of the infrastructure that determines what gets done and who gets credit for it.

Workplace relationships and productivity, in other words, are deeply intertwined. The research synthesized findings across a wide variety of industries and organizational types, which gives the conclusions a degree of generalizability that single-company studies lack. The core message: personality matters, but so does the position you occupy in your web of professional relationships — and the two influences are partially separate.

Does Personality Predict Your Career? Science-Backed Facts

What a Meta-Analysis of 138 Studies Actually Tells Us

A meta-analysis is essentially a study of studies — and drawing from 138 of them gives the findings unusual statistical weight. Rather than relying on one company’s data or one industry’s quirks, this approach pools results across diverse workplaces, countries, and job types. Think of it as asking the same core question 138 different times and then looking for what consistently shows up in the answers.

The three main variables examined were:

• Personality traits — specifically the Big Five dimensions (conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness) plus self-monitoring ability
• Network position — where a person sits in the social structure of their organization, primarily measured as centrality (being chosen by many) and brokerage (bridging disconnected groups)
• Work outcomes — including job performance ratings, promotions, salary advancement, and broader career success

One of the most telling statistics from the analysis: personality traits explained only about 3% to 5% of the variance in network position. That number is statistically significant — it is definitely not zero — but it also means that roughly 95% to 97% of where you end up in the social network cannot be predicted by personality alone. Other forces — organizational structure, job role, team composition, tenure, and deliberate social effort — appear to account for the vast majority of a person’s network position. This finding alone is a strong argument for paying attention to social capital at work as something that can be consciously cultivated, rather than something fixed by temperament.

Human Capital Management Boosts Performance: Meta-Analysis

Defining “Network Position” in Plain Terms

Network position refers not to how many connections you have, but to where you sit relative to others in the flow of information, support, and influence. Two people can each know 20 colleagues and yet occupy completely different network positions depending on who those colleagues are and how they relate to each other.

The research focused on 2 primary types of network position:

• Centrality (being widely chosen) — A person high in centrality is frequently sought out for advice, collaboration, or support. Many people direct their attention and requests toward them. This is sometimes described as the “popular” or “hub” position.
• Brokerage (bridging structural holes) — A person high in brokerage sits between groups that are not otherwise connected. They act as a conduit, passing information and resources between people who would not otherwise interact. This is the classic “bridge-builder” or intermediary role.

The distinction matters because these two positions carry different advantages, expose their holders to different risks, and — as the analysis revealed — have meaningfully different relationships with actual work outcomes. Understanding which position you currently occupy, and which one might benefit you most, is one of the most actionable insights this line of research offers.

Do Workplace Friendships Boost Productivity? Science Says Yes

The 2 Network Positions That Shape Workplace Social Connection Performance

Being Widely Chosen: The Centrality Advantage

The single strongest network-related predictor of work outcomes in the meta-analysis was centrality — the degree to which many colleagues choose to turn to you. Centrality, in social network terms, is a measure of how often a person is nominated as a go-to contact by others in the same organization. People high in centrality tend to receive more consultation requests, more collaboration invitations, and more informal information-sharing than those on the periphery.

Why does being widely chosen translate into better outcomes? Several mechanisms appear to be at work:

• Information access — Central figures hear about problems, opportunities, and organizational changes earlier than peripheral employees, giving them more time to respond and adapt.
• Resource mobilization — When a task requires cross-team cooperation, a central person can call on a larger pool of willing helpers, making it easier to deliver results on challenging assignments.
• Visibility to evaluators — Supervisors and senior leaders naturally observe the flow of consultation in a team. Someone who is frequently sought out signals competence and trustworthiness, which tends to translate into higher performance ratings.
• Accumulated endorsements — Each time a colleague asks for your input and comes away satisfied, it quietly reinforces your reputation. Over time, centrality becomes self-reinforcing.

Research found that centrality showed a consistent, positive relationship with both job performance ratings and career advancement indicators such as promotions and salary growth. Importantly, this relationship held up even after controlling for personality traits — meaning it is not simply a proxy for extraversion or agreeableness.

5 Personality Traits That Boost Communication Skills

Structural Holes Brokerage: The Bridge-Builder’s Double-Edged Role

Structural holes brokerage — occupying a position between otherwise disconnected groups — has long been celebrated in organizational theory as a source of competitive advantage, but the meta-analysis suggests a more nuanced picture. A broker is someone who connects two clusters of people that would not otherwise communicate. Picture a project manager who simultaneously maintains relationships with the engineering team, the marketing department, and the external vendor: information flows through them that no single other person possesses.

The theorized advantages of brokerage include:

• Access to diverse, non-redundant information — Because the broker’s contacts belong to different groups, the information arriving from each is less likely to overlap, providing a richer and more varied knowledge base.
• Early intelligence — News and opportunities often spread within a cluster before crossing to another. The broker hears both sides first.
• Negotiating leverage — Acting as the conduit between two groups can confer influence over how resources and decisions flow between them.

Despite these advantages, the meta-analysis found that brokerage showed a notably weaker relationship with job performance than centrality did. For career advancement outcomes (promotions, salary), brokerage did show some positive associations, but the effect was inconsistent. One plausible explanation is visibility: bridge-builders often work behind the scenes, and their coordination efforts may be less apparent to evaluators than the visible popularity of a central colleague. Brokerage is not worthless — but it tends to be context-dependent rather than universally beneficial.

5 Personality Traits That Drive Organizational Citizenship

Centrality vs. Brokerage: Which Network Position Wins?

Across the board, centrality showed a more consistent and stronger relationship with work outcomes than brokerage did. This finding somewhat challenges the conventional wisdom that emphasizes the broker role as the secret to organizational influence. The data suggest that for most everyday performance evaluations, being widely trusted and frequently consulted carries more weight than being strategically positioned between silos.

That said, the two positions are not mutually exclusive. A person can be both highly central within their immediate team and simultaneously serve as a broker between departments. The practical implication is prioritization: if you have limited social energy to invest, research suggests that building depth of trust with a wide range of colleagues — becoming someone people genuinely want to consult — is likely to yield stronger performance-related returns than deliberately engineering connections between distant groups.

The distinction also matters for how organizations design teams and evaluate talent. Managers who recognize only the strategic bridge-builders may be overlooking the quietly central figures whose day-to-day consulted presence keeps team knowledge and motivation flowing. Interpersonal connection work outcomes, the evidence suggests, are strongly shaped by this “chosen” quality — and that has real implications for how career development should be approached.

How Personality Traits Influence Network Position and Work Outcomes

Self-Monitoring: The Trait That Predicts Network Centrality Most Clearly

Of all the personality variables examined, self-monitoring ability emerged as the clearest predictor of centrality — even after accounting for the other Big Five traits. Self-monitoring refers to a person’s tendency to observe the social environment and adapt their behavior accordingly. High self-monitors are skilled at reading a room: they present themselves differently to a senior executive than to a close colleague, and they adjust their communication style fluidly depending on context.

This trait predicts centrality for intuitive reasons. People who can adapt their tone, style, and approach to suit different audiences tend to make a wider variety of colleagues feel comfortable approaching them. They also tend to be effective in unfamiliar social situations — like joining a new team or attending a cross-departmental meeting — where fixed behavioral patterns would cause friction. Research found that high self-monitors were more likely to occupy central positions in their networks, and this relationship held up even after controlling for extraversion (which one might otherwise assume accounts for the effect).

Importantly, self-monitoring also showed a direct positive relationship with job performance, separate from its network effects. This suggests that social adaptability benefits performance through at least 2 channels: by improving one’s network position, and by directly enhancing the quality of moment-to-moment workplace interactions.

Extraversion: Helpful, But Not as Decisive as Expected

Extraversion — the tendency toward sociability, assertiveness, and positive affect — showed a more limited relationship with network position and performance than many might expect. Extroverts are often assumed to be natural network builders, and there is some truth to that intuition. The analysis did find a positive association between extraversion and brokerage in work-related networks: outgoing, talkative individuals may indeed be more likely to forge connections across departmental boundaries.

However, extraversion did not show a strong relationship with centrality — the more consequential network position for performance. This is a meaningful nuance. Being loud and social does not automatically translate into being the person everyone genuinely trusts and wants to consult. Centrality appears to require a different quality: consistent reliability, genuine helpfulness, and the kind of interpersonal attunement that self-monitoring captures better than raw sociability does.

For introverted workers, this finding is encouraging. Likability in the workplace — the deeper form that drives centrality — does not appear to require an extroverted personality. It tends to be earned through demonstrated competence and genuine responsiveness, qualities accessible to people across the introversion-extraversion spectrum.

Conscientiousness: A Reliable Predictor With Dual Pathways

Conscientiousness — the tendency to be organized, dependable, and goal-directed — showed one of the most stable relationships with work outcomes, and it appears to operate through both direct and network-mediated pathways. People high in conscientiousness tend to follow through on commitments, meet deadlines, and maintain quality standards consistently. These behaviors build the kind of trust that naturally attracts consultation requests from colleagues.

The analysis found that conscientiousness predicted centrality in work-related networks, suggesting that reliable people tend to become go-to figures over time. It also showed a direct positive relationship with job performance ratings, independent of network position. This dual pathway — through both network building and direct task quality — makes conscientiousness one of the more powerful traits in the dataset.

The practical implication is straightforward: consistently delivering on your commitments is not just about the immediate task. It is also an investment in social capital at work. Every time you deliver what you promised, you incrementally increase the probability that a colleague will turn to you the next time they need help — and that accumulation is what drives centrality over time.

Agreeableness: A Social Asset With a Potential Career Ceiling

Agreeableness — the tendency to be cooperative, empathetic, and warm — predicted centrality in friendship networks, but its relationship with career advancement was more complicated. Agreeable individuals are naturally inclined to listen, accommodate, and support others, which makes them valuable social resources within teams. Colleagues tend to feel comfortable around them and may seek them out for emotional support or collaborative work.

However, the meta-analysis found that agreeableness was sometimes negatively associated with promotions. One interpretation is that highly agreeable individuals may be perceived as conflict-averse or insufficiently assertive, potentially limiting their upward mobility in competitive organizational environments. This does not mean agreeableness is a liability — far from it — but it suggests that relying on agreeableness alone as a career strategy may have limits. Pairing warmth with clear communication of one’s own goals, contributions, and boundaries appears to be important for turning social goodwill into tangible career progress.

Neuroticism: How Emotional Instability Undermines Network Position

Neuroticism — characterized by a tendency toward anxiety, emotional volatility, and negative affect — showed a negative relationship with centrality, suggesting that individuals who frequently appear stressed or emotionally unpredictable tend to be less sought-out by colleagues. This finding aligns with common intuition: people generally prefer to bring their questions and problems to someone who projects stability and calm.

High neuroticism was also negatively associated with career success indicators in the analysis. The mechanisms are likely multiple: high-neuroticism individuals may self-limit their social outreach due to anxiety about rejection or judgment; they may also generate interpersonal friction that discourages colleagues from initiating contact. That said, it is important not to over-pathologize this finding. Neuroticism exists on a spectrum, and many people who experience higher-than-average anxiety still build strong professional networks. The relationship is a tendency, not a sentence.

Burnout Personality Traits: Who Burns Out Fastest?

How Personality, Network Position, and Performance Connect: The Full Picture

Direct Effects vs. Mediated Effects: Two Separate Channels

One of the more sophisticated contributions of this meta-analysis is its examination of whether network position mediates — that is, partly explains — the relationship between personality and performance. A mediated relationship works like a relay: personality influences network position, and network position then influences performance. A direct relationship bypasses the relay: personality affects performance regardless of network dynamics.

The findings suggest both channels are active. Personality traits like conscientiousness and self-monitoring influence network position, and that network position independently predicts outcomes. But personality also retains a direct effect on performance even after controlling for network position. This means that neither channel is the whole story. An employee who is highly conscientious benefits from that trait both because it helps them build a trusted network position AND because conscientiousness directly improves the quality and reliability of their work product.

For practitioners — HR professionals, team leaders, coaches — this dual-channel model has practical implications. Interventions aimed purely at changing personality (largely futile) or purely at restructuring networks (often difficult) may both miss part of the picture. The most effective approach likely involves helping individuals understand both their natural personality tendencies and their current network position, then strategically developing the intersection of the two.

How Accurate Are Hiring Personality Tests? Research Says Pretty Accurate

What the 3%–5% Variance Figure Really Means

The fact that personality explained only 3% to 5% of variance in network position is easy to dismiss as trivially small — but doing so would be a mistake. Organizational behavior is notoriously difficult to predict. Job roles, hierarchies, physical office layouts, team composition policies, and seniority norms all constrain how much any individual-level variable can move the needle on social network structure. Within that heavily constrained environment, a 3%–5% explained variance from personality alone is meaningful.

Consider a team of 100 employees. A 5% predictive advantage translates into the ability to correctly identify approximately 5 more people who will occupy highly central positions than a purely random guess would achieve. In competitive hiring or leadership development contexts, that margin can matter considerably. The more important takeaway, however, is the inverse: because personality explains so little of network position, most of what determines where you sit in your organization’s social web is not fixed by your character. It is built — through behavior, reputation, and deliberate relationship investment over time.

Network Position as a Partial Mediator: What This Implies for Career Strategy

Because network position partially mediates the personality-performance relationship, deliberately cultivating a stronger network position may amplify whatever natural personality advantages a person already has. A conscientious employee who is also highly central in their network is not just doubling up on their conscientious advantage — they are creating conditions where their reliable work is more visible, more frequently recognized, and more often rewarded.

This mediation finding also implies that personality-based disadvantages can, to some degree, be compensated for through network investment. An employee who scores lower in conscientiousness may be able to partially offset performance gaps by building a central network position — because centrality brings information, support, and visibility that help sustain performance even when individual self-discipline wavers. This is not an argument for avoiding self-improvement, but it is an argument for recognizing that social capital at work functions as a genuine productivity resource, not just a social nicety.

Does Personality Predict Your Career? Science Says Yes

Practical Strategies for Improving Your Network Position at Work

Strengths to Build On

Understanding which of your traits are already working in your favor is the first step toward consciously strengthening your network position. Based on the research findings, here are the key strengths to leverage and the specific behaviors that tend to build centrality over time:

• Leverage conscientiousness by making your reliability visible. It is not enough to quietly meet every deadline — let colleagues know when a deliverable is ready, follow up on shared commitments, and be the person who closes open loops. Visible reliability is what transforms conscientiousness into centrality.
• Practice context-sensitive communication. High self-monitors adjust their tone and style to suit their audience. You do not need a different personality — just a habit of briefly considering, before any significant interaction, what style will make the other person feel most heard and respected. Over time, this habit makes you feel approachable to a wider range of colleagues.
• Be a genuine resource, not just a networker. Centrality is built by actually helping people — answering questions fully, sharing relevant information proactively, and connecting colleagues who need each other. Purely transactional networking tends to produce weak ties; genuine helpfulness builds the strong, trust-based ties that drive centrality.
• Seek out consultation opportunities, not just collaboration. Offering your perspective on a colleague’s challenge — even informally — begins the pattern of consultation that builds centrality. Research suggests that being seen as someone worth asking is more valuable for performance outcomes than simply knowing the right people.

Risks to Watch Out For

Certain patterns — some rooted in personality, others in habit — can quietly undermine network position even in otherwise capable employees. Being aware of these tendencies allows you to address them before they compound into career limitations.

• Avoid “invisible bridge-building.” If you spend significant energy coordinating between departments or teams, make sure that work is periodically visible to evaluators. Brokerage that happens entirely behind the scenes may not convert into performance recognition, even when it is genuinely valuable.
• Monitor for excessive agreeableness. Warmth and cooperation are genuine assets for building relationships — but chronically yielding to others, avoiding disagreement, or consistently declining to advocate for your own contributions can create a perception of low assertiveness that limits advancement.
• Manage emotional signals deliberately. Research suggests that frequent expressions of anxiety or frustration can make colleagues hesitant to seek you out, gradually eroding centrality. This does not mean suppressing genuine emotions — but it does mean developing strategies (brief pauses before responding, reframing stressful situations) that help you project stability in most professional interactions.
• Do not mistake activity for position. Sending many emails, attending many meetings, or knowing many people’s names does not automatically translate into high centrality. What matters is whether people actively direct their questions, problems, and collaboration requests to you. Periodically reflect on whether your professional relationships are deepening in that direction.

Frequently Asked Questions

How strong is the connection between workplace social connections and job performance?

Research synthesizing 138 studies found that personality traits explained roughly 3% to 5% of variance in network position, and network position — particularly centrality — showed consistent positive associations with job performance and career advancement. While these numbers may sound modest, they are statistically meaningful given the many structural constraints that limit individual-level predictors in organizations. Being widely chosen by colleagues tends to correlate reliably with stronger performance evaluations and faster career progression.

Are introverted employees at a disadvantage when it comes to building a central network position?

Not necessarily. Research indicates that extraversion did not strongly predict centrality — the network position most consistently linked to performance outcomes. What tended to predict centrality more reliably was self-monitoring ability (adapting behavior to context) and conscientiousness (being reliably helpful and dependable). Both traits are accessible across the introversion-extraversion spectrum. Introverts who are attentive, trustworthy, and genuinely helpful may build strong central positions over time without needing high social energy.

What is structural holes brokerage, and does it actually help career advancement?

Structural holes brokerage refers to occupying a network position that bridges otherwise disconnected groups or individuals within an organization. The broker controls the flow of information and resources between those groups. Research suggests that brokerage has a weaker and more inconsistent relationship with job performance than centrality does. However, it showed some positive associations with promotions and career advancement in certain contexts. Its effectiveness tends to depend heavily on organizational culture, role visibility, and whether the broker’s coordinating work is recognized by evaluators.

Can a person deliberately improve their network centrality, or is it mostly determined by personality?

The evidence strongly suggests that network centrality is largely buildable. Personality traits explained only about 3% to 5% of network position variance — meaning the vast majority of where someone ends up in their organization’s social network is not determined by temperament. Behavioral patterns such as consistently following through on commitments, proactively sharing useful information, and making oneself genuinely available for consultation tend to increase centrality over time, regardless of introversion, agreeableness, or other fixed personality dimensions.

Is being highly agreeable a disadvantage for promotions?

Research found that agreeableness, while positively associated with centrality in friendship networks, showed a negative relationship with promotions in some analyses. This may reflect a perception that highly agreeable individuals are conflict-averse or insufficiently assertive in competitive environments. The implication is not that agreeableness is harmful overall — it is a genuine social asset — but that pairing warmth with visible advocacy for one’s own contributions and clear communication of professional goals appears important for converting likability into upward career movement.

Does personality affect performance directly, or only through its effect on social networks?

Both pathways appear to be active. The meta-analysis found that personality traits — especially conscientiousness and self-monitoring ability — maintained direct positive associations with job performance even after accounting for network position. At the same time, network position partially mediated some of these relationships, meaning personality also helps performance indirectly by shaping the social positions people occupy. Neither channel alone tells the full story; personality and network position appear to contribute to work outcomes both independently and in combination.

What is the most important personality trait for building strong workplace connections?

Based on the research findings, self-monitoring ability — the capacity to observe social situations and adapt one’s behavior to suit them — emerged as the most consistent personality predictor of network centrality, even when other Big Five traits were controlled for. Conscientiousness was a close second, particularly for building trust-based, work-related connections. High self-monitors tend to make a wider variety of colleagues feel comfortable approaching them, which is the core mechanism through which centrality develops over time.

Summary: What the Research Tells Us About Connection, Character, and Career

The evidence from this large-scale meta-analysis paints a richer picture of professional success than the simple “talent wins” narrative. Workplace social connection performance — specifically, occupying a central position in your organization’s web of consultation and collaboration — tends to predict job performance ratings, promotions, and salary growth more consistently than brokerage does, and it operates as a meaningful career resource alongside (not instead of) personality traits like conscientiousness and self-monitoring ability.

The key takeaways are worth holding onto: centrality matters more than brokerage for most performance outcomes; personality explains only a small fraction of network position, which means network position is largely something you build; and the combination of dependable behavior and socially adaptive communication creates a compounding advantage over time. This is not about being popular for its own sake — it is about recognizing that the quality and direction of your workplace relationships are a genuine performance resource, not a soft luxury.

If you found this analysis thought-provoking, consider reflecting on your own network position: Are you the person colleagues genuinely turn to for advice and collaboration — or are you mostly working in parallel to those around you? Exploring your personality profile can be a useful starting point for identifying which traits are already supporting your network-building efforts and where small behavioral shifts might open new doors. Use what you have learned here to take a fresh look at the connections that shape your working life.