ABSTRACT
There are two ways to ensuring the effectiveness of human performance. One is by professional selection, the so-called “screening out” of individuals with specic attributes. The other one is individual training methods directed toward the formation of individual strategies of activity based on features of personality of the individual in the process of adaptation to the objective requirements of activity. While in the West, the selection method was used more intensive, in the former Soviet Union, the attention mostly was directed toward the development of methods for individual training. The concept of individual style of activity was rst introduced by Merlin (1964, 1986) and Klimov (1969). They were able to establish that different individuals can perform the same work with equal efciency through the use of their own individual style of performance, which is more suitable to their personality features. People attempt to compensate for individual weaknesses with their personal strengths in a given task situation; that is, by implementing the individual style of activity, they diminish the impact of their negative features of personality on performance. Among other authors who studied the effect of different personality features on performance were Bedny and Voskoboynikov (1975), Merlinkin (1977), Bedny and Seglin (1999), and others.
