I’ve been a student of leadership for a while now. It started with Simon Sinek and his numerous talks about leadership. He talked about how great leaders make you feel inspired. How they make you feel safe. And then Brené Brown took her work with Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, and applied it to leadership with her book Dare to Lead. That was a revelation, wasn’t it?

Then I found myself in a place where my job was to learn as much as I could about Leadership, and share it with our people. Can’t get any better than that, can it?

Oh but it can.

I quickly learned that my organization had adopted this new leadership framework: Character Based Leadership.

Character… based leadership?

It was the biggest AHA moment I’d felt in a long time. It was the missing piece of the puzzle. In all my research, my deep dive into all things leadership, I had seen a lot of ideas, a lot of approaches, but nothing so complete.

Sure, there’s tons out there about Transcendent Leadership, and Servant Leadership. There’s mindful leaders, strategic leaders, and leaders who are compassionate and human.

In everything I’d learned about leadership – and I know I’ve only read a tiny fraction of the leadership literature out there – it always felt like we were either looking at Vision and Drive, OR being human, empathetic and compassionate. It was always just one piece of the leadership puzzle at a time.

Character Based Leadership is about leading from who you are. AND, it’s the whole puzzle.

This is the leadership idea that says “You don’t have to choose between one or the other”… well, you still do, but at least, with this framework, YOU get to be the judge of what’s necessary in each situation. Let me explain.

How the character framework works

Here’s the thing: the idea of character isn’t new. It didn’t just drop from the sky. I mean, Aristotle and Plato talked about character. But now with this framework, we can take all the great ideas around character and start putting the puzzle pieces together.

The whole thing was conceptualized over years of research by folks at the Ivey Business School, in Western University (Ontario, Canada). Long story short, they took much of the great work by Seligman and Pedersen on character (think Via Character Strengths) and asked “How can we apply this to the corporate world?”

Then through more research, they came up with 11 dimensions of character:

• Transcendence
• Drive
• Collaboration
• Humanity
• Humility
• Integrity
• Temperance
• Justice
• Accountability
• Courage
• Judgment

Each dimension has a set of elements that describes it and, they double as specific areas of character that we can focus on and develop to strengthen that dimension overall. But more on that later.

Why didn’t we think of this sooner? Why now?

Remember the financial crisis of 2008? Did you watch The Big Short? Yeah, it wasn’t lack of competence that led to all those people losing their jobs, their homes and their pensions. When researchers asked the question “what happened?” they found that it wasn’t because leaders weren’t highly competent in their jobs. It’s not that they didn’t know what to do or how to go about doing it.

It was lack of character. All kinds of messed up decision-making.

Which brings me to one important thing that distinguishes this framework as perfect for application within the organizational context: Judgment. The reason it’s at the centre of the image is because within the context of work, your character is exercised through your Judgment.

We can tell a lot about who you are, by the decisions you make.

You know that saying “Actions speak louder than words”? It’s true. And it speaks even louder the higher up you are in the organizational ranks. You can spew as much corporate jargon about vision and values, about how incivility isn’t tolerated, and how you value diversity, but if you don’t match those words with actions, nobody will trust your leadership.

Some important things to remember:

All dimensions of character are important, and all are needed to make strong character

This isn’t a model where you can focus on your strengths and leave your weaker areas behind. And you can’t balance it out by building your team to fill the gaps either.

Can you think of someone who has a ton of Drive, but isn’t great at Collaborating? Think “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself”. Worst. Quote. Ever. If you’ve ever had a teammate like that – and god forbid they’ve been your boss – you’ve felt how demoralizing it can be to work with them.

What about someone who takes all the credit for the successes of the team or organization, but is quick to blame others for any failures? (lack of Accountability).

Strong character requires strength in all dimensions so they balance each other out.

All dimensions of character are inter-connected

See that line between each of the bubbles? It’s not something that was added just to make it pretty. And those bi-directional arrows pointing to the middle and back? It’s to show that there’s probably a few of those dimensions at play, in any given situation, and they all manifest through the many Judgment calls you make all day, every day.

When you’re starting a new project, you need a bunch of diverse people with different ideas (Collaboration) to conceptualize the whole thing. You also need a vision of what you want, where you’re going, and room for creativity and innovation to happen (all aspects of Transcendence). And don’t forget that at some point, you need to stop brainstorming and start getting things done (Drive).

Maybe you need to have a difficult conversation about racial injustice and incivility within your organization (Justice). That requires you create a safe space and be open-minded to listen to people’s stories (Humility and Humanity) and then to take Accountability for the actions your people took (because YOU are their leader, which means you failed to help your people learn and understand what’s ok and what’s not ok in your organization. YOU allowed it to happen).

Maybe you simply realize that you haven’t been your whole self at work (Integrity) for fear of being judged. So you decide to come out to your team (Courage) and you find out that they still care about you, applaud your courage, and thank you for sharing this part of yourself with them (Humanity).

We’re not looking for perfection, we’re looking for balance.

You’re not expected to exercise ALL 11 dimensions of character at once, all the time. That’s why Judgment is at the centre. Someone with strong character knows which dimension is necessary in any given moment. Sometimes you really do need to take quick action (Drive), rather than take time to consult everyone. And sometimes you can afford to talk to people and understand their perspectives and opinions, before making systemic changes to a policy or process (Collaboration, Justice, Humanity).

You won’t get it right all the time, and we don’t expect you to. But strong character also means you admit when you’re wrong (Humility) and take responsibility for your actions and decisions (Accountability).

Character doesn’t replace competence in organizations

It’s not that we’re suddenly going “We’ve been doing it all wrong!”. Skills and knowledge are still very important. You still have to be able to do the job at the end of the day. Though, more and more we’re talking about how skills can be learned on the job.

It’s just that Character is the missing piece of the puzzle. Hiring managers have been craving something like this as part of their hiring processes. They’re given these standard interview questions by HR to assess whether candidates have the competencies necessary to do the job. But managers have been asking for a long time for tools on how to find “the right fit” for their team. Many have been going off script and asking their own impromptu interview questions to get some sense of who the candidate is in order to determine whether they’re the right person for their team.

And their intuition was right. Everyone knows you can have a highly competent jerk on your team. In fact, I’m sure most of you can think of one right now.

Character can be developed

You know the whole Fixed and Growth Mindset thing? Yeah, it applies here. Character is something we all have, but it’s not set in stone when we’re born. Our character is shaped as we grow, by the people who surround us and influence us, by what we learn, by our successes and failures, by the crucibles we go through. And it never ceases to develop, change and grow over time.

Character development is a life-long journey.

It’s not the kind of thing where you can “take a training” at work and say “I now have character!”. Sorry. Like personal development, and leadership development for that matter, once you know about character, it’s something you need to constantly learn about and practice. Learning about character and committing to developing our character is a huge component of our overall growth journey towards becoming the best version of ourselves.

You can start using the framework today

There’s so much more to unpack around this topic, and I plan to do that over the next while. At least now, we have language with which to talk about some of these important issues.

For now, take the image of the framework, print it out and put it on your wall over your workspace. Look at it. Reflect on which dimensions you feel are strongest, and where you think you might need to give a little TLC. Take your notebook or journal and write your reflections down.

Bring it to work. Show it to your team and colleagues. Ask them where they see your strengths lie and which areas need more work. Have conversations about what each of the dimensions means to you, about what strong character looks like for you. Then pick one element within one of those dimensions, and commit to working on that one for a while.

Maybe you need to get better at being your authentic self (Integrity). Maybe you need to work on being more optimistic and creative (Transcendence). Maybe you need to work on remaining calm in tense situations (Temperance). Maybe you need to work on speaking up at meetings, especially when you disagree on an idea or decision (Courage). Whatever it is, be compassionate with yourself about needing to work on it, and then find some practices to strengthen that element.

Because, as a leader, the more you work on strengthening your character, the more positive impact you will have on your team and your work.