Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.
—H. JACKSON BROWNE
Character, what you are, is ultimately more important than competence, what you can do. Primary greatness is, at its base, a matter of character.
I emphasize the preeminence of character in the lives of people because I believe character (what a person is) is ultimately more important than competence (what a person can do). Obviously, both are important, but character is foundational. All else builds on this cornerstone. Even the very best structure, system, style, and skills can’t compensate completely for deficiencies in character.
Also, I believe courage and consideration are the key building blocks of emotional maturity, and that emotional maturity is foundational to all decisions and all relationships.
The emotionally mature person is also highly effective. Mature people may have a healthy ego, but they also have high respect for other people. They balance the courage of their commitment to principles with consideration for others.
I first learned that maturity is a balance between courage and consideration from one of my professors at the Harvard Business School, Hrand Saxenian. At the time, Hrand was working on his own doctoral thesis on the subject.
This is how he taught it: Emotional maturity is the ability to express your feelings and convictions with courage, balanced with consideration for the feelings and convictions of others.
The truth of that idea struck me powerfully. But even more powerful was the way he modeled it. For instance, when we entered the statistics portion of the course, he told the class that he didn’t know much about statistics, and that he would be learning along with us. He also acknowledged what our feelings might be, as we were in competition with other students and sections and had to take a schoolwide exam.
In self-defense, we sent a delegation to the dean’s office to ask for a new statistics teacher. We told the dean that we liked Mr. Saxenian as a teacher, but that his ignorance of statistics would put us at a disadvantage when we took the tests. To our annoyance, the dean simply said, “Well, just do the best you can.” So we went back to Hrand, and with his help, we got some technical notes and passed them around. In a sense, we taught each other statistics. And our section, out of eight, finished second in the exams.
I’m convinced we did well on the exams because Hrand had the courage to confess his ignorance of the subject and the consideration to help us come up with a solution. Hrand showed us that courage balanced with consideration was common to great leaders. In fact, he went back through history to show how the truly great leaders who built strong cultures behind a shared vision were those who had these two characteristics of emotional maturity, who beautifully balanced courage and consideration.
In a different way, I have also tested this idea. First, I have gone back into the history of management thought, interpersonal relationships theory, and human psychology theory, and I have found the same two concepts. For instance, the transactional-analysis theory Thomas Harris made popular in his book I’m Okay, You’re Okay really had its theoretical roots in both Eric Berne’s Games People Play and Sigmund Freud and his psychoanalytic theories. Well, what is “I’m okay, you’re okay” but courage balanced with consideration? “I’m okay, you’re not okay” means I have courage, but little respect or consideration for you. “I’m not okay, you’re okay” suggests no ego strength, no courage. And “I’m not okay, you’re not okay” suggests little courage and not much consideration.
Then I looked at the research of Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, the great theorists who looked at success from two dimensions: “Are you task-oriented or are you people-oriented?” Some are low in one area, some in both. The ideal, of course, is high people orientation plus high task orientation. In other words, high courage to drive the task to completion, plus high respect and consideration for others.
The concept of win-win is essentially the same thing: You have high respect for self to ensure that you win, but you work in a way that enables other people to win as well. If you’re synergistic, combining your strengths with theirs, you create far better solutions, as manifest in mission statements, decisions, strategic partnerships, and customer and employee relations. The win-lose approach is symptomatic of high respect for self, and low regard for others and their situation. The lose-win approach suggests low respect for self, and high regard for other people.
I examined other psychological theories and found that they all focus on the same two factors. Sometimes courage is called respect, confidence, tough-mindedness, or ego strength; and consideration may be called empathy or kindheartedness. I also found that same balance in the great philosophical and religious literature: “Treat others as you want to be treated” is an expression of this synergistic spirit.
Finally, I’ve interviewed many winners of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, which is given periodically to people and organizations that show dramatic improvements in the quality of their products or services. I have asked them the question, “What is the most difficult challenge you faced?” And they always say, “Giving up control.” In effect, they are saying, “We had to create synergistic relationships with all stakeholders. We had to reach the point where we really believed in other people, in a bone-deep way, not in some personality-ethic manner. We also had to learn to be strong in expressing how we see things.”
Essentially, the Baldrige winners learned to Think Win-Win; Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood; and Synergize (which are Habits 4, 5, and 6 of my 7 Habits). By practicing these habits, they gained new insights and skills, opened new options, engaged in more partnering and bonding, and boosted creativity. But it has to come out of this deep spirit of win-win, of courage balanced with consideration.
Balancing courage with consideration is a good way to achieve improved results and better relationships. Without this balance, you tend to get one at the expense of the other. For instance, I once worked with the president of a large organization who was a task-oriented person. If he needed to build relationships to get results, he could charm the socks off anybody, but it was always with regard to a task. The task defined the relationship. In other words, once he built the relationship, he would then get on with the task. I have known other people who were the opposite. They are so needful of relationships that they work relationships through tasks.
In searching for the factors that govern success in business, David McClelland, one of the great research psychologists at Harvard, developed what he called his need-achievement inventory. He would give people different pictures, and then have them make up a story based on the pictures. After listening to their stories, McClelland would profile the candidate, then give his recommendations to employers to match the profile of the person with the requirements of the job. He tended to classify people according to their need for power, affiliation, or achievement. In a sense, McClelland was looking at this concept of inward motivation. He identified character as the critical factor of long-term success.
Even though people may be technically well educated, if they don’t grow in emotional maturity, eventually their skills may be their undoing. For instance, the task-oriented president I mentioned earlier exhausted his social capital with his board of directors to the point at which he no longer had power or influence with them. The board would not sustain the president and they had to make a change. Board members felt that they were being manipulated by one superlative presentation after another, one big charmer after another. Eventually, the chickens came home to roost. Skills don’t trump character, yet the training and education of most people is designed to build competence, not character.
So how can we meet the equally important need for ongoing character development?
Find out how the people around you, those who have a stake in your success, measure your character. You could do this through a 360-degree stakeholder information system, which gives people solid, scientific, systematic feedback on their performance in both dimensions. A 360-degree survey gets information about a person from all stakeholders: employees, customers, supervisors, and co-workers. Then the person will say, “Gosh, I have low marks for team building and interdependency, even though I’m producing the numbers. What can I do?” Now they recognize where they need to work on character development. They can then organize resources to draw on: their families, their friends, professional association, church, and support groups.
I maintain that humility is the mother of virtues, because humility helps us center our lives on principles. Humility helps us see the need for ongoing character development. Humility helps us be considerate of others. I would then say that courage is the father of all virtues. Together courage and consideration help us become fully integrated as individuals. Karl Jung said that we never achieve individuation—the total integration of the human personality—until our later years. People must go through different phases of individuation. It takes a great deal of experience, going around the block many times in many ways, before we gradually come to see the consequences of erring on one side or the other, and gradually achieve an integration of our internal character.
That’s why you need to be patient with yourself to build strong character. People who start small and push a little every day at these high-leverage principles will expand their influence until they truly become models of good character and, eventually, mentors and teachers of other people. They become change catalysts and Transition Persons who can break cycles of negative behavior in their families, organizations, or communities.
For example, I once had an experience with the top partners of an international firm. They were grappling with the fact that many of their people had lots of competency but little consideration. In other words, they were smart but rude. “It shows in the way we admit people, the way we make them partners, the way we reward them. We have a low-trust culture. No wonder we’re losing some of our best minds. We have a political atmosphere where everyone is reading the tea leaves. We have moved so far away from our founding principles.”
In the last analysis, it’s the character in the culture that counts; yet, we let many character-destroying forces have their way with us until we lose the original character of the founders of the company or until we become programs ourselves, not programmers. And so we must begin the process of reprogramming to push on the levers of primary greatness.
How can we reprogram ourselves? Well, often we must first be humbled, either by circumstances, such as not getting desired results and losing our assets, or by crises, not getting the meaning or fulfillment we desire, or failing to maintain good relationships with our colleagues, spouses, and kids. We are then more willing to accept the fact that universal principles like respect, empathy, honesty, and trust ultimately govern. We are then more willing to accept responsibility for who and what we are. We are then more willing to develop and live by a solid sense of mission, which does much to produce integrity. Ultimately, what we are (character) is the most critical component of success.
In fact, I’ve concluded that the only way I can grow toward the ideal balance between competency and character is by living true to my conscience, to the principles that I know are right. If I begin in any way to falter in either competency or character, I can usually trace my failures within a few hours, if not days, to some flaw in the integrity of my life.
We read of actors who feel that they were exploited in certain roles and parts early in their careers. But as they gain more respect, they turn down scripts and roles that aren’t supportive of their new vision of themselves. They may even write their own scripts or determine what parts they play. We can also do the same in our careers.
I’m convinced that we can write and live our own scripts—more than most people acknowledge. I also know the price that must be paid. It’s a struggle. It requires visualization and affirmation. It involves living a life of integrity, starting with making and keeping promises, until the whole human personality—the senses, the thinking, the feeling, and the intuition—are no longer in conflict.
Many people need to break with the physical and emotional addictions that hold them down and reduce their quality of life. Until that happens, there can be little progress because the body is controlling the will. Once the break is made, people then have a path to progress. If they can get some degree of control over their appetites, they can have some degree of control over their passions, and even begin to structure their motivations and desires. Their character development can then skyrocket. It’s like breaking away from the tremendous gravitational pull of the earth and breaking out into space where there is flexibility and freedom.
We all struggle with these physical habits and appetites daily. Personally, I know that I have to keep myself under the influence of wisdom, conscience, and correct principles, or else sooner or later I suffer the effects directly, or those around me start to suffer. Violating one principle can lead to violating another; for example, I find that if I gorge at dinner, I might not be sensitive later to other people’s feelings. I have to live in control. Anytime I start feeling angry, if I go into self-analysis, I can usually trace that anger back to some indiscretion or indulgence on my part. I may justify and rationalize my behavior, but if I go counter to my conscience, I know it weakens my will. And I know it affects the level of consideration I have for the needs and feelings of others.
With the strong foundation of character in place, we can add all the colorful elements of personality. If you don’t have the character roots, you might pretend to play the part, but when push comes to shove, you’ll be uprooted. Such uprooting is among our most difficult learning experiences, but also among the most powerful and useful ones as we recommit to live lives of integrity.
• Develop a Personal Mission Statement based on a vision of your life—a vision of contribution to your family, your organization, your community. Write a statement that is based on principles that will not change.
• In your communications with others, consider your personal balance between courage and consideration. Are you able to express your feelings and convictions with courage while balancing them with consideration for the feelings and convictions of others? The next time you’re in a high-stakes conversation, deliberately try to strike that balance.
• How are you balancing your own productivity with your production capability? For one day, track how much time you spend being productive. Then compare it to the amount of time you spend increasing your production capability—that is, exercising, reading, learning, building relationships with others. In your personal journal, write your reflections on this exercise. What did you learn? What do you need to change?
• Physical and emotional addictions constrict our mind and spirit. Most of us have ingrained habits that hold us back. What holds you back? What steps could you take to break free? Make a goal to break one poor habit or to develop one habit that will strengthen you and improve your life.