Character Always Counts

I subscribe to a number of Ezines and have learned a great deal from so many of the great mentors and leaders of our time through their weekly rants.

As I was reading Chris Widener's 7 May article #3 The Last Word... I was struck by how much I agree with his take on leadership. The article is  Chris's answer to a question he was asked at one of his seminars. How can a person increase their sphere of influence. Chris states that in study after study, it is shown that people chose to follow other people based on two simple characteristics:  skill and character.

I suspect that very few people want to follow a person who demonstrates incompetence! So it only makes sense that leaders need to be quite good at what they do. In life, we are constantly working to improve ourselves. That applies to all areas of our lives whether it is professionally, personally, spiritually or physically. We tend to gravitate to those who we perceive we can learn from. When we work or play side by side with someone whose skills exceed our own, we find ourselves performing at a higher level. We learn from that other person's skills. Even if they don't realize they are teaching, we learn because we are watching, replicating, and trying to improve. We challenge ourselves to perform as well as (or better than) the "expert" so that some day we will be the expert.

But regardless how skilled a person is, I believe character is even more important. We will follow a skilled person until we learn everything we can learn from that person. But if they do not have integrity, we will not continue to follow once we have learned all we can learn through their expertise.

If that experienced person also has good character and we feel we can trust them to deal with others with integrity and respect, we will continue to follow or at least be positively influenced by the expert even if we have learned all the skills they have to teach.

In fact, I have observed (at least within myself!), that frequently a person with integrity does not have to have the same level of expertise as a person without integrity to be able to influence others. People want to follow people with integrity and character.

So if you aspire to be a leader, remember that character definitely counts. You will always be working to increase your competency and skill. People will respect you for your efforts and forgive you for not knowing everything.

But they may not forgive you for a lapse in integrity - even if you only demonstrate it one time.