Character Leadership: From the Inside Out

Character Leadership: From the Inside Out

This article examines Character Leadership theory as described by Benjamin Beckhart in his book “Lead With Character”.  Beckhart’s leadership understanding and orientation has developed primarily through his extensive experience as a leader rather than an academic or leadership development professional.  This make his views much more practical than theoretical.  That said, his extensive participation in leadership development programs has given him a deep understanding of leadership theory.

Character Leadership is best understood in contrast to Competency Theory.  Whereas Competency Theory’s foundation is the behaviors of effective leaders, Character Leadership’s foundation is in the characteristics or traits of a leader.  They both speak of behaviors, but Competency Theory focuses on the impact generated by behaviors and the development of leaders through the development of those behaviors.  Character Leadership views behaviors more as a result of characteristics and traits focusing more on how those characteristics and traits are developed and expressed.

Beckhart points to Howard Gardner’s framework for the experiences and traits of successful leaders in his book “Leading Minds”.

“The first is that at an early age leaders experience a difficult and emotional life-changing experience that shapes them. This life-changing experience may be the death of a parent or a loved one. The second commonality amongst leaders is that leaders are storytellers that engage and are relevant to others”

 Beckhart offers the following list of traits for Character Leaders with the definitions from Webster’s dictionary.

• Selflessness: having or showing great concern for other people and little or no concern for yourself.
• Honesty: good and truthful; not lying, stealing, or cheating; showing or suggesting a good and truthful character; not hiding the truth about someone or something; not meant to deceive someone.
• Visionary: having or showing clear ideas about what should happen or be done in the future; having or showing a powerful imagination.
• Humility: not proud; not thinking of yourself as better than other people.
• Curiosity: having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone.
• Courage: having or showing the ability to do something that you know is difficult or dangerous.
• Resiliency: able to become strong, healthy, or successful again after something bad happens.
• Compassion: sympathetic consciousness of others’ distresses together with a desire to alleviate.
• Creativity: having or showing an ability to make new things or think of new ideas.
• Engagement: emotional involvement or commitment; very attractive or pleasing in a way that holds your attention.

In addition to these characteristics, Beckhart refers frequently to morals and values.  He talks about how morals and values are developed by exposure to good examples and environments that teach, encourage, and even demand a clear sense of moral standards and shared values.  One example of this is expressed in the Harvard Business School oath.

“As a manager, my purpose is to serve the greater good by bringing people and resources together to create value that no single individual can build alone. Therefore I will seek a course that enhances the value my enterprise can create for society over the long term.”

In addition, character development requires experiences to act as a crucible for their formation.  This is captured in the following quote by Hellen Keller.

“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering.”

This brings us to the question of whether leaders can be created purposefully and who can be a leader.  Although Beckhart leaves this as an open question his orientation appears to be that it’s a mixture of purposeful and coincidental factors.  The difficult and life changing experiences that shape the character of leaders early in their lives would probably not be something we would impose purposefully on people in their formative years to develop their character.  This, however, still leaves open the opportunity to frame and process normally occurring challenges so that they will more likely lead to positive personality traits and characteristics.  As far as who can be a leader, I think it’s safe to say that Character Leadership leaves room for most or all people to lead, even if, and maybe especially when, they are reluctant to do so.

Morals and values are also seen as the basis of trust which, in turn, is the basis of relationships.  Since leadership is inherently a relationship between leaders and followers the presence of morals and values is a key characteristic of effective leaders.

The final ingredient for the development of Character Leaders is their willingness to change and their ability to tolerate critical self-examination.  In essence, it is their ability to learn and change that is the foundation of their development.  The motivation for this can only come from a desire for improvement.  People whose desire to lead is driven primarily by their ambition or desire for power would be hard pressed to develop themselves into the trustworthy, moral and values based leaders described by his theory.

When I shared this analysis with Ben, who I have the privilege of knowing personally, he shared the following additional thought with me.

“Everyone is a leader whether they want to or not.  Some step up, others don’t. Karen, my wife, has no inclination nor interest in being a Leader.    She, however, agreed to be a leader when I pointed out that, as a Mom, she was a willing “character leader” instilling traits, morals, and values in our kids.  Karen had not seen it in this light.”

At Ethical Leaders in Action we believe that most, if not all people, can develop themselves to play leadership roles in many different spheres both large and small. The foundation of this development process is a short but powerful list of virtues which can be developed and improved through conscious effort. For more information feel free to take the Virtues of Ethical Leadership Self Inventory (VELSI) which breaks these virtues down into features that can be individually developed. The results of the VELSI come with a quick reference guide to help you understand how the virtues and their individual features fit together. https://ethinact.com/velsi/

See a list of other posts in this series at https://ethinact.com/blog-post-series/

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