Effective leadership is unequivocally dependant on character. There is no greater impact on your performance, effectiveness and accomplishment of you and your area of responsibility than the heart of character. Your education, experience, network and influence pale in comparison to the positive or negative character issues.
Our news media is filled with leaders whose careers, families and reputations are destroyed by character flaws. Employees and volunteers respect their leaders more for their values than for their productivity. An effective leader can miss a corporate goal and recover. A missed deadline, cost overrun or mistake can be fixed yet. However, a character flaw, a scandal or negative reputation will lead to long term failure.
Dwight Moody, the nineteenth-century lay evangelist, details, “The word character comes from a Greek verb meaning “to engrave.” A person’s character, then, is the visible sign of his inner nature. “Character is what we are beneath our personality (mask)”, quoted in The World’s most powerful Leadership Principle, by James C. Hunter.
“…when it comes to the people who are responsible for making those organizations healthy, it’s all about character. Yes, character.” Patrick Lencioni quoted in Derailed p xiv
If General Norman Schwarzkopf is correct, “Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.” General Norman is quoted by James C. Hunter in The World’s most powerful Leadership Principle. Then, as leaders we need to look inward, look at heart issues. “Jesus considered the condition of a person’s heart to be the paramount issue.” Mays, Angie Courteous Rebel.
But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his statue, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).
“Character is the foundation of great leadership. We have to get this right to stay on track.” Derailed by Tim Irwin.
Leadership is strength of character.
Yours in Service,
Laurie D. Kennedy
Leadership Coach