What character traits guide you? The positive character traits of integrity, responsibility, forgiveness and compassion show improvements in the bottom line.
The traditionally held views of the success ladder included; being married to the job, working twelve hours a day, being ruthless with staff, suppliers and customers. These are not valid and don’t produce positive results.
Watch your daily news for individuals who have tripped and fallen from the executive suite, ministry or career achievement. The causes for major failures are rarely, dropping market share, balancing the budget or dividends to shareholders. Review the literature on the RMS Titanic (April 15, 1912), Challenger Disaster (January 28, 1986), Valdez Oil Spill (March 24, 1989), Deepwater Horizon Explosion (April 20, 2010). You’ll find the obvious. Yes, the Titanic hit an iceberg. Look deeper at the leadership decisions that caused these horrific accidents in history. The starting point in the chain of tragic events is rarely technical. The real cause is an ethical, compassion or integrity decision.
Ground breaking research confirms a dramatic improvement in results is achieved when CEO’s practice concentrates on integrity, responsibility, forgiveness, and compassion.
In his book, Return on Character: The Real Reason Leaders and Their Companies Win, Fred Kiel confirms, “I had expected to discover a relationship between hard business results and character, but I also was prepared for that relationship to be relatively weak. Instead, we found that when a business is led by a Virtuoso CEO and senior Executive team, we can predict with some accuracy that the business will achieve a greater positive return on assets than business lead by Self-Focused CEO’s and Teams. In other words, revealed that Return on Character is both real and significant.”
Nice people finish well.
Leadership is identifying and living your positive character traits achieving success.
Yours in Service,
Laurie D. Kennedy
Leadership Coach
Jethro Group