Reflecting on Your Character: The Key to Effective Leadership

As 2022 comes to a close, I invite each of us to use the year’s end as a time of deep professional reflection. Let’s schedule December meetings with ourselves to quietly conduct an honest assessment of ourselves as leaders.

When I suggest deep reflection, I mean to say that I would like for you to take stock of your current stage of character development and evaluate the mental and moral qualities you displayed as a leader this year.

In my book, Is This a Lousy Job or Is It Me?, I explain the seven stages of character development that we may move through over the course of our careers. I would recommend that you start your deep reflection by completing the Stage of Character Development Questionnaire. Once you have established a reasonable, objective assessment of your current stage of character development, take time to consider the impact of your character upon your leadership effectiveness, the people around you, and the success of your business throughout 2022.

As you can imagine, your impact upon others and your business can vary wildly depending upon the maturation of your character. It’s worth noting that one stage of character development, the Fear Stage, can be harder on those around you than it is on you when you are in a leadership position. There are hints of the misery that fear-based leaders can cause throughout Is This a Lousy Job, such as Jim at the law firm in chapter 3 and, most notably, Anna at the electrical contracting company in chapter 5. You can leave a particularly large wake of turmoil if you get “stuck” in the Fear Stage, especially if your behavior escalates to the “fruitless” fear-based behaviors described in chapter 3 and embedded within the two striking real-life examples below.

One example of escalated fear-based moral qualities involves a leader who had leveraged his position to engage in an inappropriate relationship with a married subordinate. What was the result of his fear-based behaviors on the people around him and the business? His behavior distracted people from their work, consumed significant time and business resources to address the situation, and betrayed the trust of the employer, his teammates, and the employees of the company.

An example of escalated fear-based mental qualities involves a CEO who regularly pitted one leadership team member against another, frequently displayed moody reactions to business discussions, including storming out of leadership team meetings, and antagonistic comments and actions toward her subordinates. What was the result of her fear-based behaviors on the people around her and the business? Her behavior created a chaotic environment wherein the leadership team members, most of whom had evolved beyond the Fear Stage of character development, found themselves reaching backwards to borrow self-protective fear-based behaviors that they had long-since outgrown to function within the turbulent and unpredictable environment. As you can imagine, this prevented the leadership team from operating efficiently and effectively, which prevented the business from achieving its performance goals.

These two cases of escalated fear-based leadership behaviors provide dramatic illustrations of the potential impact of one’s mental and moral qualities on his or her career, coworkers, and organization. The examples remind us that that we have a responsibility to honestly assess and invest in the development of our character because not doing so can be consequential. More importantly, taking the time to do so is rewarding because it unlocks our capacity to employ more sophisticated leadership principles and techniques in order to build deeply fulfilling careers that are meaningful to others’ lives and to our organizations.

So, let’s grab some coffee (or tea!) and quiet time this month to reflect on our individual leadership performance over the last year through the lens of character. Then, let’s use the insights we gain from our deep contemplations to make actionable, thoughtful plans to become even better leaders in 2023.

Cheers to our ongoing self-discovery and growth!