LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE CHARACTER KNOW THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATE CHARACTER

LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE CHARACTER
KNOW THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATE CHARACTER
BY PROF. PAUL ALLIEU KAMARA
PROFESSOR OF LEADERSHIP AND ORGANIZATIONAL
DEVELOPMENT
RUDOLPH KWANUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE-LIBERIA

INTRODUCTION
WHAT IS CHARACTER
What is the definition of a character?
Britannica Dictionary definition of CHARACTER. 1. [Count]: the way someone thinks, feels,
and behaves: someone's personality — usually singular. He rarely shows his true character—that
of a kind and sensitive person.
Leadership vs Character
Great leadership is a combination of competence, character, and commitment. Character is an
individual's unique combination of internalized beliefs and moral habits that motivates and
shapes how that individual relates to others.
Why Character Matters in Leadership
Every leader wants to be successful. But sometimes, the results achieved come at the cost of
character. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that the most dangerous person is
likely gifted with reason but no morals. A blind passion for results damages a leader's reputation
and the organization. Evidence from workplace studies on the benefits of character suggests that
leaders with high character scores outperform others on company performance metrics.
Leadership behaviors guide actions, but a leader's character determines how and if the leader
acts. Great leadership is a combination of competence, character, and commitment. This article
provides three practical steps to help you develop your character strengths and pass your next
character test.
Why is Character Important to Your Success?
Leadership creates moments not defined by policy or procedures - situations where leaders have
to choose between right and right.
Every day you make character decisions, consciously or unconsciously, such as between speed
or quality and long-term or short-term results. The impact of these decisions either reinforces
your team's desired or undesired thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love
can do that. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In a study of executive leaders and their organizations over a two-year period, CEOs who scored
high on aspects of character had an average return on assets (ROA) of 9.35%, in contrast to
CEOs with low ratings had a ROA of 1.93%.
Leadership character is shown to align the leader-follower relationship, increasing both leader
and follower productivity, effectiveness, and creativity. Leadership character plays a vital role in
unifying a team.
Followers will give more when they respect the leader's character. A focus on helping others is
essential to providing effective strategic leadership. Also, character helps leaders navigate
change more effectively.
What is Leadership Character?
Leadership character is doing the right thing for the right reasons and with the right feelings. It is
the inner game of leadership. While outer game leadership behaviors are easy to observe, a
leader's inner game quietly controls their outer game.
Character is the unique combination of internalized beliefs and moral habits that motivates and
shapes how that you relate to others. Fred Kiel
Evidence suggests that there are four universal leadership character principles:
 Integrity – Being honest, acting consistently with principles, standing up for what is right, and
keeping promises.
 Responsibility – Owning personal decisions, admitting mistakes, and showing concern for the
common good.
 Forgiveness – Letting go of self and others' mistakes, focused on what is right versus only what
is wrong.

 Compassion – Empathizing with others, empowering others, actively caring for others, and
committing to others' growth.
A leader's character determines how knowledge, skills, and abilities are applied. Leadership
decisions are often based on values, worldviews, and past experiences. Your past, even as a
child, has shaped your current perception of what is right or wrong. Family members, friends,
religious leaders, and the community where you live and work reinforce your character.
How to Measure and Assess Your Leadership Character
Although character can seem complex to understand, it can be reliably defined and measured.
Character does not need to be considered subjective. In fact, the more self-aware you are of your
character strengths and those of your team, the better you can lead.
VIA Character Strength Survey
The VIA Character Strength Survey is a validated instrument for assessing character strengths. It
has been completed by over 15 million people globally, and all of the scales have satisfactory
reliability (> 0.70 alphas).
The free VIA Character Strength Survey provides insights into your 24-character strengths in
rank order. Character strengths are values in action or positive thinking, feeling, and behaving
traits that benefit the leader and others. For more information regarding the VIA Character
Strengths Survey, visit www.viacharacter.org.
Accidental Habit Assessment
Few leaders seek to develop bad habits. Everyone I know strives for good habits. That is why
this quiz is labeled the Accidental Habit Assessment (AHA). It helps you uncover possible
leadership bad habits that are keeping you from getting the most out of life and work.
The free quiz includes a customized report and guide that will provide you with an "aha"
moment as you reflect on your leadership to understand your strengths and accidental habits
needing improvement. You can also use the report as a personalized reading plan to access
researched and field-tested leadership resources and transformational tools in the book, Life-

Changing Leadership Habits: 10 Proven Principles That Will Elevate People, Profit, and
Purpose.
3 Practical Steps to Develop Leadership Character in Your Business
Most leadership development programs focus on building competence, and the leader's character
is often left out. A lack of attention to character harms both the leader and the organization's
performance.
Character Development Step #1: Making the invisible visible
The conversation of leadership character development in the workplace is lacking and needs to
be raised to the same level as developing leadership competence. The desired goal is to increase
character development investments, not replace them.
Start with clarifying leadership inner game and outer game expectations:
 What should leaders do? You might already have these leadership behaviors defined in
performance reviews or leadership competency models.
 What kind of leaders should they be? If you are unsure where to begin, research-based books and
articles like those mentioned and cited in this post can be great resources.
Character Development Step #2: Make it experiential
Leadership character development should involve challenging simulation experiences that
involve everyday decisions between right and right. These experiences should also include time
for guided reflection with each participant. Additionally, the development should include
teaching leaders specific habits for dealing with challenging issues.
Character Development Step #3: Assessment and coaching
Character development is a process and not an event. A proven way to develop character is to
combine self-assessment with executive coaching. The combination of enhanced self-awareness
and a thought-provoking creative executive coaching program inspires transformation and
growth.

How You Can Ace Your Next Character Test
Choosing between what is best for yourself or what is best for others creates very different
outcomes for you and your business. Leadership character matters, and it is difficult to regain
trust once lost. Acing your next character test is possible by being deliberate and persevering.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort,
but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Passing a test of character begins with knowing your non-negotiables. You will do your best
when you have a clear picture of what leading with character looks like for you. List your
leadership inner game and outer game principles. Then expand on each of these by writing a
brief, vivid description of how each principle guides you in a given situation.
Surround yourself with accountability partners. Share the list of principles you have defined and
invite people close enough to know you well to hold you accountable if you start to get off track.
The influence of others is powerful on performance. Leaders tend to become more isolated the
higher they move in a company, and the role of a coach and mentor becomes even more critical.
Making the next right choice in a test of character is simply making the next right choice. You
build leadership character like you build physical endurance. Training helps create character
muscle memory making the right decision automatically. Attend a leadership development
program that focuses on both the inner and outer game of leadership.
Key Summary Points
 Great leadership is a combination of competence, character, and commitment.
 Character is an individual’s unique combination of internalized beliefs and moral habits that
motivates and shapes how that individual relates to others.

 Leadership character is shown to align the leader-follower relationship, increasing both leader
and follower productivity, effectiveness, and creativity.
 Leadership character can be measured, and feedback can be provided through executive
coaching as part of a leadership development process that targets the leader's inner and outer
game.
 Character development needs to be raised within organizations to the same level as leadership
competencies.
Striving for better habits is a competitive advantage available to any leader looking for a
powerful point of differentiation. Our transformational executive coaching, leadership
development, and organizational consulting help you achieve your goals and get more out of life
and work.
Competencies, commitment and character
Competencies matter. They define what a person is capable of doing; in our assessments of
leaders we look for intellect as well as organizational, business, people and strategic
competencies. Commitment is critical. It reflects the extent to which individuals aspire to the
hard work of leadership, how engaged they are in the role, and how prepared they are to make
the sacrifices necessary to succeed. But above all, character counts. It determines how leaders
perceive and analyze the contexts in which they operate. Character determines how they use the
competencies they have. It shapes the decisions they make, and how these decisions are
implemented and evaluated.
Figure 1: Who Good Leaders Are
While specific competencies may differ with the role, we believe that these same criteria should
also be considered in director recruitment, selection, evaluation and turnover.
Focus on character
Our research has focused on leadership character because it’s the least understood of these three
criteria and the most difficult to talk about. Character is foundational for effective decision-
making. It influences what information executives seek out and consider, how they interpret it,
how they report the information, how they implement board directives, and many other facets of
governance.

Within a board, directors require open, robust, and critical but respectful discussions with other
directors who have integrity, as well as a willingness to collaborate and the courage to dissent.
They must also take the long view while focusing on the shorter-range results, and exercise
excellent judgment. All of these behaviors hinge on character.
Our research team at Ivey was made very conscious of the role of character in business
leadership and governance when we conducted exploratory and qualitative research on the
causes of the 2008 financial meltdown and the subsequent recession.[1] In focus groups and
conference-based discussions, where we met with over 300 business leaders on three continents,
participants identified character weaknesses or defects as being at the epicenter of the build-up in
financial-system leverage over the preceding decade, and the ensuing meltdown. Additionally,
the participants identified leadership character strengths as key factors that distinguished the
companies that survived or even prospered during the meltdown from those that failed or were
badly damaged.
Participants in this research project identified issues with character in both leadership and
governance. Among them were:
 Overconfidence bordering on arrogance that led to reckless or excessive risk-taking
behaviors
 Lack of transparency and in some cases lack of integrity
 Sheer inattention to critical issues
 Lack of accountability for the huge risks associated with astronomical individual rewards
 Intemperate and injudicious decision-making
 A lack of respect for individuals that actually got in the way of effective team functioning
 Hyper-competitiveness among leaders of major financial institutions
 Irresponsibility toward shareholders and the societies within which these organizations
operated.
These character elements and many others were identified as root or contributory causes of the
excessive buildup of leverage in financial markets and the subsequent meltdown.
But the comments from the business leaders in our research also raise important questions about
leadership character. Among them:
 What is character? It’s a term that we use quite often: “He’s a bad character”; “A person
of good character”; “A character reference.” But what do we really mean by leadership
“character”?

 Why is it so difficult to talk about someone’s character? Why do we find it difficult to
assess someone’s character with the same degree of comfort we seem to have in assessing
their competencies and commitment?
 Can character be learned, developed, shaped and molded, or is it something that must be
present from birth – or at least from childhood or adolescence? Can it change? What, if
anything, can leaders do to help develop good character among their followers and a
culture of good character in their organizations?
Leadership character dimensions
We define character as an amalgam of traits, values and virtues. Traits, such as open-mindedness
or extroversion, may be either inherited or acquired; they predispose people to behave in certain
ways, if not overridden by other forces such as values, or situational variables such as
organizational culture and rewards. Values, such as loyalty and honesty, are deep-seated beliefs
that people hold about what is morally right or wrong or, alternatively, what makes the most
sense to do, or not do, in running a business. Virtues, such as courage or accountability, refer to
patterns of situationally appropriate behaviors that are generally considered to be emblematic of
“good” leaders.[2]
In Figure 2, we posit character as consisting of 11 dimensions: integrity, humility, courage,
humanity, drive, accountability, temperance, justice, collaboration, transcendence and judgment.
If we were to take just one of these dimensions – accountability, for example – we could say that
it is defined by traits such as self-confidence and internal locus of control, values such as a
deeply-held belief that good leaders should take ownership for their actions, and the near-
universal view that good leaders readily hold themselves accountable for results. Each of these
11 dimensions has a similar underlying structure of traits-values-virtues, and each could be
extensively deconstructed and discussed in greater depth.
The following set of dimensions, together with an illustrative set of elements that describe each
dimension, is unique in that it attempts to integrate age-old concepts from philosophy with more
contemporary thinking from the fields of psychology, sociology, anthropology, evolutionary
biology, management and leadership. The wording of these dimensions is heavily influenced by
the language used by the executive- and board-level participants in our “Leadership on Trial”
research, subsequent qualitative and quantitative work with leaders, managers and students to
ensure that we had identified relevant dimensions, as well as endless debate within our own
research group.[3] This analysis differs from many other discussions of character in that it

extends the definition of character to embrace other aspects of personality traits, values and
virtues, rather than focusing exclusively or primarily on its moral dimensions.
Figure 2: Dimensions of Leadership Character
Drive
Drive is essential in leaders so that they will establish stretch goals and the plans to achieve
them, behaviors highly valued by boards. Leaders with drive demonstrate a passion to achieve
results, the vigor to motivate others; they demonstrate initiative and a desire to excel. We prefer
to think of good leaders as having drive that comes from within, rather than “being driven,”
which suggests some external force. Drive should not be confused with hyper-competitiveness,
destructive excess that can impede required collaboration, or with complacency, a
dysfunctional deficiency that can lead to underperformance.
Accountability
Accountability includes a sense of ownership, being conscientious in the discharge of leadership
mandates, and accepting of the consequences of one’s actions. Good boards demand this of their
executives; shareholders require boards and individual directors to demonstrate high levels of
accountability for results and the ways in which they are achieved. However, taking the whole
world on one’s shoulders is an excess that can result in burn-out or paralyze someone from
taking action. On the other hand, ducking legitimate responsibility results in negligent and
reckless conduct that will lose leaders or directors the respect of their peers, those whom they
report to, and those who work for them.
Collaboration
Collaboration is highly prized as a dimension of leadership character. It is essential for leaders to
form effective teams, to cooperate with others, and to work collegially. They have to be open-
minded, and be flexible so that they can cooperate with those in their own organizations as well
as in external groups. However, collaboration for its own sake may result in endless deferral of
decisions until consensus is reached, while lone-wolf decision-making squanders the
opportunities to benefit from a diversity of views, better-quality ideas and smoother
implementation of decisions.
Humanity

Humanity, which we describe as consideration for others, empathy, compassion, magnanimity
and the capacity for forgiveness, is essential to developing followership. Without it, a person can
be an effective boss, but never a good leader. We do not view humanity as a soft or weak
dimension of leadership character but, rather, as a fundamental strength that is often at the core
of fostering quality, candid conversations, and is essential in supporting other dimensions of
character. However, we recognize that being tenderhearted may induce paralysis in decision-
making, especially in situations in which some people may be disadvantaged, such as
downsizing. We also recognize that being hardhearted, callous, or indifferent destroys human
relationships, and usually results in leaders being rejected by their followers.
Humility
Humility has long been regarded as an essential quality for leaders; without humility, it’s
impossible to learn from others or from one’s own mistakes. This dimension embraces a degree
of self-awareness, the capacity for reflection, and a sense of gratitude toward those who have
helped one learn or achieve success. Boards eventually lose patience with CEOs or fellow
directors who don’t have an open mind, or who are arrogant and contemptuous of others.
However, as with the other dimensions, it is important to guard against excessive humility, such
as might lead to self-abnegation. This is actually a failure to recognize personal strengths that can
undermine the self-confidence that leaders must have.
Temperance
Temperance allows leaders to be calm when others around them panic, to think things through,
and to act in the best long-term interests of the organization. It helps them avoid over-reacting to
short-term success or failure, and to assess both the risks and the rewards of alternative courses
of action. Temperance as a dimension is one that is often not top-of-mind for directors, until
some risk blows up in the board’s face – then it becomes highly prized! However, boards must
be concerned when temperance is so strong that it contributes to undesirable temerity. Boards
actually want leaders to take risks, provided that the leaders understand these risks and know
how to manage them.
Justice
Justice is a dimension of a leader that is central to followers’ decisions to accept an individual’s
leadership. This construct incorporates fairness and even-handedness in both procedures and
outcomes, such as the allocation of work and dispensation of rewards. It includes a sense of
proportionality with respect to praise or censure and – in a broader sense – recognition of the

requirement of a leader to contribute to the growth and development of the societies within
which they operate. Boards sometimes struggle with this dimension of character, recognizing its
importance but wondering about its role in a profit-maximizing context. But leaders who act
unjustly soon find themselves violating societal expectations; they court reactions such as over-
regulation and excessive controls that will likely undermine long-term performance. We see this
happening in the financial sector today, where executive compensation in many organizations
that were bailed out by government support during the financial crisis has emboldened regulators
and their political masters to push for even more stringent controls on “too-big-to-fail” banks.
Courage
Courage, both mental and sometimes physical, is a requisite character dimension for leaders. It
includes preparedness to take risks, to challenge the status quo, to test uncharted waters, to speak
out against perceived wrongdoing, and to be prepared to admit to concepts such as “I don’t
know,” or “I screwed up.” Sometimes it requires courage to adopt a lower-risk strategy, forgoing
the immediate returns of a higher-risk route. It may include a degree of resilience as leaders fail
in their first efforts to accomplish something. Boards appreciate courage in their CEOs and
fellow directors, although they want to avoid the extreme of recklessness. They realize that
absence of courage results in compliance with authority, a moral muteness that allows
wrongdoing to go unchallenged and unreported, and average or even mediocre returns.
Transcendence
Transcendence is the dimension that allows leaders to see the big picture and take the long view.
It means doing what’s right for their organizations rather than pursuing the expedient or
momentarily satisfying route, climbing above petty rivalries or personal feelings. It often
requires creativity. Transcendent leaders are optimistic: they focus on the future and inspire
others to do the same. Boards look for transcendent leaders who keep their feet on the ground
while looking over the horizon. Transcendence is not a detached other-worldliness, which may
detract from focus on the here and now. Nor is it the pursuit of perfection to the point where the
organization fails to achieve acceptable results in the shorter term.
Integrity
Integrity is essentially about wholeness, completeness, and soundness of leadership character. It
is most readily apparent in principles such as honesty, authenticity, transparency, candor, and
consistency, but it is also used to describe high moral standards. It’s knowing who you truly are,
being true to yourself, and ultimately being complete, together, and morally sound. It’s both

saying what you think and doing what you say. Still, there are times when people with high
integrity display rigidity of thinking and lack of good judgment when required to make decisions
or take actions in complex and ambiguous circumstances that require the reconciliation of
opposing principles.
Judgement
Judgment has a central place in defining an individual’s character. Each of the other dimensions
of character represents reservoirs of varying depth – people may have lots of courage or a little,
or great integrity or not so much. How an individual’s character influences their actual behavior
in a particular context depends on their judgment. It serves to moderate and mediate the way that
the other dimensions determine individuals’ behaviors in different situations. It acts like the air
traffic controller, determining when courage should be shown and when it is better suppressed;
when collaboration is appropriate and when a leader should go it alone; when it’s appropriate to
demonstrate humility and when to demonstrate great confidence; when to be temperate and when
to be bold; and so on.
Talking about character
In our original “Leadership On Trial” research, participants had little difficulty talking about the
role that character appears to have played leading up to the financial crisis. Yet those we have
interviewed over the years almost always wondered why such issues were seldom addressed
prior to the crisis. They noted the absence of ongoing meaningful discussions about character in
their own organizations, even in critical issues such as talent recruitment, selection, development
and retention and succession management.
We think there are several reasons for this inconsistency:
 Decades of time and many millions of dollars have been spent by private- and public-
sector organizations developing ways of measuring competencies. No such effort has
been placed on character. However, we are confident that this is changing. Whether it
does or not is largely in the hands of the governance community itself, and we sense that
it is ready for the challenge.
 Competencies are manifested in behaviors and we can actually measure them, however
imperfectly. Character, on the other hand, addresses a capability in individuals that may
not yet have been tested and the evidence for which is frequently vague. Here again,
work is underway to develop better assessments and measures. Our discussions with

members of the global governance community suggest that directors would welcome this
development.
 Character is a loaded word. We tend to avoid talking about character in the workplace
because it seems such a subjective construct. It does not have to be so – especially if we
are able to describe the good and bad behaviors associated with these character
dimensions in the appropriate business contexts. This is the focus of our ongoing
research.
 Too often, discussions of character have required people to buy into some particular
school of philosophical, ethical, psychological or managerial thought. We have tried to
minimize this problem through balance, transparency, careful wording, and clear
definitions.
 To date, the language of character has been complicated and inaccessible to those
unversed in philosophy, ethics, and advanced psychological terminology. It is often
viewed as a “soft” and certainly a non-quantifiable construct in a world that looks for
hard data. However, we don’t think that it has to be this way. We believe some adept
translation of arcane terminology into contemporary managerial language, which we have
tried to do in our framework, is a starting point to making the discussion of character
easier and ultimately more valuable.
Where character comes from
Some elements of character, especially basic personality traits, are inherited, while others are
acquired through early childhood development, education, experiences in both work-related and
socially-related organizational settings, as well as later-in-life experiences that mold character.
People cite such life-changing experiences as being hired and fired; working with “good” or
“bad” bosses; marriage and divorce; success and failure; illness and recovery. These crucible
events only contribute to character formation if individuals have the degree of humility and self-
awareness that allows and motivates them to seize the opportunity for self-improvement. Other
“character-forming” experiences include working in different international, industry or corporate
cultures, as well as having great critics and mentors who are prepared to have the tough
discussions that also shape character development.
Assessing character strengths
Character is revealed by how people behave in situations. For example, we don’t know whether
individuals have courage until they’ve faced a major challenge or danger and done the right

thing. Similarly, we don’t know if they have humility unless they’ve experienced failure,
acknowledged it and learned from it. Whether or not they have integrity can only be assessed by
how they have responded to situations that tested that integrity under pressure.
While it is standard for directors to establish selection criteria for competencies, we believe it’s
rare for them to discuss the character dimensions they expect in qualified candidates. Nor is it
common to address character dimensions when reviewing executive performance or doing peer
reviews of other directors. Most of us lack the vocabulary to have these discussions behind
closed doors, let alone in face-to-face discussions.
Regrettably, systematic and thorough character assessment is seldom done well, often relying on
an “absence of negatives” rather than focusing on positive character dimensions. A full character
assessment requires a deep and wide-ranging examination of a person’s life and work history
over an extensive period of time, through the investigating of the highs and lows of a business
cycle, and the asking of very specific, pointed and often intrusive questions in both the
interviewing and reference-checking processes. We all know how difficult this is to do –
especially when the candidate has achieved positions of leadership prominence, possesses a
sterling reputation, and may even be a personal friend. It’s even harder when the candidates
clearly possess the competencies that you urgently need, or have a track record of success.
We look to character to attempt to predict how someone will behave in future circumstances. It is
much better to ask well-constructed, probing questions about how candidates have behaved in
similar situations in the past, or how they believe they would behave in specific situations in the
future, than to settle for impressions formed from loosely-structured interviews, or basing hiring
decisions on individuals’ reputations. This focus on behavioral interviewing is not a new idea,
but emphasizing character assessment underscores its value and importance.
Building character
There are several ways that directors can influence character development in the organizations
they govern. They can talk about these dimensions, especially in their formal processes of CEO
appraisal and succession management. They can press management to develop formal leadership
profiles that address competencies, character and commitment. They can also introduce

character-focused discussion into their own board assessments. Since CEOs are almost always
board members, such discussions should start to rub off on their own internal talent reviews.
Boards are in a pivotal position to alter the way businesses are run. If boards put character on the
corporate agenda, organizations will have to respond. Boards can begin the process by ensuring
that the senior leaders of the organization are selected, evaluated and promoted based on
character as well as commitment and competencies.
We are encouraged by the number of business leaders who feel that they themselves must
surmount these obstacles to talking about character, and who believe that boards should focus
more on it – just as we are sometimes discouraged by stories of character-related scandals, from
bribery and corruption to money laundering and near-insane risk-taking in capital markets, that
are emerging on a regular basis. We are conscious that we must guard against the cynical
assumption that there is, somehow, a natural cycle of wrongdoing (recognition, learning,
improvement and relapse) as we go through business cycles and forget the last crisis and why it
happened.
There is a lot we don’t know about the role that character plays in governance and effective
leadership in organizations. We would like to get a better sense of how boards actually address
character-related issues. We also need to improve how we assess character dimensions and
measure them more accurately. The holy grail of this line of leadership research is an empirical
assessment of whether or not the character of an organization’s leadership is significant in
determining its success or failure; there is much work to be done before we can pronounce on
that. We are committed to engaging members of the global governance community in this future
research.
We recognize that we must be careful and responsible in asking busy directors and executives to
master new language and new methods of assessment. But we believe it will pay off in better
leadership. In short, while competencies matter, while commitment is critical, character really
counts; it must be embraced as a major concern by boards and the governance community.

References:
[1] Gandz, J., Crossan, M., Seijts, G. and Stephenson, C. (2010). Leadership on Trial: A
Manifesto for Leadership Development. London, Ontario: Richard Ivey School of Business.
http://www.ivey.uwo.ca/research/leadership/research/LOTreportpreview.htm
[2] We acknowledge the great influence of the work by pioneers in researching character:
Peterson, C., and Seligman, M. E. P. (2004) Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and
Classification. New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press.
[3] We see this set of character dimensions as a “work in progress.” The more we talk about it to
individual leaders and groups of executives and directors, the more they want to add, modify or
sometimes subtract. We anticipate more modifications as we engage the governance community
in discussion and debate about the nature and importance of character.
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LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE CHARACTER KNOW THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATE CHARACTER

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LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE CHARACTER KNOW THE IMPORTANCE OF CORPORATE CHARACTER