Character is Crucial: The Key to Leading Well
Ephesians 4:7-12 Notice: one thing that “apostles,” “prophets,”
II. Character is Crucial: Empirical Evidence
It is enough for us that the Bible tells us that character counts when it comes to leadership. We trust God and believe in the wisdom of His Word! It is interesting, however, to see the wisdom of His Word affirmed in research.
When researches identify the most important elements of leader character, what do you think they will find? Any predictions?
• The Foundation of Character: Credibility Produced by Honesty (Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge)
James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner began in 1982 researching what it is that leaders do when they are at their best.23 They studied leadership in organizations in multiple countries and at varying levels of authority. Their findings were published in the book entitled, The Leadership Challenge. Now, well over 3 decades later the book has yielded its sixth edition and now utilizes up-to-date data collected from over 3 million people.
Their conclusion? The single most important factor in anyone’s leadership is credibility.24
Having credibility is often described as “walking the walk” or “practicing what you preach” and “following through on promises.”25 Good leaders have a consistency about them whereby they can be counted on and taken at their word. Thus, in order to be credible a leader must be honest.
23 James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Leadership Challenge: How to Make
Extraordinary Things Happen in Organizations, 6th ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons, 2017), xii.
24 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 42.
25 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 42.
Reflect and Discuss…What is your reaction when a leader is …
• Arrogant?
• Rude?
• Self-willed?
• Irritable?
• Resentful?
What is one evidence of leadership that is …
• Patient?
• Kind?
Kouzes and Posner write: “Overall, (honesty) emerges as the single most important factor in the leader-constituent relationship. The percentages may vary, but the final ranking does not. First and foremost, people want a leader who is honest.”26
Surveys conducted in every decade since they began their work yielded the same result:
honesty is the most esteemed trait in a leader: across all genders, ages, levels of education, types of organizations, and in the vast majority of countries.27 Some of the benefits of having credible and honest leaders:28
o Team members are more likely to tell others that they are involved in your organization (i.e. they are excited about it and can’t help but talk about it) o There is a heightened sense of team spirit amongst workers
o There is a stronger sense of commitment to the organization Some of the pitfalls of having leaders who lack credibility:
o Worker productivity declines (un-motivated) o Team members feel unsupported and unappreciated
o Team members lack a sense of personal affinity with the organization o Workers are quicker to look for opportunities elsewhere (i.e. get me out of
here!)29
• Humility in Good-to-Great Leaders (Jim Collins)
In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers sought to understand the differentiating factors of companies that went from “good results to great results”
compared to a control group of companies that did not experience the same degree of success, or who made significant strides that they could not sustain. In other words, the companies that went from being good to great, and who stayed great – what is it about them that they were able to be better than the rest for the long haul?30
The biggest difference was in leadership. Here's what they discovered:
• The leaders of good-to-great companies had leaders who had two complementary qualities: 1) they are persistent in being willing to do whatever it takes to make the company great, and 2) they are humble.
26 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 32.
27 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 29-31. Note that in China, Singapore, and Turkey, “honesty” did not always rank first overall. However, it was never lower than fourth in these nations and, taken together with results from other countries, it ranked first overall.
28 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 40.
29 Kouzes and Posner, The Leadership Challenge, 41.
30 Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . And Others Don’t (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 3.
People who work for good-to-great leaders describe them as: “quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated”31
Collins notes that articles written about the companies they lead were rarely about the leaders themselves. Collins says that good-to-great leaders “never aspired to be put on the pedestal or become unreachable icons.” When asked about their successes they give credit to their team or chalk it up to “good luck.”32
In the comparison companies it is a different story. Leaders of good-to-not-so-great companies tended to be larger-than-life leaders who have a short-term catalytic impact but in due course experience decline. These leaders were more apt to respond to success by accepting credit, while attributing failures to factors external to themselves.33
This is not to say that modesty is the only predictor of success – good-to-great leaders are every bit as driven as they are humble. However, where humility is lacking in leadership so are the long-term organizational results.34
• Who Is Worthy to Be Followed? (Patrick Liborius)
Patrick Liborius (University of Darmstadt) conducted a study aimed that empirically confirmed the positive effects of leader character on followers. Of particular interest was how much a leader’s character impacts the willingness of others to follow them.
He created three scenarios, that a participant would read, relaying a narrative in which a leader acted with positive or negative character. For example, a leader was described as acting with integrity and then without integrity and then participants responded to questions about how they would feel if they were the follower in that situation and how willing they would be to serve under such an individual.35 As you might imagine, the results confirmed the importance of character in a leader. There was a statistically
significant increase in a person’s willingness to follow a leader who conducted his/herself with integrity, humility, graciousness, and gratitude.
Not only are people more willing to follow leaders of character, but they are also more likely to make meaningful contributions to the organization as well. Liborius found a definite link between leader character and follower voice behavior (willingness to speak up, give input), and a greater likelihood that followers will go above and beyond in their efforts on behalf of the organization.36
He also found that how a follower feels about the leader will be impacted by the
personality of the follower. For instance, team members who score high in agreeableness
31 Collins, Good to Great, 27.
32 Collins, Good to Great, 35.
33 Collins, Good to Great, 35.
34 Collins, Good to Great, 29-30.
35 Patrick Liborius, “Who Is Worthy of Being Followed? The Impact of Leaders’ Character and the Moderating Role of Followers’ Personality,” The Journal of Psychology 148, no. 3 (2014): 381-83.
(compliant, pleasing, trusting), are affected more by the quality of the leader’s character than those who are low in agreeableness.37
In practical terms, the researcher gave this advice to leaders: “Be honest, do not say one thing and behave another way, be reliable, be truthful, be humble and forgiving, be interested in those who follow you and give you gratitude to them, not only when they achieve something special, but just for their faithful work.”38
III. Developing Our Own Character: “Train Yourself for Godliness” (1 Tim 4:7)