When talking about character, it’s common to oversimplify its meaning. However, extensive research reveals that it encompasses a multitude of dimensions, incorporating various behaviors within these dimensions. When evaluating a leader’s character, it becomes evident that achieving an effective balance across all these dimensions is essential for leadership effectiveness. 

Dr. Mary Crossan is a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Strategic Leadership at the Ivey Business School, Western University. In 2021, she was recognized on a global list representing the top two per cent of the most cited scientists in her discipline, and in 2023, she received the life-time career achievement Academy of Management Distinguished Educator award. Her research on leader character, organizational learning and strategic renewal, and improvisation is published in over 100 articles and books. Mary Crossan is co-author of: The Character Compass (October 30, 2023). 

In this episode, Mary shares how you can exercise the muscles of a leader character exercising all the different dimensions in balance with each other so you get more effective as a leader.

What you will learn from this episode:

  • Discover the various dimensions and behaviors that comprise a leader’s character to effectively achieve balance and maximize effectiveness
  • Find out the steps to cultivate an organizational culture that truly embodies the unique character of each individual
  • Explore an innovative app designed to enhance leadership skills and foster personal character growth

“The essence for great leadership actually lies in your character.”

– Mary Crossan

Valuable Free Resource: 

Topics Covered:

01:43 – What’s behind pursuing research about leader character

03:11 – Character to mean not just about one thing but a multifaceted dimension

05:42 – Learning how to develop the muscles of character 

07:35 – The assessment and development sides of character found in her book including an app 

11:14 – What dimension does confidence belong

13:42 – How do you keep all these behaviors associated with the 11 dimensions get to be in balance with each other

17:11 – What’s in the character app: 

19:06 – Organizational culture a reflection of individual character

22:05 – Two important angles of leaders’ blindspots

24:10 – Mary’s important insights on leader effectiveness and most importantly the need for people to have access to toolkit and resources that would reinforce such

Key Takeaways:

“Picture this that if you want to rewire the culture of an organization, start with rewiring the character of the individuals within it, and then through that we begin to see some of the systems that don’t really work or align well.” – Mary Crossan

“We miss the major point that any potential virtue would operate like a vice in excess or deficiency. But if I put it another way, if you’re going to have a lot of drive, you also need a lot of humanity and temperance in the other dimensions to support it.” – Mary Crossan

“The work around character not only is around individual development, but it’s around organizational transformation.” – Mary Crossan

“…the culture of an organization will be a reflection of the character of the individuals within it, particularly senior leaders.” – Mary Crossan

“Part of the way that we would talk about changing culture is, you know, fostering the development of character of the individuals in the organization and then addressing the systems that don’t support it.” – Mary Crossan

Ways to Connect with Mary Crossan:

Ways to Connect with Sarah E. Brown:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

Mary Crossan 00:00

In reality, what we want to be thinking about is that these are actually muscles that we can develop. And if we learn what they are, we get to understand the nuances of what makes strong character for an individual.

Sarah E. Brown 00:21

Hello everyone. Welcome to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women, where we talk about challenges senior female leaders face in being happy and successful at work. I’m your host, Dr. Sarah E. Brown.

My guest today is Dr. Mary Crossan. She is a distinguished university professor and professor of strategic leadership at the Ivy Business School of Western University. In 2021, she was recognized on a global list representing the top 2% of the most cited scientists in her discipline. In 2023, she received the lifetime career achievement from the Academy of Management, Distinguished Educator Awards, her research on Leader Character: Organizational Learning and Strategic Renewal and Improvisation is published in over a hundred articles and books. And she has written a book called The Character Compass, which is what we will be talking about today. Welcome, Mary.

Mary Crossan 01:35

Great to be here, Sarah. Thanks for having me.

Sarah E. Brown 01:3

So tell us a little bit about your research. How do you research this topic?

Mary Crossan 01:43

Well, I have to admit that I’ve been about close to 40 years in research, and I wish I had come across leader character earlier in my research, and it was in the 2008 economic crisis that we were looking at the failures of leadership. And long story short, a lot of the work that we were doing revealed that what we were missing was not so much competence, but we were missing character. But people didn’t know what it was or how to develop it. So when you ask how do we study it? Well, we’re really standing on the shoulders of giants. I mean, you go back to Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, the importance of character for human flourishing has long been recognized. And then in about 2004, Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, weighed in on it and he and Christopher Peterson did some research that identified these aspects of character that were universal across time, culture, even religions. So that’s really the backdrop of how we got into it. And really in the last 15 years, we’ve been working at trying to develop the toolkit on how we can actually understand character, assess it, and develop it.

Sarah E. Brown 03:02

Okay. I’m going to talk about how to assess it and develop it in a minute. But first of all, how do you define it? What is character? Can you give me an example?

Mary Crossan 03:11

Right. Well, in its broadest sense, character is a set. We think about it like anatomy and physiology of the body. And so there are 11 dimensions of character. So a lot of times people think, oh, character is all about ethics, or it’s all about integrity, or it’s all about grit. And that’s what we’ve got wrong about it. It’s not all about one thing. It actually has this kind of quality of this interconnected set of dimensions. So let’s just walk through those a little bit. Judgment is in the middle. got to that’s what Aristotle called practical wisdom. But judgment draws on 10 other dimensions. And I’ll just kind of step through those, but each one of them has a set of behaviors that an individual can develop.

So they are transcendence, and that’s that quality of seeing possibilities in the future, real uplift that people have in their being, drive. A lot of people already know those things like drive, collaboration, humanity, humility, integrity, temperance, which is kind of an odd word these days, but it is about your patience and calmness and how you handle it. And self-regulate under pressure, justice, accountability, and not surprising, courage. And Sarah, I think the most profound part of this that we have got wrong in this area is because people have thought, oh, it’s all about grit, or it’s all about one thing or another. We miss the major point that any potential virtue would operate like a vice in excess or deficiency. But if I put it another way, if you’re going to have a lot of drive, you also need a lot of humanity and temperance in the other dimensions to support it.

And I think, Sarah, the key insight for a lot of women, particularly female leaders, is we get thrown around an awful lot about, well, who are you supposed to be? And I think the architecture of character starts to help us understand why we have found ourselves being asked to do things like, oh, tone ourselves down or, or elevate this or look like that. And in reality, what we want to be thinking about is that these are actually muscles that we can develop. And if we learn what they are, we get to understand the nuances of what makes strong character for an individual.

Sarah E. Brown 05:39

Okay. So how do you develop these muscles?

Mary Crossan 05:42

Great question. We’ve spent an awful lot of time on the development side because actually understanding what it is, it’s like we think about, that’s the starting point. We often use the analogy, you got to go to the character gym, meaning just the same way you would go and work out in a gym and lift your weights or do your cardio or whatever you’re going to do. We have to begin treating our character in that way, in an intentional way to say, so what am I doing to develop my transcendence? Or what am I doing to develop my integrity or my humility or my humanity? And there we’ve got lots of tools in the toolkit, there’s an assessment, a leader character insight assessment that’s available through a company called Sigma Assessment Systems. We ourselves developed an app called Virtuosity that you can put in your hand. And that’s the kind of thing that just gives you exercises every day that would get you thinking about how am I actually going to develop these particular behaviors. I would say, Sarah, about this, the science is so well developed about this that we know what we need to develop, we know how to develop it. And really the big challenge is character is habit.

So the question is, how are you actually going to change the habit? And that’s where that analogy of, let’s say, going to the gym is really a good one. And I think for a lot of leaders, they didn’t really know what it is that they could do or how practical it would be to say, what am I going to do investing five minutes every day that’s going to change every other minute of my day.

Sarah E. Brown 07:31

So you talked about an assessment. Do you deal with that in your book?

Mary Crossan 07:35

We do, we do talk about that. We’ve got a couple of chapters in the book that both talk about assessment and they talk about the development side. Even talk about the app itself and how that can be used. It’s interesting, Sarah, because around character development, it is fascinating to me how…I look at so many women who don’t see themselves as a person who’s going to be in a leadership position. And we talk about the disposition to lead. And that the essence for great leadership actually lies in your character. So now, if you have this really accessible roadmap that says, well, how am I actually going to become somebody who has more transcendence or drive or courage or accountability, number one, you’ve got a pathway to develop it. But I think also for a lot of your listeners, they also really struggle with issues around stress, anxiety, lack of confidence and certainty about how they operate. And they haven’t really understood that much of that is actually anchored in these muscles of character that they could develop. And they could begin to understand, well, what is the pathway then for me to be able to do it? I’ll give you a practical example about it. Something like confidence. I hear this an awful lot from women.

They feel that they lack confidence. They don’t want to, maybe they have trouble public speaking or something around that. We say, well, your confidence may not be around lacking the courage to do it because you probably have the courage set up, but maybe you’re being really hard on yourself. Maybe there are issues about your humility that give you that idea around your vulnerability to step into a space that’s unknown and difficult and be kind with yourself about how you’re going to operate in that space. So if you take that and link it to something like imposter syndrome, which many people talk about, and I’m a big fan of Ann Murray, who talked about the fact that, well, let’s not label it as imposter syndrome because we’re not imposters and it’s actually not a syndrome. And to quote her, it’s an inescapable part of being alive.

And in particular for women, she picks up this idea when you’re crossing thresholds, that is, you’re in systems and spaces that haven’t necessarily been all that friendly too. And it could be anything, could be your race, sexual orientation, gender, you name it, any marginalized part of who we are, we are all in systems that haven’t necessarily been very favorable to us. And what she talks about is that you’re not an imposter. You’re actually just in a system that wasn’t designed for you. And when you begin to then think about character, you begin to think about it as these muscles that help you navigate a system that was never designed for you. And how are you going to operate not only in the system, but on the system. And doing so, I think starts to reduce things like stress and anxiety because you’re not kind of struggling with the fact that, oh my gosh, I’m an imposter here, but rather you belong. And now the job is how do you take that in that spirit of being alive as you kind of navigate those difficult spaces.

Sarah E. Brown 11:08

You talked about confidence, and I’m just looking at your chart of these 11 dimensions, and it’s not one of them.

Mary Crossan 11:14

Well, if you take a look, it’s under courage. So, it’s the behavior, if you look at those behaviors under courage, being brave, determined, tenacious, resilient, and confident.

Sarah E. Brown 11:26

Okay. Got it.

Mary Crossan 11:27

Okay. Yeah. And, here we pick up that even something like tenacity and determination, they kind of really align with grit. And sometimes it’s back to this thing people say, oh, it’s all about grit. But that area has also been under fire because let’s take a look at it. Grit, if it operates in its excess state, you’re stubborn you’re ending up being that person that doesn’t…You resist things. You don’t actually have the judgment to say, at what point? Is this the time to stop what I’m doing here? And think about it, then you need these other dimensions of character like temperance being patient or calm or humility or humanity or collaboration to say, geez, I’ve got all that tenaciousness and determination. But if I’m weak on things like collaboration and humility, they may be operating in their vice state. And that becomes pretty, I think, compelling for many women to go, oh my gosh, that’s me. You know? That’s why I’m struggling.

Sarah E. Brown 12:38

How do you know whether you’ve got these in balance?

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Mary Crossan 13:42

I love that question. There is a chart we have in the book that lists every single one of these 62 behaviors that are associated with the 11 dimensions, and it lists them in the deficient state and their excess state. And I think what we find, any ways, with a lot of people, they can just look at those adjectives and they’re going, oh my gosh that’s me. I’m on the deficit or the excess. And Sarah, what I would suggest to women is that operating with strength of characters, like walking on a balance beam and that the excess side it’s kind of, let’s call it the right side falling off or the deficient side is the left. And you have to figure out what your leanings are. And here with character many people believe they’re good people with good character, but they don’t really understand how to diagnose it.

So if I take myself as an example, which I often do, is under judgment, there’s a word decisive. And I talk about how I am rarely indecisive. It is so. On that balance beam, I’m not going to be falling off on the deficient side. That’s kind of a curious thing if I am, but what does that tell me? I really have to guard against the excess side, and that doesn’t mean I want to dial down my decisiveness. It’s a really, a very, very strong aspect of how I operate. But that does tell me I have to look to those other dimensions of character to be sure they’re incredibly strong to support it. So under collaboration, being flexible, open-minded or interconnected, and I use this example, I say when somebody asks me my point of view and I respond, there’s my decisiveness. If I know the answer to it, I’ll be able to provide some perspective.

I take that as the beginning of the conversation. But do they take that as the end of the conversation? And that I think is the essence about where character leadership lies. Because now I can begin to see if they don’t see me as open-minded, flexible, and collegial and collaborative, then how is it that they see my decisiveness as an opening gamut on what we could talk about?

Sarah E. Brown 16:04

Okay. So one of the ways that women can assess is to look at those descriptors and on the deficient, what was the other side of the equation?

Mary Crossan 16:15

Excess and deficiency side.

Sarah E. Brown 16:19

And once they’ve got an idea of an area that they might need to beef up or tone down, did I get that right? Is that what they’re doing, it’s beefing up or toning down?

Mary Crossan 16:28

You never want to tone it down. So that’s a really important thing. So it’s a bit confusing I think, in the fact that when you talk about it, it’s operating in the excess state. It’s only doing that because it’s not supported by something else. And that would be like in a… You think about muscles, if you started to develop them and you didn’t have the core strength in your body you might actually find yourself kind of compromised with those other muscles, but you don’t want to weaken those muscles. You just want to build your core strength. And that’s the same thing with character.

Sarah E. Brown 16:59

Yeah. Okay, so I get that now. So tell me again, go back to this app. And I’m curious about how one would use it and where they can find it.

Mary Crossan 17:11

Well, the app itself is available through virtuosity character. I think it’s dot ca but it could be dot com, I should know that. What’s in the app, the app provides a guided tour around those 11 dimensions of character and the behaviors, and provides a daily exercise that one would be able to look at to develop that particular behavior. It helps… The person who’s using it actually understands what character is. So one of the things, Sarah, that we’ve found is that there’s so much knowledge and understanding about what character is, but it’s not accessible. How do people know this? How do they learn about this? And we really wanted to put in the palm of the hands of the individual everything we know about how to develop character and that they can have that kind of guided tour on their own. I think though some of your listeners might also be leaders who guide other leaders, and one of the things that becomes apparent in the app is that a lot of the systems of our organizations do not support the development of character.

We undermine many aspects of these. And so part of the things that come out in the app is not just the development of the individual character, but a thought around what are the systems that we’re operating in that may not be supporting us as well as we could. And I think for leaders who have that kind of accountability, they can begin to think about what kind of culture they are cultivating in their organization. So the work around character not only is around individual development, but it’s around organizational transformation.

Sarah E. Brown 18:56

Okay. And that leads into your claim that you could actually transform culture. Alright, say more about that.

Mary Crossan 19:06

And I love that. I’m so happy you brought that up. For those four decades, the area I worked in a lot with strategy, got to organizational renewal, culture change. And I have seen decade after decade organizations really struggling with culture change. And it was not until I actually understood character that I understood why, because the culture of an organization will be a reflection of the character of the individuals within it, particularly senior leaders. And what we have found is that we’ve overweight some of these dimensions like drive and accountability and integrity, and we never actually understood that those things could operate like a vice if we didn’t bring along the humility, the humanity, the temperance, the transcendence to support it. So picture this is that if you want to rewire the culture of an organization, start with rewiring the character of the individuals within it, and then through that we begin to see some of the systems that don’t really work or align well. So imagine this, how do we hire on the basis of character?

Not many organizations think they go, oh, well of course we hire good people, but they don’t actually have a systematic way of understanding what character is or how to develop it in the organization or how to reward it. So part of the way that we would talk about changing culture is fostering the development of character of the individuals in the organization and then addressing the systems that don’t support it.

Sarah E. Brown 20:40

Okay. And the systems that the opportunities for improvement in the systems tend to appear once the character starts to develop?

Mary Crossan 20:48

Very quickly. Because here’s where they appear. We say, wherever competence resides, character belongs. And so you just have to look at any place. So it’s all your HR practices — in your selection, it’s your promotion, it’s your reward, it’s performance management. So it’s all of those practices that you’d be thinking about. It’s in places like the culture of the organization, it’s in places like risk management in the EDI and strategy. And of course all your leadership development or development in particular. So we spend a lot of time helping, we’ve got a practitioner program, kind of a train the trainer program through the Ivey Business School that helps leaders understand what it takes to embed this in an organization. And many of them are changing all the curriculum. how do we onboard people in an organization, how do we handle learning and development and particularly leadership development. Okay. So I could see how it would have an impact on equity, diversity, and inclusion if you view it as culture. But is there anything else specific to EDI?

Mary Crossan 22:05

It’s well beyond culture because most of the challenge on the EDI front, if you start to kind of scratch the surface, is around our character. It’s around these core beliefs that we have that have been cultivated under systems that have been designed for different groups of people. So think about how the very journey of character development might get you thinking about issues of justice might get you thinking about issues of humanity. And what are your core beliefs about all of those things? So that’s the journey that Sarah, we find people on that they go, oh my gosh, I really didn’t realize that I was operating this way. And I should add two really important pieces about why it’s been such a blind spot. Two things we judge ourselves on our intention and others on their behavior. So people do not intend to act out on issues of DEI or whatever ways we think about that acronym or they don’t intend, but what’s that observable behavior that’s happening?

It’s like me and my decisiveness. I don’t want to make something at the end of a conversation, but what is it about my observable behavior that will enable that? And then the other piece is that research revealed that 85% of us believe we’re self-aware and only 10% are. So one of the things I think, Sarah, for your listeners around this, is if you want to cultivate self-awareness, which is actually one of the behaviors under humility, a really good roadmap is to start to work on your character. And boy will you start to get more self-aware about how you operate in the world.

Sarah E. Brown 23:52

I can see that. So Mary, in order to understand this and to be able to take even just a baby step to developing our own character, is there any question I should have asked you that I didn’t?

Mary Crossan 24:10

I think, really, the question, it’s not so much that you didn’t ask it, but it’s the question actually for your… the listeners. We’ve got something here that has shown by its empirical evidence to have an incredibly important impact on our wellbeing and our performance. Things like a 10% increase in our resilience, and job related well being and our job satisfaction. And I look at a 14% increase in leader effectiveness. There are not many things that we could invest in that will move the needle on these things as much as we do. So really the question is why aren’t we doing it? My answer to that over 15 years is, every time I try to think about why aren’t we doing it to write an article that talks about it, or to do things like put the virtuosity app out there, or the leader character insight assessment, put the tools in the toolkit.

And I have to believe that we’ve been getting to a point that having podcasts like this is that people will become aware of something that has been a blind spot for us that we really didn’t understand very well. And yet it’s as ancient as any area of study. We go back, as I said to Confucius, Aristotle, Plato, it’s in things in our indigenous practices like the seven grandfather teachings. And it’s one of these things that have been so prevalent, but we’ve never ported it into leadership in organizations. So my hope, Sarah, is that with all the tools in the toolkit, people will listen to your podcast and say, okay, I want to get going on this.

Sarah E. Brown 25:55

Very cool. So Mary, where can people find you? Well, there’s lots of different places. So the Ivey Business School that’s spelled I-V-E-Y, there’s a lot of tools and insights at ivey.uw.ca/leadership. The other places that we got to ended up being able to start a consulting organization with people who have subject matter expertise to bring the strategic aspect of character into organizations. And people can find that at leadercharacterassociates.com. Of course, you talked about the Character Compass book. Boy, it’s really a good roadmap and that’s available through the publisher, Rutledge. Those are a couple of key resources, Sarah, that I think can get people going.

Sarah E. Brown 26:44

Great. Mary, thank you so much for being with me today.

Mary Crossan 26:47

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Sarah E. Brown 26:49

Thanks for listening to the KTS Success Factor Podcast for Women. If you like what you are hearing, please go to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave a review. And if you would like more information on how we can help women in your organization to thrive, then go to www.sarahebrown.com. You can sign up for our newsletter, read show notes, and learn more about our podcast guests. Read my blog, browse through the books, or contact us for a chat. Goodbye for now.

Sarah E. Brown
Sarah E. Brown