We believe that no level of competence or commitment will matter without the foundational leadership element of strong, well-developed character. Our conversations with global leaders reinforced our ...conviction that character development must be included in leadership conversations and development if we are going to help create leaders who are willing and able to tackle the grand challenges of our time and work towards a more prosperous, just, and inclusive society. The ultimate objective our paper is to encourage the reader to consider how each of us can raise the bar in our respective selves, teams, organizations, and communities by recognizing, measuring, fostering, and being leaders with good character. In short, we hope the reader comes to appreciate that character is not a niche topic or a nice-to-have. Simply put, character is utterly essential to good leadership and to individual and societal well-being.
Many organizations in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors have begun to take action to address the systemic racism entrenched in their processes, systems, and structures. This has included ...commitments to elevate initiatives for equity, diversity, and inclusion. Data indicate that such good-faith efforts are often not as successful as leaders and organizations had envisioned. Our assertion is that if we really want to address systemic racism in organizations, we must first attend to the people who work there. This is because their individual and collective character, revealed through behavior, drives and determines organizational processes, systems, structures, and culture. The purpose of this article is to connect character to the creation and sustainment of organizational cultures of equity, diversity, and inclusion with a specific focus on anti-Black racism. Character is not a subjective, amorphous entity but manifests as a set of observable behaviors. We explain that character equips people with consciousness and the conduct to embrace and cultivate equity, diversity, and inclusion in their organizations and in their lives. We provide concrete examples of the dimensions of character in action using brief illustrations.
Singing your heart out for others isn't hard when you are at a celebration like a wedding. But it takes strength of character to do so while in self-isolation to protect yourself from a deadly virus ...that is preventing your community from gathering, even to honor the dead. In the days ahead, the images of Italians serenading each other from open windows and balconies as they struggle to survive within the European epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic should serve as inspiration to us all. With the emergence of COVID-19, leaders across all sectors and at all levels in societies worldwide face enormous challenges. How they behave and the decisions they make will separate the bad and mediocre from the truly great. And the importance of good leadership will be only magnified further as we all continue to confront highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous situations.
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