How Good Character and Virtuous Behavior Drives Great Leadership

The following is an excerpt from my new book, Virtuous Leadership: The Character Secrets of Great Leaders.

The relationship between character traits, virtues, and happiness was thoroughly investigated by Denise Quinlan, Nicola Swain, and Dianne A. Vella-Brodrick in their article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. They also looked at the effects of lacking leadership virtues.

They claim that if you think about what might occur when leaders lack these qualities, the repercussions become more apparent. They argue the following:

• Without good judgment leaders frequently make poor decisions, particularly when they must respond fast in unclear circumstances, such as when they are presented with the numerous paradoxes that occasionally face all leaders.

• Without humanity, leaders are unable to empathize with others, view things from the perspectives of their followers, or consider how their decisions may affect other people. Without humanity, leaders will act in ways that alienate people rather than in ways that are socially responsible.

• Without a sense of justice leaders are unable to comprehend the problems with social inequality and the difficulties of fairness without a sense of justice. Such leaders take unjust measures that result in poor employee relations or negative responses from the public, the government, and regulators. People will resist and try to remove the leader in various ways.

• Without courage, leaders will be unable to confront others’ poor choices and will lack the tenacity and determination needed to resolve challenging problems. In addition, when faced with difficulty, they will back down and take the simple path. But they only delay what will happen as a result.

• Without collaboration, leaders will be unable to accomplish important objectives that call for more than just one person’s abilities and commitment. They don’t make better decisions or carry them out better by utilizing the diversity of knowledge, experience, views, judgments, and talents of others. Relations worsen as a result of friction between various interests.

• Without accountability, leaders cannot persuade people to commit to or take ownership of their decisions. They create a culture of fear and disengagement by blaming others for bad outcomes. People cease caring, which could have terrible repercussions.

• Without humility, leaders are unable to be open-minded, solicit, and take into account the opinions of others. They are unable to grow as leaders as a result of reflecting critically on their mistakes and learning from those of others. They resemble cartoon versions of themselves. It leads to isolation.

• Without integrity, leaders are unable to forge strong bonds with subordinates and superiors within their organizations, or external allies, or partners. Every assurance must be provided, which causes mistrust and slows down choices and actions.

• Without temperance leaders take unwise risks, jump to conclusions, neglect to obtain relevant information, lack perspective, make frequent and detrimental changes, and even go back on crucial decisions. They lose credibility.

• Without transcendence, leaders’ objectives become constrained and they are unable to move conversations to higher-order objectives. They lack perspective, thus their choices might merely be motivated by opportunism. They don’t inspire others to think creatively or unconventionally.