Hi Reader,

It’s a theme I keep hearing in this year’s US Presidential election: character matters.

It seems old-fashioned, a throwback to another era, to talk about the leader's character.

Because it seems that over the past decades, qualities like character, integrity, and honesty have taken a back seat to qualities like individuality, authenticity, and non-conformity. ​

The current trend is to have leaders as disruptors, norm-busters, and creative geniuses who think and live outside the box of convention.

But maybe we’ve seen the outer, extreme, and dangerous limits of leaders flaunting norms, disregarding traditions, and breaking the mold—and the laws.

So perhaps the pendulum is swinging back to something we haven't seen for a while, or rather, haven't embraced in a while: the importance of character, values, integrity, honesty, and empathy. We're looking for leaders, for role models who can champion that.

In a well-known Nike commercial years ago, NBA star Charles Barkley famously said, “I am not a role model.” But the fact is, he was. Because basketball stars are role models. And celebrities. And teachers. And leaders.

If you have a platform, a following, or a position of influence in any facet of society, then you are a role model — even if you don’t want to be. ​

​As a role model, you set the tone. You model what is acceptable, and your behavior signals to others what behaviors are permitted. But you model not only the behaviors you commit but also, importantly, the behavior you permit.

The behaviors you allow, ignore, and excuse are thereby normalized. Humanitarian Albert Schweitzer said it best: Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

So, if character matters, if we're looking for leaders who model character, what does that mean? What specific things do leaders do to lead with character?

You make a covenant with your role

Leading with character means being in service to the office you hold and the role you occupy. We commonly think that the leader’s chief concern is the people, the employees, the customer, the organization’s mission, or even the shareholders.

But more than any of that, your chief concern is to execute your role faithfully.

A role is an office, a position that exists separate from you. That’s why the presidency is called “the office of President.” It’s a role, not a person, and stepping into it should scare the bejeebers out of you.

You are meant to feel smaller than the role you are fulfilling because the role is bigger than you. Many great people have been in that office before you, and many more will be in it after you leave. Your task is to exalt the role, to live into and up to its symbology.

This is why new parents tremble in fear — because more than the worry that they won’t know what to do with this massive new responsibility on their hands is the fear, “Am I up to the task of being a parent?”

It’s not easy. The role you play can, and often does, conflict with how you see yourself or how you prefer to be. And the behavioral expectations placed upon that role can be demanding, exacting, and exhausting. To fulfill your role, you will need to do things that will feel uncomfortable and that may not be aligned with your personal needs. ​

Having a covenant with the role means you commit to that task, you recognize your conflict of interest, and you pledge to make your personal needs secondary to the duties of the role, to put your discomfort aside to take up the challenges before you.

You take an honest inventory of yourself

Power will amplify the best and worst of you. If you’re generous and warm, it can make you even more so. If you’re controlling and assertive, it can make that even worse.

It’s not only because power is disinhibiting but also because you receive less feedback. The higher you rise, the fewer people there are to give you feedback, and the less honest and accurate the feedback is.

In a high-ranking role, you’re more likely to have your rank reflected back to you by people agreeing with you, deferring, and idealizing you. The result: there is less need to restrain yourself, and more permission to just let it fly.

So it's important you know just what terrible things can fly out of you under pressure and stress when the guardrails are off. What will happen, who will you be, when power opens the door, when there’s no one to hold you accountable and you can get away with things?

​David Brooks, in his book, The Road to Character, says that for this reason, we need to “take an honest inventory of our appetites and vulnerabilities that lead to morally ambiguous choices and conflicts of interest.”

He tells the story of the Civil Rights leaders of the 1960s who were honest with themselves. They strove to hold themselves accountable because they knew very well they could “become guilty of self-righteousness because their cause was just; they would become vicious and tribal as group confronted group; they would become more vain as their audiences enlarged their hearts; they would be compelled to make morally tainted choices as they got closer to power; the more they altered history, the more they would be infected by pride.”

You look at your sphere of influence

Or, to say it plainly, you don't pass the buck. You don't look outside yourself to place the blame, find the solution, and assign responsibility.

​In my book, I talk about the ladder metaphor of power: climbing the ladder of rank, our eyes are always up. We become experts about the power of those above us but forget the power that we have — that we might be standing on someone else’s fingers.

Looking at your own sphere of influence means asking yourself, what is my role? What action can I take? How do I contribute to this, and what can I do to change it?

And that runs counter to the normal human reflex to feel that others are making things difficult, that someone else caused this, that the media, the other team, the politicians are stopping me from succeeding. We pass the buck, deflect blame, make counter-accusations, and engage in whataboutism.

Instead, leading with character means always, always considering our responsibility, actions we can take, what's under our control, and how we contributed to this mess.

There are leaders at all ranks, which means lots of opportunities for us to model character. Regardless of your level of influence, to use it effectively — to use it for good — strive to live up to the role and approach it with the gravity that it deserves.

Thanks for reading,

- Julie

P.S. If you've ever wished you could have a playbook for facing the challenges of power, leadership, and rank dynamics, my new 10-lesson course on Power Intelligence will give you tools and strategies for recognizing and navigating sticky power issues so that you can lead with confidence, use your power well, and achieve desired outcomes. Get started here.​
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