Why Your Character is Key to Your Success
So the story goes like this...
“Your knee sucks and needs surgery. You’ve chosen a surgeon who understands you deeply and you feel his empathy. You know he is “for” you and wants the best for you. He is deeply motivated for you to regain your ability to function and live a fulfilling life. And, certainly he has proven to be skilled and capable. Then, in an unusual move, he invites you to join the audience in the operating theater so you can see how this surgery is done. The procedure begins, and everything seems to be going smoothly.
Then it happens.
Suddenly, the patient begins to bleed profusely, in a way you know is unexpected. You see the team moving into different positions and responding, grabbing this instrument and that one. But something that shocks you happens next. Your surgeon screams, “He’s bleeding! What did you idiots do? Somebody do something! Stop this bleeding or you’ll be next!” And from there continues to yell at people and seems to cause more chaos than he relieves. You can tell the surgical team is clearly rattled at his outbursts. They are trying to work and deal with getting screamed at all at the same time. And you—your trust in “Dr. Understanding-Good Motive-Capable-Trustworthy” has turned to despair. It wasn’t because of a lack of skill, but because of something else altogether: his character.
That story is a passage from the book that inspired this series on trust which is entitled "Trust", by Dr. Henry Cloud. His book inspired me to think about Trust as a diamond because the book reveals Trust has not 1 but 5 facets to it.
Today we will look at facet 3, Character, and discuss what it is, why it’s important and how to build ours up.
Now character can been referred to as a personal makeup of how people deal with others, themselves and life. If you’re from the business world you may have heard this referred to as “soft skills”. But trust me, there is nothing soft about developing these skills. It can be very difficult but I believe absolutely worth it because it’s connected to trust which is the currency of life.
To help us understand Character better, we can think of it in 2 main categories:
The first is known as Ethics: “would that person lie, cheat or steal” If they would, trust is out the door. This is the ground floor of character.
But the second category is what is now commonly referred to as Emotional Intelligence.
Since we’re on the subject, there’s a book I highly recommend on the subject called Emotional Intelligence 2.0. In the book the authors share something very interesting that their studies revealed.
“People with the highest levels of intelligence outperform those with average IQs just 20 percent of the time, while people with average IQs outperform those with high IQs 70 percent of the time.”
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0
This discovery lead to the concept of a persons emotional quotient or EQ which can be measured in 4 categories: self awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management.
They way I like to think of EQ versus IQ is: People smarts > Book smarts
Now don’t get me wrong, having book smarts is very important. I mean, case in point this video is about a book.
But it seems that, especially here in the states, EQ has been downplayed as less than, which is a shame because no matter how smart you are, if you want to create anything bigger than yourself, you need to work with other people. I have seen many a “smart leader” self-sabotage their own business because of weak EQ and then turn right around and blame the team as the problem. Even though we all know that...
Everything rises and falls on leadership.
- John Maxwell
So just because a person has a skill or understanding doesn’t mean they are to be trusted in a specific area if they don’t have the character to back it up.
Remember that Trust is a two way street. Not only do we need to discern, we also need to develop. So let’s turn the lens on us for a second and ask ourselves “Do we have the character traits to be trustworthy?”
Henry Cloud offers some positive and negative examples for a helpful frame work I that I’ll share here. Now, if you’re like me, you’ll see traits on both sides of the fence that you’ve exhibited from time to time. No one watching right now is going to bat 1000. The key word is “develop”. It’s a process. We don’t expect perfection, but we should exhibit progress.
Another key concept in the book we need to remember when it comes to character is:
A person’s trustworthiness is specific to the certain areas in which we trust them.
- Dr. Henry Cloud
Because we’re not perfect, no one’s character is going to be trustworthy in every area of life simply for the fact that there’s just too many areas. So the question Dr. Cloud encourages us to ask is...
Can they do what we need them to do for that context?
If yes, trust can build. If no, trust will break. But this awareness doesn’t mean the relationship is broken. On the contrary, it can be liberating.
For instance, my wife, Sandi is an amazing interior decorator. She will come home from a long day at work and actually want to go into the garage and start on a wood working project. In fact, this back drop behind me was made by her as a side project, not only because she likes building stuff but also because she’s absolutely infatuated with me. (I mean, I can’t blame her) She has the desire and patience to do all that and finds it relaxing.
However, asking me to do that would stress me the heck out! I really struggle when it comes to building things. I loose my temper much easier, get confused quicker and want to quit faster than anything else you could ask me to do. Now that used to bother me. I felt less than especially when people would see all the tools in the garage and ask me how long I’ve been a carpenter. But now, because I’ve been working on my EQ, I just smile and point to Sandi and genuinely celebrate her talent.
Like all these facets we’re learning in the trust diamond, they develop over time through heat and pressure. It’s not going to happen by accident. You have to be intentional with developing your character. Fortunately, their are lots of helpful resources you can use to help you get their faster. The one I used and highly recommend comes with the Emotional Intelligence 2.0 book I mentioned earlier. When you buy the book, it will come with an assessment that you take before reading the book, and then you take it again several months after to see how you’ve progressed.
When I took the assessment I discovered my lowest score was in self management so I went to the section on self management and picked one of the self management strategies. I remember the first one I chose was called “Count to 10” and it said...
When you feel yourself getting frustrated or angry, stop yourself by taking in a deep breath and saying the number one to yourself as you exhale. Keep breathing and counting until you reach the number ten.
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0
Sounds easy right? Well, it’s was quit the challenge to put it into practice. So, full disclosure, one of my triggers is when my computer doesn’t do what I want it to when I want it to. If it freezes or an app crashes or glitches out on me in any, way shape or form, I get mad quick. And god help everyone around me if it happens when I’m on a tight deadline where every second counts.
At first I didn’t remember to do the counting exercise so I made a reminder on my phone to remind me every day before I started working. And, just like the metaphor of the Trust diamond, progress didn’t happen overnight but over time with heat and pressure. Now I’m not perfect but I have seen massive improvement in my temper when things start to glitch.
So, that’s the 3rd facet of the trust diamond. In the next blog, we’ll rotate the diamond to facet number 4: Ability.
If you know another Creator who would like this topic, share this blog with them.
