January 2023
Exercising Your Leadership Character
We are very excited to see the interest in leader character growing. We wanted to share this thought-provoking article here for you to read. Written by LCA Inc. co-founder Dr. Mary Crossan and colleague Dr. Corey Crossan, and supporting the publicity of LCA Inc.’s recent book The Character Compass, this article delves into 5 key steps to exercise your leader character. Be sure to click the link to read the full article, originally published in Chief Executive.
A short summary
While most people can agree that character is important, they may not realize that character is something that can be developed. In fact, you can think about character development the same way you think about a fitness journey. Using exercise science as a guiding principle, we have created an intelligent and intentional pathway toward character development.
Step 1: Discover your character
Understanding the interplay between character dimensions forms a foundation for character development.
Step 2: Activate your character:
Spend at least 5 minutes a day intentionally engaged in music, movies, books, and the people around us to influence both performance and overall well-being.
Step 3: Strengthen your character:
Performing character exercises, habit stacking, and incrementally increasing the challenge level will help strengthen your character.
Step 4: Connect your character:
Character behaviors cannot be developed in isolation. Pay attention to how your character behaviors are connected can prevent virtuous strengths from becoming excess vices.
Step 5️: Sustain your character:
Your character is strongest across different contexts and when under stress, these contexts or systems can undermine or support your character development.
