Are we really surprised to find a link between character and performance?

In the 2018 LCP Global Leadership Survey, we asked 134 Board Chairs, CEOs, executives and senior leaders to respond to a short survey exploring their thoughts on this topic.

Apart from my own leadership experiences in seeing the importance of this relationship over the last 25 years, I have extensively researched this topic since 2010 and am still amazed that many do not believe there is a link between character and performance. There is often an interesting psychology behind this, hidden by the economic justification for expediency in delivering short-term results without regard for the damage this can do to the credibility and performance of a brand over time.

For now, I merely want to highlight some of the preliminary insights from our analysis. From the eighty respondents, 95 percent agreed that there is a link between the integrity of the leadership team and the success of the business. 5 percent disagreed.

We next asked them how they would describe this link?

The three most dominant themes describing this link were:

1. Great values don’t guarantee immediate success. However, there was acknowledgement that the best people thrive in an environment where there is a commitment to strong values. In the short-term it affects the recruitment and retention of great talent; longer-term, the relationship between values and success becomes more pronounced.
2. People want to do business with organizations and people they can trust — trust is the currency through which a business can succeed, and it is clearly much more than a mere transaction.
3. Closely related to the above, there was a clear belief that business success should be measured beyond monetary value.

What’s the bottom-line?

Building resilient character is an indispensable quality for any business, and without it, many corporate collapses and leadership failures provide evidence of how catastrophic the results can be.

Here at LCP Global we are passionate about putting character high on the agenda for businesses that want to achieve great results without having to compromise their integrity. Building Resilient Character is one of the 5 Leadership Anchors™ LCP Global presents as part of a systematic and strategic approach to increasing leadership capacity.