Character in leadership is the match between what a leader says they value and what they actually do, especially under pressure and over time. In Human Centered Leadership we describe it as the line between values (what you believe) and virtues (how those beliefs show up in daily behavior). When the two line up, people trust the leader, take creative risks and perform. When they drift apart, credibility erodes quietly.
Most leadership development treats character as a compliance topic and moves on. The research points the other way. This guide covers what character means for leaders, how values differ from virtues, what Fred Kiel found about the return on character, why character matters for creativity, the signs of a virtues gap and practical steps for closing it.
Key takeaways
- Character goes well beyond avoiding scandal. Fred Kiel measured whether leaders’ moral knowing, motivation and action lined up, and high-character leaders delivered close to five times the return on assets of low-character leaders.
- Values answer why. Virtues answer how: how you treat people under pressure, how you act when no one is watching and how you respond when your beliefs are tested.
- Most character problems in organizations live in the space between stated values and everyday behavior, in meetings, feedback and responses to bad news.
- Character is also a creative requirement. Göran Ekvall found trust and openness among the strongest markers of creative organizations, and both depend heavily on leadership.
- Closing a virtues gap starts with getting specific about what a value looks like in how you run meetings, give feedback, handle conflict and make hard decisions.
What does character mean in leadership?
Ask a room of managers to define character and most will talk about ethics: no lying, no cheating, no headlines. Those things matter, and they set the floor. Character in leadership asks something more demanding, which is whether a leader’s behavior reliably reflects what they say they believe.
Fred Kiel’s research, published in Return on Character, looked at three pieces that have to line up: moral knowing (understanding what’s right), moral motivation (wanting to act on it) and moral action (doing it). A leader can score well on the first two and still fall short on the third. The people around them experience the third.
That makes character something you practice. It shows up in small, repeated moments: whether you follow through, whether you tell the truth when it’s inconvenient and whether you treat the person with the least power in the room the same way you treat the person with the most.
What is the difference between values and virtues?
Values are the internal compass. They tell you what matters, what’s right and what you won’t compromise on. Virtues are those values in motion, the habits people can see. A leader can hold sincere values and still lack the virtues that make them visible.
| What changes | Values | Virtues |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Why: what matters and what’s right | How: what you do about it |
| Where it lives | In beliefs, statements and intentions | In everyday behavior and habits |
| Who can see it | Mostly the leader | Everyone who works with the leader |
| When it gets tested | When you write it down | Under pressure, when no one is watching and when beliefs are challenged |
| What it builds | A sense of direction | Trust and credibility |
| What happens when it’s missing | Drift and inconsistency | Integrity on the wall and dysfunction in the conference room |
Teams pay far more attention to what a leader does than to what the values statement says. A leader who cares deeply about people can still create fear through the way they run a meeting or react to bad news, and the team will remember the reaction.
How does character affect organizational performance?
Kiel compared leaders in the top quartile on character measures with those in the bottom quartile. Organizations led by the high-character group earned nearly five times the return on assets, and their cultures were healthier too. Few leadership variables show a gap that large.
Kim Cameron’s work in positive organizational scholarship points in the same direction. He linked organizational virtuousness, meaning integrity, compassion, reliability and care, with higher performance, more resilience and a stronger ability to adapt. Cameron calls the leaders behind those results “positive deviants” because their behavior raises the people and systems around them well above the norm.
Put those findings together and character stops looking like a soft skill. It works as one of the highest-leverage variables a leader controls.
Why is character a creative imperative?
Most conversations about character end with ethics. We think that’s where the more interesting conversation begins, because character is also the foundation for creative contribution.
Göran Ekvall studied what separates highly creative organizations from the rest. Trust and openness came out as one of the strongest differentiators, ahead of strategy, resources and talent density. He also found that trust and openness depend almost entirely on leadership.
When people can count on a leader to be honest, follow through and treat everyone with respect, they start doing the things creative work requires:
- Offering ideas before they’re polished
- Challenging assumptions, including the leader’s
- Admitting what they don’t know
- Taking reasonable risks without fearing the fallout
Without that foundation, people comply and execute while their best thinking stays out of the room. A character deficit at the top becomes a creativity deficit across the organization. Jules saw a version of this in her dissertation research on women leaders: the climate leaders create shapes whether creativity is invited or quietly shut down. You can read more in What Kills Creativity at Work?
What are the signs of a virtues gap?
A virtues gap rarely announces itself. Leaders with good intentions are often the last to see it. These patterns are worth a closer look:
- People bring you problems late, after they’ve grown, because raising them early felt risky.
- Your team agrees in meetings and disagrees in the hallway afterward.
- Commitments you’ve made slip, and no one mentions it to you.
- Your stated values describe collaboration, but decisions are made by a few people behind closed doors.
- Bad news gets softened by the time it reaches you.
- New ideas come from the same two or three voices every time.
Any one of these can have other causes. Several together usually mean people have learned that what you say and what you do don’t always match.
How do leaders close the gap between values and virtues?
Nearly every leader we’ve worked with has good values. The harder and more useful question is where their virtues fall short of those values. These steps make that question practical:
- Pick one value. Start with the one you’d most want your team to name when they describe you.
- Translate it into behavior. A word like “integrity” on a list does little on its own. Write down what it looks like in how you run meetings, give feedback, handle conflict and make politically difficult decisions.
- Watch your pressure moments. Notice how you respond to missed deadlines, bad news and disagreement. Character shows most clearly when you’re stressed.
- Ask the people closest to the work. Invite your team to tell you where your actions and words don’t line up, and thank them when they do. Humble inquiry helps here.
- Keep small promises. Trust builds through ordinary moments when what you said you’d do matches what you did.
- Stay close. Position creates distance. The 1948 Air Force Leadership Manual warned leaders to guard against aloofness, and that risk hasn’t changed. Being approachable and available keeps your virtues visible.
Which questions help you check your character this week?
Try these on your own first, then consider asking a trusted colleague:
- Where did my actions this week fail to match something I’ve said matters to me?
- How did I respond the last time someone brought me bad news, and would they bring it to me again?
- Which commitment have I let slide that my team probably noticed?
How does character fit Human Centered Leadership and the Creative Alliances System™?
Human Centered Leadership treats leadership as relational. People do their best work when the relationships around them make it safe and worthwhile to contribute, and those relationships rest on a leader who is who they claim to be. Character is the foundation the rest of the model is built on.
In our Creative Alliances System™, character touches all three parts of how a team works:
- Bonds. Consistent, trustworthy behavior is what makes a team climate feel safe enough for people to bring their full thinking. It underpins psychological safety.
- Tasks. When people trust the leader, they challenge assumptions and take smart risks on the work itself.
- Goals. Shared goals only hold when people believe the leader will keep the commitments behind them.
Frequently asked questions
What is character in leadership?
Character in leadership is the alignment between a leader’s values and their behavior, shown consistently under pressure and over time. It covers ethics and goes further, into whether people can count on the leader to follow through, tell the truth and treat everyone with respect.
What is the difference between values and virtues in leadership?
Values are what a leader believes; they answer why. Virtues are the habits that put those beliefs into practice; they answer how. Teams experience a leader’s virtues far more than their values.
Does character really affect business results?
Yes. Fred Kiel found that organizations led by high-character CEOs earned nearly five times the return on assets of those led by low-character CEOs. Kim Cameron linked organizational virtuousness with higher performance and resilience.
How is character connected to creativity and innovation?
Creative work requires people to share unfinished ideas, challenge assumptions and admit uncertainty. They only do that when they trust the leader. Göran Ekvall identified trust and openness as key differentiators of creative organizations and found they depend heavily on leadership.
Can character be developed?
Yes. Because virtues are habits, they can be practiced. Leaders build character by defining what their values look like in specific behaviors, inviting feedback on where they fall short and keeping small commitments consistently.
What is a virtues gap?
A virtues gap is the distance between a leader’s sincere values and their everyday behavior. It often shows up as late bad news, quiet disagreement and ideas coming from only a few voices.
Character is where leadership begins, and it gets practiced every day.
— Lane & Jules
Morris & Morris | BOMBDIGGITY, LLC
Michael Lane Morris, PhD and Jules Morris, PhD are co-authors of “Human Centered Leadership: The Decisive Leadership Advantage,” published in the SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Development (2024).
Sources & further reading
- Cameron, K. S. (2008). Positive leadership: Strategies for extraordinary performance. Berrett-Koehler.
- Ekvall, G. (1996). Organizational climate for creativity and innovation. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 5(1), 105–123.
- Kiel, F. (2015). Return on character: The real reason leaders and their companies win. Harvard Business Review Press.
- Morris, J. (2025). Playing the creative advantage: Creative role identity of female leaders [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
- Morris, M. L., & Morris, J. (2024). Human centered leadership: The decisive leadership advantage. In SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Development. SAGE Publications.
This article is part of our Human Centered Leadership hub, where we collect our work on how leaders build trust, connection and creative capacity in their teams.