Since the Leadership On Trialresearch, Ivey has made considerable headway in addressing the question "What is good in character in business leadership?" Ivey's working framework of the elements and dimensions of good character in business leadership is the culmination of nearly two years of intensive research efforts by Jeffrey Gandz, Mary Crossan, Gerard Seijts, and myself. The pilot research underlying this framework included, in succession, extensive literature reviews, two series of focus-group studies, and two on-line quantitative surveys. These processes enabled us to identify, refine, and obtain preliminary confirmation of a working inventory of elements and dimensions of good character in business leadership, as well as to develop, test, and refine our on-line research methodology for Phase 1 of Ivey's Leader Character Study.
Our inventory of leader character elements builds on the work of many scholars, including Peterson and Seligman (2004), who have done extensive work to synthesize the scholarly literature on the elements of character. Peterson and Seligman conducted a comprehensive review of the psychology, philosophy, sociology, religious, and historical literatures, identified 24 character "strengths", clustered them within 6 "virtues", and associated them with personal qualities that are conducive to beneficial individual and collective human outcomes. Scholars have identified many of these same character "strengths" as important to leader effectiveness over the past sixty years. Their Values in Action - Inventory of Strengths ("VIA-IS") (Park, Peterson, & Seligman, 2004), contains 240 items that assess 24 character strengths. However, while working with the VIA-IS we discovered there were significant gaps, and that many business managers, leaders, and consultants critiqued it for missing important elements, and for the language it used to describe various elements. This prompted us to embark on subsequent research to close this gap.
Accordingly, based upon this literature review, we developed a preliminary inventory of 46 potential leader character elements for salience testing. We then used this inventory in a Q-Sort pilot study using a facilitated, face-to-face group format with nine business executives who are all experienced and well informed about business leadership and character. This process yielded a variety of insights about the importance and potential groupings of elements that served to focus and refine the list of, and names for the character dimensions and elements, and their associated descriptors. Also, this pilot study enabled us to test and refine the use of Q-Sorting methodology, and to confirm its usefulness in identifying, clarifying, and verifying participants' complex viewpoints about the relative importance and potential groupings of various elements of leader character.
Next, we adapted a web-based application for on-line Q-Sorting of the refined character elements by the same group of nine business executives. This system allows any participant to complete the Q-Sort from anywhere at any time. It presents to the participant the character elements in random order which he or she then "drags & drops" into a displayed grid that represents the importance rating, or general dimension, he or she associates with an element. Before saving this data for subsequent analysis, this system allows the participant to rearrange his/her ratings, until they are satisfied with their overall pattern of ratings for all of the character elements. Follow up focus group discussions were held with the pilot study participants in order to further refine the list of, and names for, the character dimensions and elements, and their associated descriptors. Also, the participants provided their feedback and improvement suggestions, confirming the usefulness of the on-line Q-Sorting application in identifying, clarifying, and verifying their complex viewpoints about the relative importance and potential groupings of various elements of leader character.
Based upon the results from these pilot studies, we refined and expanded the inventory to 60 character elements, as well as the on-line Q-Sorting application. During February 2013, we administered the on-line Q-Sorting survey to Ivey's EMBA candidates. 41 EMBA participants completed the on-line Q-Sort study. At the same time we developed a completely separate on-line survey that did not employ Q-Sorting methodology, but rather traditional Likert scales to assess the relative importance of the same set of 60 character elements. During April and May 2013, this separate on-line survey was administered to a different group - all of the business leaders within a single firm. Coincidentally, 41 of these business leaders completed this separate on-line survey. The results from both of these pilot studies are strikingly similar - despite their very different methodologies - providing strong initial confirmation that these 60 elements are highly salient to business leadership effectiveness. Nevertheless, upon closer examination of these quantitative survey results, we further refined their names and descriptors, as well as their groupings within Ivey's 11 dimensions.
In summary, we see this set of character elements and dimensions as a "work in progress" since the more we talk about it to individual leaders and groups of executives and directors the more they want to add, modify or sometimes subtract and we anticipate more modifications as we engage the governance community in discussions and debate about the nature and importance of "good" character.
Nevertheless, the result of our extensive literature reviews, focus-group studies, and quantitative surveys is the working framework at the heart of Ivey's Leader Character Study, as briefly described in in our article, Leadership Character and Corporate Governance.
Stay tuned for the next article in this series about Ivey's Leader Character Study.
References
Park, N., Peterson, C., and Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Strengths of character and well being. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology. 23, 5, 603-619.
Peterson, C. and Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.