Ross Tom knew he was in for some tough challenges when he stepped into a new leadership role five years ago at a global technology giant.
"My predecessor had not done a great job of taking care of the large team I had inherited, so they weren't exactly excited when I walked through the front door," recalls Mr. Tom, who has since moved on from that employer and now works as head of marketing for ExperiencePoint Inc., a leadership-training company in Toronto. "The challenge for me was to win the trust and confidence of my team and, in some cases, bring them back to a level of performance that I knew they were capable of."
Mr. Tom, who had spent several years managing employees in his family's transport truck business, came well equipped for the challenge. The year before he accepted the job at the technology company, he had completed the Transformational Leadership elective course in the MBA program at Western University's Ivey Business School in London, Ont.
The unique focus of the course – the dimensions of character possessed by effective leaders – proved invaluable, Mr. Tom says, in helping him define his own values as a leader. It's a critical exercise for anyone who wants to build and grow a business, he points out.
"I learned to balance important values such as humanity and wisdom to make decisions that not only affected me but also my team," he says. "As a result, I was able to build a strong cohesive team, and to this day, I continue to meet up regularly with my previous team members and we remember very fond times."
The notion that character matters in leadership is far from new. Even in ancient times, great thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle underlined the importance of good virtues and values in sound decision-making. But in recent decades, organizations seemed to put more weight on leaders' experience and skills rather than on their character, notes Gerard Seijts, a professor of organizational behaviour at Ivey.
The conversation changed after the 2008 global financial crisis.
"A lot of people at the time were really wondering how the crisis happened under the watch of some presumably very smart and capable people," says Prof. Seijts. "So we started to talk to people in industry as well as in the public and not-for-profit sectors about the role of leadership in the financial crisis. Out of these conversations came a book called Leadership on Trial: A Manifesto for Leadership Development, which questioned the role of leadership in the crisis and, most importantly, how the next generation of leaders can deal with the challenges of the future."
After the book was published in 2009, three of its co-authors – Ivey professors Seijts, Mary Crossan and Jeffrey Gandz – continued their research on character and leadership. Based on interviews with about 2,500 leaders, they along with a team of researchers at Ivey, developed a framework on the character of leaders in organizations.
Prof. Crossan names the 11 "dimensions," included in the framework: transcendence, drive, collaboration, humanity, humility, integrity, temperance, justice, accountability, courage and – the dimension that orchestrates them –judgment.
"These are the facets of character that matter, and what is critically important is the way that these 11 dimensions of character work," explains Prof. Crossan, who teaches strategy and leadership at Ivey. "What we have found in both theory and practice is that when you overweight some dimensions and underweight others, what could be a virtue becomes a vice."
For example, courage without temperance can become recklessness, while drive without integrity could lead to unethical decisions, says Prof. Crossan, who also emphasizes the importance of putting judgment in the centre of the framework. "Judgment is like an air traffic controller. You exercise judgment whenever you apply any of the other dimensions," she says. "The key is to have the capacity for whatever dimension the situation requires. Unfortunately, a lot of leaders don't have that capacity."
Ivey is working to develop this capacity in the next generation of leaders through its HBA and MBA programs, as well as through its Executive Education courses, workshops and speaking engagements at various organizations across the country and overseas. These organizations have included companies from various sectors including a professional sports team, a capital markets firm and a financial regulatory body.
"One organization we're working with has a lot of HR processes – for example, reference checking – where the focus is all about competence," says Prof. Crossan. "Now they're changing these to also include questions about character."
The impact of business leaders' character on the success of their companies should not be underestimated, according to John Lewis, manager of business development at Quinsam Capital Corp., a Toronto-based merchant bank. In addition to ensuring better business decisions, a leader's good character also attracts investors.
"There's no question that investors want and like to support CEOs they feel they can trust," says Mr. Lewis. "The numbers matter for sure, but when you also have a leader who possesses those values that most people associate with good character, investors will flock to the business because they want to see that leader as well as the company [to] succeed."
A key reason why a business leader's character matters so much is the long time horizon for most investments, notes Mr. Lewis. "Investors are looking for someone they can have a strong long-term relationship with."
Leaders who strike the right balance of character dimensions in any given situation are better able to create healthier and more productive workplace cultures, adds Matthew Gray, BMO Financial Group's director of business operations in retail automotive finance.
"When you become aware of the dimensions of leader character and how you apply the dimensions of your own character in everyday situations, you become better and faster at decision-making because you're acting in a more authentic way with little or no biases," says Mr. Gray, a 2012 graduate from Ivey's EMBA program. "It's easier for good decisions to be made when you're allowing your humanity to shine through instead of always trying to project a certain leader persona."
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's Globe Edge Content Studio. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.