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Character is the hidden root system that anchors greatness When Serena Williams stepped onto the tennis court, she wasn’t just chasing titles—she was redefining what it means to be great. Studying athletic greatness isn’t about idolizing sports; it’s about breaking down how excellence is achieved. The locker room and the executive suite aren’t so different. In fact, most organizations haven’t realized how important character is to true greatness. Greatness at the individual level is often dramatic, focusing on what someone does or how they do it, captured in highlight reels and record books. Rarely do we understand who the person truly is and how they continue to grow in terms of their character. But look beyond the individual, and greatness becomes something more collective: a culture built on trust, shared purpose, and teamwork. Now, shift your focus to organizations, and greatness shows itself differently—with less emphasis on single moments and more on lasting influence, creating systems that uplift everyone involved. In sports, we call this a dynasty. So, what is at the core of greatness? While competence and commitment are essential, it is character that serves as the hidden X factor in greatness. This is more evident in sports, where wins, losses, trials, and tribulations are on display, but the same qualities of greatness apply to everyone, both personally and professionally. It can also be scaled to teams, organizations, and society at large. We compare character to the roots of a tree, with competence being the canopy. The stronger the roots, the stronger the canopy. There are important lessons to understand when considering character as the X factor. Greatness Doesn’t Need to Sacrifice Well-Being Start with the idea that greatness, in any context, can be defined by sustained excellence and well-being. Too often, people see these as being in conflict. In the ESPN documentary “The Last Dance,” Michael Jordan shared the personal cost to his well-being in his pursuit of excellence, and there are many examples of athletes such as Michael Phelps, Naomi Osaka, and Simone Biles whose well-being has suffered in pursuit of high performance. In the case of Simone Biles, the public witnessed a challenge to her mental health when she withdrew from several events at the 2020 Olympics, which were held in 2021. As Forbes contributor Julie Kratz wrote in 2024, “Biles’ decision to withdraw from the Tokyo Games was a brave and courageous act. It showed younger generations that she is strong enough to put her mental health first, even when the world was watching, as much as her story of resilience this Olympics,” capturing the triumphant return of Biles in the 2024 Olympics. Although Kratz focuses on resilience, it is just one of the elements in the character constellation - a point I return to in the “Architecture of Character.” Debates about who is the GOAT – greatest of all time – in sports often focus on specific achievements that measure performance and neglect any mention of well-being, often perpetuating the view that a person has to sacrifice well-being for performance as Corey Crossan and Anjali Sarker from the Oxford Character Project reveal in their article “Winning With Character: Leadership Success That Doesn’t Come With A Price.” However, one does not have to sacrifice one for the other, as Roger Federer explained in his June 9, 2024, commencement address to Dartmouth, where he said that “life is bigger than the court…tennis could show me the world but would never be the world…it was important for me to have a rewarding life….these are the reasons I never burned out.” If you start with the premise that performance and well-being cannot be achieved, they will not be achieved. This lesson is vital for individuals, but it becomes even more crucial when considering teams and organizations, where focusing on one without the other weakens the system. Focusing solely on performance is like the early days of flight, when people tried to fly by copying birds flapping their wings. Instead, it was the discovery of aerodynamics and the related engineering that made flight possible, as Bill Furlong and I discuss in our 2023 article “Character – The Aerodynamics of Leadership.” To understand greatness, we need to look beyond performance alone. MORE FOR YOU The 3C Foundation – Character, Competence, Commitment Character, competence, and commitment form the foundation for lasting excellence and well-being, as my colleagues and I at the Ivey Business School have explained. Much has been written about the skills needed, whether in sports or a profession. While competence is essential, it alone does not guarantee sustained excellence and can even hinder it when strong competence is paired with unbalanced character, clouding judgment. Additionally, many talented athletes exist, and in business, MBAs are “a dime a dozen.” The key point is that developing competence is the price of entry into greatness, but what truly sets successful individuals apart is something else. Commitment is essential because talented individuals who lack it will underperform. I was asked to help a professional hockey team conduct character-based interviews with players before the entry draft. The interviews also revealed insights about commitment. When I asked a talented multi-sport athlete why he chose hockey, he struggled to answer. Not the kind of struggle that comes from difficulty expressing love for the game, but from an inability to differentiate between playing basketball and hockey, for example. Generally, training, team dynamics, and elite competition are part of any sport. Having and nurturing a love for what you do beyond those basics sustains careers like Sidney Crosby’s, who is entering his 21st season with the Pittsburgh Penguins. In a video message from his sister before the 2025 Four Nations Hockey Tournament, she says: “When I think about you, I think about hockey and not the accomplishments or the trophies that you have won, but your pure love of the game and the passion you have each time you get to play whether that’s on a pond, in the basement, or playing mini-sticks in a hotel hallway. I know that every moment you get to play, you love it.” For Crosby, commitment isn’t just to hockey, which he describes as a sport that is uniquely fast and physical, but also one that was cultivated through his life and woven into his identity, growing up in Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia, where hockey became a way of life for him at a very young age. Too often, people pursue something simply because they excel at it or are promoted for their competence, without considering their true commitment. An unexamined reason for why we are dedicated to something can create vulnerabilities. Former Golf World #1 David Duval struggled after winning the 2001 Open Championship. While many factors contributed to his difficulties, it was notable that in 2021, during a Golf Digest interview with John Einstein, he reflected on winning the championship revealing, “I had worked so hard for so long to get to that moment, and when I won it was certainly a good feeling, but I didn’t feel any different.” Too often, people, teams, and organizations pursue something they think they should —something that should deliver satisfaction —only to find emptiness. William Deresiewicz’s 2009 speech at West Point raised the concern that organizations and society set up systems that create hoops for us to jump through. At Yale, he described: “So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors. They were, as one of them put it herself, “excellent sheep.” I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops.” He went on to describe a crisis of leadership in America with leaders “Who can fulfill goals, but don’t know how to set them. Who think about how to get things done, but not whether they’re worth doing in the first place. What we have now are the greatest technocrats the world has ever seen, people who have been trained to be incredibly good at one specific thing, but who have no interest in anything beyond their area of expertise. What we don’t have are leaders.” Pursuing a set of hoops without understanding what you are committed to and why introduces risks, whether it’s pursuing the wrong goals or not realizing the true essence of a goal. In a character development workshop with a group of MBAs, the students were asked to imagine their obituary to reflect on who they wanted to become and why. One student said she struggled with the exercise, feeling she hadn’t truly started living because she had been stuck in education limbo for many years. Her vulnerable reflection resonated with others, who instinctively understood it. I’ve seen similar themes when people say, “Once I get through this, I will do...” It’s like wishing away the moment, the day, and, essentially, life. Examining what we are committed to and why can change our perspective and help us avoid simply going through the motions—like chasing grades, degrees, wins, or quarterly targets. For the student, this meant reframing her relationship to education and her MBA studies—not as something to endure, but as a way to find meaning within it. When working with professional hockey players, all aiming to win the Stanley Cup, a deeper understanding of commitment arises from the stories they imagine about their journey—an exercise called “their story yet to be written.” In all great stories, what sparks the imagination is the journey, not the destination. But commitment is only part of the story. It takes character to imagine and enact the story, and the unfolding story reveals and forges character, for better and worse. The Architecture of Character Greatness has historically focused on competence and commitment, often with a limited understanding of character. Building on the ancient wisdom of Confucius, Aristotle, and Plato—and brought into modern practice by psychologists Martin Seligman and Christopher Peterson—my colleagues and I at the Ivey Business School developed a leader character framework. This framework is designed for individuals to use and also meets organizational needs, promoting character alongside competence. It features 11 interconnected character dimensions, arranged in a wheel with judgment, or what Aristotle described as “practical wisdom,” at its center. Each dimension includes a set of behaviors, called elements, that can be observed and cultivated. Two critical insights have emerged. The first is that any of the character dimensions and their associated behaviors can manifest as deficient or excess vices, as shown in the linked table. This dynamic is the secret sauce of character, which has been misunderstood and overlooked. Returning to Michael Jordan as an example, his competence and commitment were unmistakable. These qualities were likely fueled by his character, including his drive, courage, accountability, and integrity. Often, when wellness issues arise for individuals, signs emerge from other aspects of character. The key insight is that a person’s strengths can turn into excesses or vices if not balanced by other character dimensions. While you shouldn’t diminish strengths, they require the support of the other dimensions’ structure. For instance, within drive, “striving for excellence” can become “striving for perfection” if humility and temperance are lacking. Most people don’t consider integrity in its excess-vice form, but its related behaviors—being authentic, candid, consistent, principled, and transparent—can become excesses, such as being uncompromising, belligerent, rigid, dogmatic, and indiscriminate. In workshops focused on developing character, participants often cite successful individuals they see as having character imbalances. It’s a turning point when they realize that such individuals could have achieved even greater sustained excellence and well-being if they had understood and strengthened their weaker dimensions. Knowing the architecture of character is helpful, but it’s not enough. Character is a habit of being that is shaped by every moment of a person’s life experiences. When it comes to character, we are all becoming who we are while we are busy doing what we do. The key is that character is constantly forming—and not always in a positive way—if we don’t understand what it is, how to develop it, and how context can either strengthen or undermine it. Corey Crossan brings a unique expertise to understanding character development as habit formation by applying principles of exercise science. We describe it as “going to the character gym” in our 2024 article in Chief Executive Magazine, “Exercising Your Leadership Character.” Although the heavy lifting associated with character is its intentional development, it is clear that people will not embark on that development if they don’t see its impact. In “Cracking the Code: Leader Character Development for Competitive Advantage,” published in 2023 with Corey Crossan and Bill Furlong, we outline those incredible benefits citing research at the Ivey Business School, including a 10% difference in resilience and well-being, and a 14% difference in leader effectiveness between individuals with weak and strong character. How Character Influences Competence and Commitment Daily There is a well-known quote attributed to Viktor Frankl, who wrote “Man’s Search For Meaning.” “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and freedom.” I have argued that Frankl underestimated the strength of character needed to make a choice. If we lack the patience and calmness associated with temperance, we lack the ability to choose it when it’s required. If we lack the optimism and future-oriented habits of behavior related to transcendence, we fail to see possibilities. If we lack the tenacity and determination associated with courage, we can’t exercise choice. Similarly, when it comes to strengths, if strong drive, is unsupported by strong humility, for example, we’re limited to our perfectionist tendencies. Frankl’s quote reminds us that character is dynamic and exercised in every moment. Who we are and who we are becoming, in terms of character, serve as the foundation for what we do and how we do it. The alignment between character and commitment is critical. Simply put, if people feel they lack choice, commitment wanes. If people don’t have the tenacity and determination that underpin their commitment, it will not be sustained. Humility is an essential foundation for commitment. If a person lacks being a continuous learning, reflective, vulnerable, and self-aware, commitment can wilt under adversity. As Federer relayed his Dartmouth speech, “effortless is a myth…I had to work very hard to make it look easy.” He described that it took him time to develop the mental discipline to sustain him. “I didn’t get where I got from pure talent alone…You can win at your best and also when you aren’t...I won 80% of the matches but only 54% of the points.” Consider the character required to develop and exercise competence. Although courage, drive, and accountability are often highlighted as essential, people often overlook the whole structure of character necessary for this growth. Federer explained how his education-focused philanthropic efforts began when he was 22, which deepened his humility and sense of transcendence, fostering a purpose that extends beyond tennis. While most view tennis as an individual sport, he sees it as a team sport involving everyone who influences him daily, including his rivals. Perhaps more problematic is the lack of understanding that strong competence and unbalanced character are a toxic combination. It was this insight that my colleagues and I revealed when we put “Leadership on Trial” after the 2008 global financial crisis. However, this toxic combination persists in individuals, teams, and organizations. Diagnosing how character imbalances influence individuals, teams, and organizations is the first step toward developing initiatives to shore up the gaps. Develop Individual Character To Strengthen Teams And Organizations Imbalances in individual character are not only problematic for individuals; they become toxic to teams and organizations, as I described in my 2025 Forbes article “Seeing How Character Eats Culture For Breakfast.” Because character is often misunderstood, teams and organizations inadvertently overweight some dimensions and underweight others. They miss the need to strengthen all dimensions. For example, professional sports teams are hardwired around drive but often neglect humility and humanity, treating them as weaknesses or failing to understand that strengthening them doesn’t have to diminish drive. The same can be said for most organizations. Focusing on only a few dimensions — like drive, accountability, and integrity—falls short of grasping the architecture of character and also hardwires into teams and organizations the very imbalances that compromise performance and well-being. Embracing character as the X-Factor of greatness begins with recognizing it more clearly in oneself, others, teams, and organizations. Recognizing it is only part of the battle. Cultivating character and embedding it into organizations is where true greatness is achieved. Editorial StandardsReprints & Permissions
