In 1964, a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death outside her apartment building in Queens, New York. She was attacked repeatedly over the course of an hour. Despite her screams, none of her 38 neighbors intervened or called for help. Some were afraid. Some didn’t want to get involved. Some thought someone else would do it.

The incident became a symbol of the increased callousness, self-centeredness, and fearfulness of a society where bad guys act with confidence that onlookers won’t interfere.

The long array of billion-dollar scandals rocking corporate America is not so much the result of growing hordes of clever scoundrels as it is the product of passive complicity of innocent people who are willing to look the other way to protect their job, their relationship with their boss, or their incentive compensation.

The moral root of the issue is responsibility. As Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

I don’t think we have the obligation to put ourselves at risk to right every wrong we witness, but we should be willing to do so when the consequences are serious and we’re accountable for creating an environment that’s hostile to illegal and unethical conduct.

The duty of responsibility requires good sense and courage to help us avoid the extremes of doing nothing and trying to do everything. One thing is certain, though: The world will be better if we’d all do a little more.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comment (5)

Tess, an earnest 8-year-old, was worried. Her little brother was very sick and she overheard her mom crying on the phone: “They say his only chance is an experimental operation, but it isn’t covered by insurance and there’s no way we can pay for it.”

Tess went to a jar containing all the money she had saved. Although she wasn’t supposed to go to the store alone, this was an emergency. She walked four blocks to the drugstore where her mom got her medicine. She went to the counter, but the pharmacist was deeply engaged in a conversation with another man.

Finally, Tess said, “Excuse me, but this is an emergency.”

“What do you need?” the pharmacist snapped. “I’m talking to my brother whom I haven’t seen in years.”

Tess replied, “Well, I have a brother, too, and he’s going to die if you don’t sell me an experimental operation.”

The pharmacist said, “We don’t sell operations here.”

His brother stepped forward and asked softly, “What kind of operation do you need?”

“To take sick lumps out of his brain,” Tess answered, “and I have money.” She poured all her cash out on the counter.

The brother said, “Well, that may be just enough.”

After a discussion with Tess’s mom, the nationally renowned neurosurgeon took the case and successfully performed the complex operation at no charge.

This is my version of a story that once circulated on the Internet. Even if it’s not true, it’s a wonderful parable about what can happen when caring is turned into action.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comment (3)

Our abilities to think, reason, and learn are among the most powerful tools we have to make our lives safer, more comfortable, and more fulfilling. Yet many of us don’t develop our mental capacities.

Although we can learn important information in school, the wise person in pursuit of self-improvement realizes that education is a lifelong process of expanding our minds through conversations, reading, listening, watching, and doing.

Thus, in selecting who we converse with and what we read, listen to, or watch, we should avoid whatever lacks intellectual nutrition.

No matter your age, the quality of your life can be improved if you seek opportunities to increase your knowledge, deepen your understanding, and sharpen your problem-solving skills. Think how much better your decisions would be if you learned how to better distinguish between facts, opinions, assumptions, and accusations. Or if you could identify and overcome personal prejudices and self-interest.

Aristotle said, “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” And Robert Frost added, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

To do that, try to develop your ability to receive and, with an open mind, consider unsettling, unpleasant, or offensive information and points of view.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comment (5)

I grew up during the sexual revolution. It was a philosophical and physical rebellion against entrenched social mores about everything from enjoying sex to condemning sexual activities, including pre- and extramarital relations.

Spurred by new concepts of feminism and the availability of the pill, more permissive attitudes toward casual sex became prevalent. And while not the norm, extramarital affairs and having children out of wedlock were more readily accepted. Today, it’s as if all choices involving sex are exempt from moral judgment.

It’s simply not so. While values confining sexual activity to the marriage bed are deeply rooted in religion, sexual conduct also involves secular ethical considerations that go beyond religious views about chastity and fidelity. In fact, choices concerning sexual conduct are ethical minefields.

Although many decisions about sex are private, when they affect others, there’s an ethical dimension that can’t be ignored. If one betrays a trust or induces another to do so, it’s wrong. So is irresponsible, dishonest, or disrespectful behavior that exploits people, inflicts emotional pain, jeopardizes important relationships, or creates risks of disease or unwanted pregnancy.

Sex isn’t wrong, but given the stakes, it should be taken very seriously.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comment (3)

If you want to help your children do well in life, there are a few things you can do. A high proportion of high achievers have two things in common: lots of books in their house and an emphasis on reading, and a family tradition of regularly eating dinner together.

Filling a house with books surrounds children with endless and varied opportunities and challenges to explore and learn. Books provide knowledge and seeds of wisdom about morality and character.

Eating dinner together assures that parents have an opportunity to participate in their kids’ day-to-day lives and help shape the way they think and react. Coordinating schedules so everyone eats together requires an effort to elevate family time above other things and instills in children a sense of belonging.

But we can do more than promoting reading and family discussions to offset the bad influences to which our kids are exposed. Everything we do to or in front of our children matters; what we allow, what we encourage, and what we do ourselves teaches our children how to live and conveys powerful messages about values.

So be sensitive with what you say and how you say it, what you read and what you watch on TV. And be careful with how you handle relationships and deal with emotions like disappointment, anger, and frustration. Because what you do is what you’ll get.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comment (1)

In the early ’90s I was asked to spend a full day talking about ethics with the entire California Senate. I was their punishment. Three senators had been convicted the previous year, and voters had passed an ethics initiative requiring legislators to receive education on ethical principles.

This was a high-profile, high-prestige program, and I didn’t want to be naïve about Sacramento’s political realities and rationalizations. I spent days interviewing senators and staffers.

During one interview, a senior staffer confided, “We need this program. People lie a lot up here.”

I wondered if I should act surprised. “Lying in politics? I’m shocked!” I thought. But before I could respond, the staffer added, “I hardly ever lie.”

“Gee,” I thought, “do you hardly ever take bribes?”

Although his statement sounded like a confession, he wasn’t embarrassed at all. In fact, he was proud. Hardly ever lying made him feel morally superior. In a culture where lying is common, the occasional liar feels like a saint. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

I’ve heard variations of this justification (“I’m not so bad as long as others are worse”) so many times that I’ve given it a name: The Doctrine of Relative Filth.

It’s a rationalization used by cheating athletes and coaches, dishonest businessmen, and others to minimize their moral shortcomings by comparing themselves to others who have even lower standards.

What a pathetic defense! People of character aren’t satisfied being better than someone else. They strive to be the best they can be.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comment (5)

When young children start to learn new things, they commonly reject any help, declaring, “I want to do it myself!” Whatever happened to this growing flame of self-reliance and independence?

Why have so many young people replaced this youthful hunger for self-sufficiency with an entitlement mentality? Why are so many young people comfortable with their hands out and indifferent to the idea of keeping their heads high? We need to do a better job promoting self-sufficiency as a good thing, as a mark of maturity, and as a requirement of independence.

Self-sufficiency is the only road to meaningful personal freedom. Dependency always comes with strings attached. Thus, young adults who still live in their parents’ home or let their parents pay for rent or car payments have to expect unwanted efforts to influence or control important decisions.

Self-sufficiency is an important aspect of responsibility. People of character try to carry their own weight. They want to free others of the burden of providing for them. Self-sufficiency isn’t simply a state of financial independence wished for by parents anxious to reclaim their incomes and homes. It’s a genuinely prized source of self-respect and esteem arising from the sense of freedom that comes with knowing we can thrive on our own without relying on the goodwill and resources of others.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comment (2)

Suppose you hear that the only person who has a chance to beat you at this weekend’s golf match is ill and may have to withdraw. Are you overjoyed at your good luck or disappointed that you won’t be able to compete against the very best?

If you really love and understand sports, you ought to be disappointed. John Naber, the winner of four Olympic gold medals in swimming, says a true sportsman wants to compete against his best competitor on his best day. Yes, that makes winning more difficult and less likely, but it also makes the event more exciting and a victory more meaningful. Being declared the winner is not real victory; being the best is.

If you play any sport, what’s more fun: to play against someone you easily dominate or against someone who forces you to be your best and makes every point an exciting challenge? You see, the point of sports is to have fun while trying to win and loving the game enough that you can have fun whether you win or not.

Athletic competition should not be a form of war. The people you compete against are also the people you play with. They’re not your enemies. The word “competition” comes from the Latin root competere that means “to strive together, not against each other.” Be thankful for quality competitors who push you to your limit. You’ll find sports more healthy and enjoyable when you respect and even like your opponents rather than hate them.

When you compete with someone as good or better than you, you may not always win, but you never lose.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comment (1)

After a workshop, Paul said he still has 10-year-old scars from the time he quit a good job rather than lie. When his boss asked him to issue a press release containing patently false statements, he refused, putting his employee badge on the table.

His boss calmly handed the badge back to him saying, “Think this over. Why throw away a good job and a promising career?”

Paul walked out so frustrated and frightened, he had to find a private place to cry. What’s worse, he said his act of moral courage was a meaningless waste. Someone else issued the press release and his boss’s career flourished. “It took me years to find a job as good as that one, and my family suffered,” he added. “What good did my integrity do for anyone?”

Paul was looking for validation of his principled stance in the wrong place. We exercise integrity not to get what we want but to be what we want. Integrity is not about winning; it’s about staying whole and being worthy of self-respect and the esteem of loved ones. It’s about being honorable – not as a success strategy but as a life choice. Although Paul suffered for a time because of his moral courage, he would have suffered far worse had he betrayed his values.

While he didn’t appreciate it, Paul preserved for himself and his family something far more valuable than his job – his honor. And it’s no accident that he now has a better job with no pressures to cheat or lie.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comment (8)

According to a story in the book Hugs for Dad by John William Smith, a father asked his son after grocery shopping to return their cart to the retrieval area. Although it would have taken only a minute, the son protested.

“C’mon, Dad,” he said, “there are carts all over the lot. None of those people returned theirs. No one expects them to.”

Then Mom chimed in. “For heaven’s sake, they pay people to collect the carts. Returning one more won’t change the history of the world. Let’s just go.”

Dad was about to surrender when he saw an elderly couple walking together to return their cart. After a moment, he said to his wife and son, “We’re not responsible for what other people do, but we are responsible for what we do. There are two kinds of people: those who put their carts away and those who don’t. We put our carts away because that’s the kind of people we are.”

This story isn’t just about grocery carts. It’s about putting principles above convenience and doing the right thing in a world that seems to promote rationalizations and excuses that demean or trivialize simple acts of virtue. There are two kinds of people: those who find the strength to do what they ought to and those who find excuses not to.

People of character do the right thing even if no one else does, not because they think it will change the world but because they refuse to be changed by the world.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comment (46)

Peggy Adkins, a talented CHARACTER COUNTS! trainer, tells the story of when she adopted a cat. Each of the cat’s original owners was interviewed, and when Peggy finally got the animal, she had to sign a document that listed 23 things to do and 17 things not to do to raise a happy, healthy feline.

Over the next several months, she received phone calls to confirm that her family was doing what they were supposed to do and refraining from what they weren’t supposed to do.

As the mother of two adopted children, Peggy marveled at the fact that she got better training and follow-up about her cat than her children. Although raising happy, healthy, decent children is vastly more complicated and important than raising pets, there’s no manual for child-raising, not even a list of dos and don’ts.

To make her point in her presentations, she uses Play-Doh in different sizes and colors, pointing out that, like children, no two pieces are alike and that each one can be molded into infinitely unique shapes.

“Indent it slightly with your finger,” she demonstrates. “Touch it with your fingernail. Press it against your arm. Notice that every hair leaves a mark. Now press it against the Sunday comics; it will mirror the pictures. And if you roll it on a table, all kinds of bits and particles become embedded in the substance, almost impossible to remove.

“That’s what makes parenting so important and difficult. Everything kids touch makes an impression.”

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comment (0)

In my book The Power of Character, Dr. Laura Schlessinger writes that her radio show didn’t become a success until she abandoned the nonjudgmental strategy of the traditional psychologist/family counselor and began to challenge, chastise, and encourage her listeners to think of their behavior in terms of right and wrong. Believing that we’re all obligated to discern and honor moral boundaries and ethical principles, she popularized discussion of conscience and character as personal obligations, not abstract concepts.

As a law professor, I felt a similar need to distance myself from the “Who am I to judge?” legalistic perspective taught in law school in favor of a more complex outlook that included moral judgment. Sure, clients may prefer nonjudgmental advice focusing on what works rather than what’s right and patients in counseling may prefer talking about feeling good rather than being good, but universal standards of right and wrong cannot be ignored.

The middle ground between self-righteous finger-wagging moralists who scold and condemn everyone who lives by different standards and the “whatever works for you” relativists with no moral backbone at all is found by understanding that “Your right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose.”

In other words, a person’s need for happiness or freedom does not justify endangering or injuring others. Thus, if the concept of character is to mean anything, we should judge and disapprove of untrustworthy, disrespectful, irresponsible, unfair, and unkind conduct.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comment (11)

Our values – the core beliefs that drive behavior – determine our character, our ethics, and our potential. Thus, the most important thing we can do for our children is to stimulate them to develop positive values that will help them become wise, happy, and good. This is no simple matter.

The first step is to achieve greater clarity about what we believe and what we want our children to believe. Often there’s an inconsistency between what we say we value (our stated values) and what we actually value (our operative values).

We also need to recognize the complexity of our value structures. Some values deal with wants and desires, others with beliefs as to what works, and still others with our convictions about what’s morally right. In a person of character, the latter values supersede others.

As my children are getting older, I’ve been thinking about constructing with my wife a Statement of Family Values expressing our beliefs about the nature and relative importance of a dozen basic matters.

If you want to try it, state the beliefs you hope to instill in your children regarding these 12 areas:

Character/ethics
Faith/spirituality
Marriage/family relationships
Friendship
Education
Self-reliance
Attitude
Service
Success
Money/material possessions
Drinking/drugs
Premarital sex

We teach our children values with everything we say and do. The trouble is, we’re not always aware of what principles we’re teaching. Taking the time to formulate a Statement of Family Values can provide an unambiguous source of standards your children will never forget.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comment (0)

As an athlete, I had to aspire to be mediocre. Still, I loved sports. When my baseball career ended when I was cut from my Pony League team at age 13, it was a devastating blow. Fortunately, my high school had a different philosophy: Every kid who wanted to participate could have a sports experience. They accomplished this by organizing four levels from varsity to C team.

I switched to basketball, and though I rode the bench my first year for all but about two minutes, I had a great experience. I stayed on the C team as a senior and became a starter.

Sports belong in schools as an important opportunity for physical and social growth. But high school sports are being hijacked. A minority of competitive coaches and a growing contingent of sports parents consumed by illusions of professional careers for their kids have changed the face of interscholastic competition. As the pursuit of celebrity, glory, and imagined financial rewards has pushed the educational values of competing far out of sight, schools across the country are violating the spirit of sportsmanship by assembling all-star teams of elite athletes.

It’s not the athletes who are exploited, however. These kids and their parents are getting exactly what they want. The real victims are (1) the teams they wallop because of the mismatch and (2) the kids who want to play but are displaced by students who transfer from other schools or other countries. Today, few highly successful programs are built on local kids.

It’s a shame and a sham, and I don’t understand why the parents of kids who are denied their chance to play tolerate it.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comment (6)

Here are seven truths I’ve discovered in my struggles to be an effective boss:

1. It’s not what you say that matters; it’s what people hear. Just because you said it doesn't mean they heard it. Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean they read it. Be sure your message is received and understood.


2. There are lots of things you don’t know and lots of people who hope you don’t find out. The boss rarely hears the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. You’ve got to walk around, look around, listen, and ask direct questions.


3. Hire for character, train for skills. Integrity, responsibility, and the ability to work with others are vital competencies. You’ve got to screen out or weed out people you can’t believe or rely on or who are toxic to the team.


4. Settling for warm bodies turns one problem into two. You still have to get someone who’s right for the job, but first you have to deal with and remove the wrong person. If you can’t find the time to do it right, when will you find the time to do it over?


5. What you allow, you encourage. If you don’t enforce your values and rules, they’re not your values and they’re not rules.


6. Doing nothing is doing something. Indecision and inaction cause as much harm as poor decisions. Indecisiveness is incompetence.


7. It’s all about relationships. Your most important job is to get the most out of the people who work with you. You’ve got to be ready to be a boss, motivator, mentor, counselor, disciplinarian, or friend.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comment (3)

When Molly found a child's plastic purse with three quarters inside, she chanted, "Finders keepers, losers weepers."

But her mom said the right thing to do was to return it to the person who lost it, and they went to the Lost and Found office.

A week later, Molly found a dollar bill on a table. "We've got to go to the Lost and Found again," she said.

This time her mom replied, "That's not necessary. It's only a dollar."

"But Mom," Molly protested, "you said we have to find the owner."

Mom was right to reject the "finders keepers" principle, but is there is a moral difference between returning a child's purse and a dollar bill? I think so.

The value of found property is important ethically and practically. The more it's worth, the more the loser is likely to suffer from its loss and make efforts to recover it. This imposes a higher duty on the finder.

It's not just monetary worth that matters. It's the value the owner attaches to the lost item that's most important. Thus, the purse with three quarters was probably worth a lot more to the little girl who lost it than the dollar bill was to its owner. Can you imagine how happy she would be to get it back?

What's at play here is a form of the Golden Rule: If you lose property, how important would it be to get it back? At the core of ethics is caring for others and the willingness to go out of our way to bring pleasure to someone's life or ease their pain.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comment (18)

A few years ago, 14 students at an affluent public high school were involved in a school break-in. They weren’t vandals and weren’t trying to steal anything. Their goal was to alter computer records of their academic transcripts so they’d have a better chance of getting into premier colleges.

Some people were horrified, others were amused, and still others treated the matter as a minor youthful indiscretion. The superintendent fell into the last category. “It’s a one-time infraction of the rules,” he said and imposed a five-day suspension.

Corrected transcripts were sent to the colleges involved, but the schools weren’t told about the burglary or falsification of records. According to the superintendent, “The students were under a lot of pressure, but we think they learned their lesson. We don’t want to ruin their lives.”

The students learned a lesson all right.

They learned that there’s little downside to doing whatever it takes to get what you want, even if it involves committing a felony. They learned that even if you get caught, you probably won’t suffer serious consequences. Come on! Suspending high school seniors for a week is a vacation, not a punishment.

This sort of excessive leniency sends a terrible message to kids about right and wrong. The superintendent trivialized the act by calling it a “mistake.” A mathematical error is a mistake. Forgetting someone's birthday is a mistake. Getting into a bad relationship is a mistake.

Breaking into a locked office to alter documents is not a mistake. It’s a premeditated act of dishonesty and should be treated as such. If that means the students will suffer long-term impact, so be it. That’s what justice requires and responsibility is about.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comment (17)

In the early days of our democracy, newspapers played a critical role in electing officials, making and breaking reputations, and forming public opinion. Publishers had no hesitation drenching their papers with their political views or making vicious personal attacks on public figures they disliked or disagreed with.

John Adams’s Federalist-dominated Congress became so angry about attacks undermining its policies that it passed the Sedition Act in 1798, making it treason to publish “any false, scandalous, and malicious writing” about the government. Under this law, 25 men, most of them editors of newspapers supporting Thomas Jefferson, were arrested and their newspapers were shut down.

When Jefferson came into office, he repealed the laws, but the Federalist newspapers were no less vicious or relentless in their criticism of him than the other newspapers had been of Adams. Still, Jefferson steadfastly insisted that a free press was the single-most important safeguard of liberty.

By any imaginable standard, today’s newspapers (and other forms of news media) are more professional, fair, and responsible than those that reported on the founding of our nation. Yet they’re far from perfect, and many people so dislike and/or distrust the news media that they’re ready to constrain it rather than demand improvements. In a 2005 survey, more than one in five Americans said they favored allowing the government to censor the press. You’ve got to have a lot of trust in government to believe that would make things better.

Our nation needs aggressive, fearless, and objective news reporting. It’s fair and proper for reporters to identify deficiencies and express dismay, but at some point we have to devote greater energy to diagnosing and fixing the problems. Censorship isn’t the answer.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comment (4)

When I first heard the name Valerie Kondos Field, I thought it was a sports venue. Since then, I’ve come to have a great appreciation for the name of UCLA’s women’s gymnastics coach and the extraordinary woman who owns it.

For one thing, she has impeccable credentials. Her name was among the first mentioned when I asked Coach John Wooden years ago for a list of coaches who best exemplified the teacher-coach concept he introduced to the CHARACTER COUNTS! Pursuing Victory With Honor sports initiative.

He told me he was an avid fan of women’s gymnastics and attended every meet he could. He loves the way Coach Val teaches her girls to be not merely great gymnasts – her teams have won five NCAA national championships – but to be good people.

So I got to know Val a bit and found out why Coach Wooden thinks so much of her. As a model teacher-coach, she takes seriously the notion that her team is comprised of student-athletes. Her team’s cumulative grade-point average is always among the top in the conference.

And in a sport that highlights personal performances, Coach Val insists that her athletes work and think as a team. But what touched my heart most was watching her athletes enthusiastically cheering for each other during a meet.

Coach Wooden’s endorsement is hard to beat, but the clincher for me was when my wife Anne, who runs her own gymnastics school and treats her gymnasts like they were her own kids, told me that no parent could hope for more than having a child coached, mentored, and loved by Valerie Kondos Field.

Coached, mentored, and loved – that's quite a combination.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comment (0)

Long ago, a woodsman saved a leprechaun’s life and was given one wish. The woodsman thought for a long time and finally wished that each of his three daughters find a good husband.

But the leprechaun was full of games. “How am I to know what’s good in your mind? I’ll give them husbands, but you can name only one quality and it’s got to be the same for all. What’ll you have? I can make them clever, strong, handsome, rich, you name it.”

“Give me men of good character,” the woodsman said.

The leprechaun wasn’t done playing. “How am I to know what good character is?”

“Do you have daughters?” asked the woodsman.

“I do,” said the leprechaun.

“Do you love them?”

“More than life itself.”

“Then give my girls the kind of men you want for your children.”

“Ah,” the leprechaun beamed, “then they’ll have honorable men with kind and loving hearts! And I’ll throw in a strong conscience, too.”

The woodsman was a shrewd man and a good father. He knew his children’s well-being and happiness depended on the quality of their relationships. And the quality of their relationships depended on the quality of the people they were with.

What if the woodsman had been asked what one quality he would want in his own daughters? As a wise father, he again would have asked for good character. Whether it’s in one’s spouse or oneself, cleverness, good looks, and money are nice, but in the end the most essential quality of a good life is good character.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Comment (0)

Today, I want to talk about the qualities that generate trust. I’m talking about being trustworthy, not trusting others. There’s a relationship between the two concepts, but a decision to trust another is a choice, not a moral obligation.

Being trustworthy is an indispensable aspect of good character. We should always act so as to be worthy of trust – not because it’s wise to do so but because it’s the right way to live.

Being worthy of trust entails two qualities: character and competence.

The attribute we first associate with trustworthy behavior is integrity. This aspect of good character is demonstrated through scrupulous honesty and moral courage. If we want people to trust us or our organization, they must believe we will consistently do the right thing regardless of circumstances or pressures.

Other aspects of character include accountability and fairness. People trust those who accept responsibility for their choices and don’t palm off blame to others. It’s also important to be regarded as fundamentally fair.

In business, confidence in character is not enough to justify trust. In this case, trust also involves the conviction that the person or organization will successfully do what is expected. This competency dimension embraces faith in ability, knowledge, and judgment as well as the belief that the person or organization will be reliable and responsive. Reliability is established through diligence and follow-through while responsiveness involves respectful communication and demonstrated concern.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

Posted by Josephson Institute Editor at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comment (0)