Honesty is one of the four character strengths that comprise the Virtue of Courage.

Courage describes strengths that help you exercise your will and face adversity. 

What is honesty?

When you are honest, you speak the truth. More broadly, you present yourself in a genuine and sincere way, without pretense, and taking responsibility for your feelings and actions. 

You are a person of integrity — you are who you say you are — and you act consistently across the domains of your life rather than being one way in the community and a completely different way in your family. As a result, you believe you are being consistently true to yourself.

The strength of honesty is often linked to self-concordance – the extent to which your goals accurately represent your implicit interests and values. Honesty allows people to take responsibility for their feelings and behaviours, owning them, and reaping benefits by doing so.

Why is honesty of value?

• Honest people are typically viewed as trustworthy which contributes to healthy, positive relationships.
• Honesty is linked with improved accuracy of your goals, reflecting true values and interests. 
• Honesty allows for more accurate self-assessment of your competencies and motivations – to others and to yourself.

A couple of questions to consider

• How well do you honour your commitments, agreements and compromises in your personal and professional relationships?
• When you make a mistake, how easy is it for you to take responsibility for it?

Some things that you can do to practise honesty

• When someone asks for your honest opinion, give it to them (with a dose of kindness too).
• When you are speaking with your co-workers, examine your speech for anything less direct, clear, specific communication. Watch for tangents, disclaimers, exaggerations, avoidance and minimisations that begin to pull you from a purely honest expression. 
• Be honest with yourself. Name a struggle, bad habit or vice you have avoided facing or talking about. Begin to face this vulnerability with greater honesty.

For more information on the strength of honesty, go to https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/honesty.

If you are interested in exploring how the practice of Character Strengths might be of benefit to your business and culture, contact Peter Maguire on 0438 533 311 or at info@poswork.com.au.

Acknowledgement: the primary reference for this post is “The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate And Ignite Your Positive Personality” by Ryan M. Niemiec & Robert E. McGrath (An Official Guide From The VIA Institute on Character)

Judgment is one of the five character strengths that comprise the Virtue of Wisdom.

Wisdom describes strengths that help you to gather and use knowledge.

What is judgment?

Judgment involves making rational and logical choices, and analytically evaluating ideas, opinions, and facts. 

To use a term that originally came from outside the character field: it is critical thinking, weighing the evidence fairly, thinking things through, and examining the evidence from all sides rather than jumping to conclusions. 

Judgment also involves being open-minded and able to change one’s mind in the light of evidence, remaining open to other arguments and perspectives. It should be clear at this point that judgment is a core “strength of the head” — it’s a very thinking-oriented character strength.

The strength of judgment is a corrective strength in that it counteracts faulty thinking, such as favouring your current views or favouring ideas that are considered the dominant view, and therefore giving less attention to the less-dominant view. It is the willingness to search actively for evidence against your favoured beliefs, plans or goals and to weigh all of the evidence fairly when it is available.

Why is judgment of value?

• People who can see things from more than one perspective are particularly skilled in dealing with times of change and transition.
• Judgment counteracts biased thinking, contributing to more accurate decision-making.
• Individuals with this strength are less swayed by singular events and are more resistant to suggestion and manipulation.

A couple of questions to consider

• What people and circumstances bring out your analytic side and what brings you to your emotional or intuitive side?
• How do you express your judgment/critical thinking to others?

Some things that you can do to practise judgment

Choose one of your work tasks where there is some disagreement about how to get it done. Use your critical thinking to examine the case for each view on the best solution. 

• Watch a political program that shares a very different or opposite point of view from your own and try to understand how others could believe that position deeply.
• As you gather information about a person, weigh it based on its merits and analyse the information rationally so you can keep any tendency to jump to conclusions in check.

For more information on the strength of judgment, go to https://www.viacharacter.org/…/judgment-critical-thinking

If you are interested in exploring how the practice of Character Strengths might be of benefit to your business and culture, contact Peter Maguire on 0438 533 311 or at info@poswork.com.au.

Acknowledgement: the primary reference for this post is “The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate And Ignite Your Positive Personality” by Ryan M. Niemiec & Robert E. McGrath (An Official Guide From The VIA Institute on Character)

Love of learning is one of the five character strengths that comprise the Virtue of Wisdom.

Wisdom describes strengths that help you gather and use knowledge.

What is love of learning?

Love of learning means a passion for learning, a desire to learn just for learning’s sake.

If you love to learn, then reading one blog post or hearing a two sentence response to your question is not enough for you. You want to delve into the topic and really learn a new skill or master new material. You are prone to viewing most of your life experiences as learning opportunities.

You feel genuinely excited about new information and this can result in positive emotions like gratitude, joy, pride, hope and peacefulness. 

Why is love of learning of value?

• Love of learning leads to the development of a deeper base of knowledge, enhancing competency and efficacy.
• Love of learning supports positive experiences that, in turn, may predispose an individual to psychological and physical wellbeing and has been associated with healthy productive aging.
• Viewing a new setback or challenge as an opportunity for learning and growth leads to greater perseverance. 

A couple of questions to consider

• What areas of learning do you find most interesting?
• How does knowledge improve your life?

Some things that you can do to practise love of learning

• Seek out someone with whom you can have an in-depth conversation on a topic of mutual interest or a topic you are interested in learning more about.
• During a work break, give yourself 5-10 minutes to learn something new on a specific topic that interests you.
• Visit a building or a new business in your community and take the opportunity to learn more about it through as many forms of media as you can (eg video, social and other media, website) 

For more information on the strength of love of learning, go to https://www.viacharacter.org/character…/love-of-learning.

If you are interested in exploring how the practice of Character Strengths might be of benefit to your business and culture, contact Peter Maguire on 0438 533 311 or at info@poswork.com.au.

Acknowledgement: the primary reference for this post is “The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate And Ignite Your Positive Personality” by Ryan M. Niemiec & Robert E. McGrath (An Official Guide From The VIA Institute on Character)

Humour is one of the five character strengths that comprise the Virtue of Transcendence.

Transcendence describes strengths that help you connect to the larger universe and provide meaning.

What is humour?

Humour means to recognize what is amusing in situations, and to offer the lighter side to others. 

Humour is an important lubricant to social interactions and can contribute to team building or moving toward group goals. 

Where other strengths are more or less essential for achieving certain types of goals or dealing with certain types of problems, humour is rarely an essential component to positive social interactions, but it is often a desirable one. It is also a valuable method of coping with distressing situations.

Humour involves the ability to make other people smile or laugh. It also means having a composed and cheerful view on adversity that allows an individual to see its light side and thereby sustain a good mood.

Why is humour of value?

• Humorous people are socially attractive to others
• Humour buffers people from life stress and hassles of daily living.
• Humour helps to enhance pleasure and positive emotions in life which contributes to overall happiness.

A couple of questions to consider

• Of all your relationships, who do you laugh with the most? How does that humour shape that relationship?
• How do other people you know express playfulness? What can you learn from observing playfulness in others?

Some things that you can do to practice humour

• Keep a humour diary and write down three funny things that happened in your day each day, however small they were. Note why they happened and, when you have enough of a collection, share them with someone. 
• Watch a funny sitcom or movie with someone who has a strong appreciation of humour. 
• When you find yourself taking life too seriously, pause to turn humour towards yourself and laugh. 

For more information on the strength of humour, go to https://www.viacharacter.org/character-strengths/humor.

If you are interested in exploring how the practice of Character Strengths might be of benefit to your business and culture, contact Peter Maguire on 0438 533 311 or at info@poswork.com.au.

Acknowledgement: the primary reference for this post is “The Power of Character Strengths: Appreciate And Ignite Your Positive Personality” by Ryan M. Niemiec & Robert E. McGrath (An Official Guide From The VIA Institute on Character)

There are a variety of strengths frameworks out there that people can use to get insights into their personal DNA and how they can get to be the best version of themselves and lead a happy and fulfilling life.

One of those is Gallup’s Clifton Strengths 34 Assessment.

That started decades ago from a question asked by an American psychology professor by the name of Don Clifton and the question was: “What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what’s wrong with people?”

His work eventually led to the launch of the Clifton Strengths assessment in 1999 and since then over 25 million people have undertaken the assessment.

What does it look like?

There are 4 domains, each with 8-9 themes in them:

1. Executing: “People with dominant Executing themes make things happen” with themes of Achiever, Arranger, Belief, Consistency, Deliberative, Discipline, Focus, Responsibility, Restorative.
2. Influencing: “People with dominant Influencing themes take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard.” with themes of Activator, Command, Communication, Competition, Maximiser, Self-assurance, Significance, Woo.
3. Relationship building: “People with dominant Relationship Building themes build strong relationships that hold a team together and make it greater than the sum of its parts.” with themes of Adaptability, Connectedness, Developer, Empathy, Includer, Individualisation, Positivity, Relator
   4. Strategic thinking: “People with dominant Strategic Thinking themes absorb and analyse information that informs better decisions.” with themes of Analytical, Context, Futuristic, Ideation, Input, Intellection, Learner, Strategic.

What does the assessment tell you?

Your survey responses generate a report that tells you what your strengths are with the themes ranked in order from 1 (your strongest) to 34 (your weakest).

In my case, the top 5 (signature) strengths are:

1. Strategic: someone who creates alternative ways to proceed, quickly spotting relevant patterns and issues.
2. Maximiser: someone who focuses on strengths as way to transform something strong into something superb.\
3. Ideation: someone who is fascinated by ideas and able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.
4. Empathy: someone who can sense other people’s feelings by imagining themselves in others’ lives or situations.
5. Self-assurance: someone who feels confident in their ability to take risks and manage their own lives.

What does that mean for me?

Gallup advocates that getting to use your strengths is one of the most important things that you can do for high performance and wellbeing and we agree. That is why strengths is one of the five lenses through which we deliver our EngageMentality coaching.

For me, the Clifton Strengths 34 assessment delivered:

1. Similar results to what I got from the VIA Character Strengths survey which is reassuring
2. Different perspectives on my strengths due to the different classifications of strengths (“Domains” and “Themes” as opposed to VIA’s “Virtues” and “Character Strengths”)
3. A stimulant and reference point to review my VIA Character Strengths in the context of my Clifton Strengths results
4. My dominant domains were “strategic thinking” and “Influencing” which provided affirmation about my vocation, my leadership style and the reasons for our success in people and culture consulting.

Conclusion

For an investment of about 80AUD, you get a comprehensive Strengths 34 report which provides lots of feedback on your strengths profile and guidance in understanding your strengths profile and how to use them.

I found it was a good return on investment.

Also see our posts on VIA Character Strengths and Sharetree.

If you would like to know more about implementing a strengths-based approach in your business, contact us on 0438 533 311 or at info@poswork.com.au