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)

The VIA Character Strengths framework began as the Values in Action Inventory developed by two eminent researchers in the field of positive psychology, Professors Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman.

This framework, which we utilise in our consulting work and in our everyday lives, is now used by millions of people to foster self awareness and enhance personal wellbeing through strengths awareness.

What does it look like?

There are 6 virtues, which are underpinned by 24 character strengths:

1. Wisdom: strengths that help you gather and use knowledge. These strengths are creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning and perspective.
2. Courage: strengths that help you exercise your will and face adversity. These strengths include bravery, honesty, perseverance and zest.
3. Humanity: strengths that manifest in caring relationships with others. They are interpersonal in nature and include kindness, love and social intelligence.
4. Justice: strengths that help you connect in community or group-based situations. They include fairness, leadership and teamwork.
5. Temperance: strengths that help you manage habits and protect against excess. They include forgiveness, humility, prudence and self-regulation.
6. Transcendence: strengths that help you to connect to the larger universe and provide meaning. 

What does the assessment tell you?

 Your survey responses generate a report that tells you what the order of your strengths areranked in order from 1 (your strongest) to 24 (your weakest).

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

1. Creativity: someone who generates ideas or behaviours that are novel or unusual and these make a positive contribution to the life of the individual or the lives of others.
2. Humour: someone who has the ability to make others smile and who can see the light side in adverse situations which can help to sustain a good mood and cope with challenges.
3. Leadership: someone who provides a positive vision or message that inspires people and who is effective in goal setting, achievement, enlisting help, building coalitions and resolving differences. 
4. Perspective: someone who sees the bigger picture in life and looks at whole systems and weighs up multiple sides before making a decision.
5. Appreciation of beauty and excellence: someone who notices and appreciates the good things in life which fall in three categories – physical beauty, skill or talent and virtue or moral goodness.

What does that mean for me?

Undertaking the VIA Character Strengths survey was a lightbulb moment for me in that the results that I got from it really put some science and structure around what I intuitively knew – what my character DNA is as demonstrated in the work that I do and the approach that I take in doing it. 

For me, the VIA Character Strengths Survey delivered:

1. A framework that I can use to optimise my use of my signature strengths (kept in balance) which is great for my wellbeing and support my lesser strengths when I need to use them. 
2. A filter through which I can explore work opportunities to determine if they are a good fit for me and my strengths.
3. A greater level of confidence in expressing the inner me in line with my character strengths profile.
4. Validation that my signature strengths provide me with a great toolkit for the work that I do in people and culture and leadership consulting.

Conclusion

You can undertake the VIA Character Strengths Survey for free at https://www.viacharacter.org. That will provide you with a simple list of your character strengths from #1 – #24.

 You can also invest in a Total 24 report for around 70AUD which provides you with a lot more detail on your character strengths profile plus a range of strengths exercises, tips on using, overusing and underusing your strengths.It is worth getting this. I found it was a good return on investment.

Also see our posts on Gallup Clifton 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