Character matters.

For those of us who love "the pinks" (Financial Times subscribers), this morning brought a lovely piece about how character isn't innate--it's earned.  Luke Johnson wrote A Crisis Is the Only Way to Test Your Value (here).

He's right, for several reasons.  First, it's easy to behave well when everything's going right.  That's no test of character.  Second, experience shapes character.  Character is a series of decisions over someone's lifetime, not a static quality.  And third, someone's reaction to an event will be affected both by his own experiences and the group he's in.  We're affected by social pressure more than we realize, so being alert to that social pressure matters.

Leaders need to understand that it's not "who they are" that matters as much as how they behave, especially when things aren't going well for them.