Character strength · Justice
Leadership as a character strength: meaning and examples
The short answer: leadership, as a character strength, is the ability to organize a group, keep it moving toward a goal, and keep good relationships within it along the way. It has nothing to do with job titles. It is one of the 24 character strengths of the VIA classification, in the Justice family: the strengths of living well in a group.
What leadership looks like
People with a lot of leadership tend to:
- naturally take charge when a group is stuck
- make plans and get people behind them
- keep an eye on how everyone in the group is doing
- make the call when a decision is needed
- take responsibility when things go wrong
In everyday life
At work, leadership shows in the person who organizes the project, even without being the manager. Outside work, it is the friend who plans the trip, the parent who runs the school fundraiser, or the neighbor who starts the community garden.
Good leadership has two sides: getting things done, and keeping the group together while doing it. People strong in this strength tend to do both.
Leadership and the strengths close to it
- Teamwork is being a good member of a group. Leadership is guiding it.
- Fairness keeps a leader trusted.
- Social intelligence tells a leader what each person in the group needs.
When leadership is overdone, or underused
Like every strength, leadership works best in the right amount. Overdone, leadership can turn into taking over, not listening, or needing to be in charge of everything. Underused, groups drift, good ideas are not organized into action, and others wait for someone to step forward.
The aim is guiding a group so that it succeeds and stays together.
Is leadership one of your top strengths?
Ask yourself:
- When a group is stuck, do you usually end up organizing it?
- Do people follow your plans willingly, without being told to?
- Do you care as much about how the group feels as about whether it finishes?
If you answered yes to most of these, leadership may be one of your signature strengths. The only way to know how it compares with your other 23 is to rank them.
Find your top strengths with the free test
Where this comes from
The 24 character strengths were described by psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman in Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification (2004). Happy Me's assessment uses public-domain questions from the International Personality Item Pool and is not affiliated with the VIA Institute.