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Take a look at any job description. What do employers say they’re looking for? No matter what the job is, its description focuses on two things: what the employee needs to know, and what the employee needs to do.

Knowledge and skill are essential qualities in any employee. But are they enough? Isn’t there another aspect of a job candidate’s profile that is at least as important as knowledge and skill — namely, that person’s character?

Consider what’s at stake. Would you really want to hire an accountant who was at the top of her class in business school if she is also a liar and a thief? What electronics company would want one of the country’s leading software engineers on its team if that person lost his temper at every real or perceived slight? If you want to sell your home, would it matter to you that your broker bad-mouths his employer on his Facebook page?

There’s a quantifiable cost to businesses when employee behavior is less than exemplary. Employees who are actively disengaged cost U.S. businesses between $450 and $550 billion per year, according to a State of the American Workforce report from Gallup. The typical organization loses 5 percent of revenues each year to fraud, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2014 global survey. The median loss in the survey was $145,000, and 22 percent of the cases involved losses of at least $1 million. Workplace violence costs businesses an estimated $36 billion a year and affects over two million Americans. These statistics suggest a painful truth in business: questionable character is costly.

Why Don’t Companies Focus on Character?

Given the importance of character, it’s surprising, even disturbing, that companies pay so little attention to it when hiring and promoting people. Why is this the case? I asked many business and thought leaders this question, and here’s what four of them had to say.

“Some companies don’t think it’s important, or they’re not willing to put down a set of behavioral values that they’re going to hold people accountable to,” observes Joel Manby, president and CEO of Herschend Family Entertainment, the largest family-owned theme-park corporation in the United States, whose holdings include Dollywood and the Harlem Globetrotters.

“Sometimes companies are reluctant to bring up character in an interview because they’re afraid they’re not going to get an honest answer or that they’ll be inviting platitudes,” notes Mary Gentile, director of Giving Voice to Values, a business curriculum piloted in over five hundred business schools and organizations around the world.

“I can’t think of a well-known company that includes references to character in their hiring practices,” observes John Spence, whom Trust Across America selected as one of the country’s top one hundred thought leaders. John, who is a voracious reader of business literature, notes that “if these books talk about character at all, it is inevitably with respect to the leader of a company, not his or her employees.”

Alan Tecktiel, senior HR director at the global law firm Baker & McKenzie, adds that even if companies do acknowledge how important it is to hire people of high character, they tend to do so during the job interview rather than when selecting candidates for interviews.

Given what’s at stake, wouldn’t it make sense to place character front and center at every phase of hiring and promotion, beginning with the job descriptions themselves? It’s time for an in-depth look at what it means to be a person of high character in the workplace and why smart companies hire and promote people like the folks you’ll meet in this book:

Brenda Harry, an employee at the Goodwill store in Pearisburg, Virginia, who found $3,100 in cash in a coat she was processing. She turned in the money, even though no one would have ever known if she had decided to keep it for herself.

Janice Piacente, a senior compliance officer who routinely gives her team the credit for implementing groundbreaking ideas that she comes up with.

The twenty thousand employees of Market Basket, a New England grocery store chain who left their jobs after the company’s CEO, Arthur T. Demoulas, was fired. Demoulas had fought tirelessly for his workers, and they repaid his loyalty with such a widespread protest that it drew national media attention and resulted in his reinstatement.

These are men and women of high character who have chosen to take the high road when it would have been easy to do otherwise. We’ll also hear from high-character people who, by their own admission, made poor decisions at crucial points in their lives, and we’ll see how those choices affected them. These include Stanley, an accountant, who says that his reluctance to stand up to a corrupt boss in the 1970s continues to haunt him. He explains how that experience taught him the importance of courage, even when one’s job is on the line.

Finally, we’ll encounter people for whom the term high-character is not fitting. Their stories are told from the perspective of former direct reports, colleagues, and bosses, who suffered the consequences of their dishonorable behavior. They include men and women like these:

Dirk, a bookkeeper at a consulting firm who found himself incapable of balancing the books one quarter and decided to fudge a few numbers. This decision required further lies down the road, until the problem grew so large that he was forced to admit what he’d done. He lost both his job and the trust that everyone had placed in him.

Theodore, a manager whose constant stream of insults, angry outbursts, and refusal to acknowledge the good work of his staff transformed what had been a joyful workplace into a toxic environment. His attitude has prompted at least one senior staff member to look for a new job after fifteen years of excellent work.

Federico, an Italian executive whose pattern of asking for suggestions from his team and then ignoring them completely compromised both his relationships at work and the financial interests of his company.

If you’re a manager, you’ll see from these stories why smart companies actively recruit and promote high-character employees. Wouldn’t you want someone like Brenda Harry to work for you? If you’re applying for a job, these stories may spur you to think about how you’ve dealt with difficult situations honorably. They’ll prepare you for questions you may encounter in your interview or prompt you to tell your own stories as a way of demonstrating that you are a person of high character. And if you’re seeking a promotion or raise, the stories here illustrate why it’s in your best interests to discuss during your performance review the notable choices you’ve made at work.

Character Is Crucial

This is a book about honorable behavior at work. At the heart of honorable behavior is a simple concept: character. It turns out that character and performance are strongly intertwined. “People who have, for lack of a better term, ‘ethical lapses,’ are never your high-performing employees,” says Kenneth Meyer, vice president of human resources for Community Healthcare Network in New York City. “They’re either marginal or poor performers.”

So why are there so few references to character in job descriptions? What’s behind the reluctance to bring up character in a job interview? “People are afraid that this could be invasive,” says Ana Cristina Reymundo, founder and first editor of American Airlines’ Nexos magazine. “We don’t know how to gauge character. We haven’t been trained to gauge character. Perhaps we think that a person’s bio or résumé reveals their character, but that’s not true.”

Another reason that character is overlooked is because it’s taken for granted. “There’s an assumption that you’re already trying to hire someone of high character,” notes Kirk LaPointe, executive director of the Organization of News Ombudsmen. “But we don’t really test our employees in the interview process. We look at their skill sets, and we check references, but we don’t get a good firsthand grip on character until they get in the door. It could be because it’s more involved and requires a greater dedication to the recruitment process.”

As important as knowledge and skill are in successful employees, “they’re needed to play, but they’re not needed to win,” notes Alan Tecktiel. “Yet as critical as character is, employers aren’t sure how to define or measure it.”

Then there’s the comfort factor. “No one would like to be asked in the first round, ‘Are you honest?,’” Kirk says, “but around the area of character, and in particular how someone would handle a difficult situation, that gets into intimate territory, and we’re still queasy about that. We’re treating the employee/employer process almost like a first date, when you’re all on good behavior.” Although the reluctance to bring up honesty and other facets of a job applicant’s character in an interview is understandable, companies cannot afford to overlook it.

In the interviews I conducted for this book, the most common reasons managers gave me as to why their organizations don’t emphasize character in hiring and promoting employees are, first, that there doesn’t seem to be a universally understood definition of character; and, second, even if we could agree on what it means to be a person of high character, we don’t know how to measure those qualities.

These challenges are not insurmountable. Even if there isn’t a one-size-fits-all definition of character, and even if evaluating character is more of an art than a science, companies that place a premium on the character of job applicants and current employees are positioned to succeed in ways that their competitors cannot. Let’s first try to make sense of the thorny concept of character.

What Is Character?

Character refers to the most important qualities that define a person’s identity. It is revealed not by words but by actions. Character stands in contrast to other qualities that describe a person but don’t speak to that person’s essential nature.

Consider two coworkers, Joe and Mike. Both are 5´7,˝ both are slightly balding, and both like classic rock. Joe has a slightly disheveled appearance, as does Mike. But Joe is self-obsessed, angry, and loves to tell offensive jokes. When you talk with him, the conversation always ends up circling back to Joe. He doesn’t seem to know or care what effect he has on other people.

Mike, on the hand, frequently asks you how you are — and carefully listens to your answer. Mike never fails to thank you for things you’ve done on his behalf, and you’ve rarely seen him lose his temper. While these two employees may be similar in their physical appearance, style of dress, and taste in music, there are good reasons to believe that Mike is an employee of high character and Joe is not.

Mike and Joe can’t do anything about their height, unless 1970s-style platform shoes become fashionable again. They could do something about their appearance, but being mildly unkempt isn’t a serious breach of the dress code at work. And liking one kind of music over another is no different from preferring West Indian Licorice Mocha Delight ice cream over French vanilla. None of these attributes speaks to Mike or Joe’s character. But the way the two men treat other people does.

I’m not suggesting that Joe doesn’t deserve to work at your organization. He might do his job well, and he may have wonderful qualities he doesn’t reveal at work — maybe he’s a good husband, a loving father, and active with a local volunteer organization. But because his behavior at work is often insensitive, self-centered, and off-putting, it’s difficult to characterize Joe in the same glowing terms you might use to describe Mike.

Mike is a high-character employee. Joe is not. You may not know precisely how they got that way, but you can be sure that three things have contributed to it.

Time, Practice, and Commitment

Character is developed over time, with consistent effort. Character development is similar to weight training. It takes several trips to the gym every week for months to build strength, and if you stop, your body returns to the way it used to be.

When I was writing my doctoral dissertation, I started lifting weights to help deal with the stress of the work. The first time I tried the bench press, I could hardly lift the bar even with no weights on it. Gradually I was able to lift more and more, until finally people started commenting on how strong my upper body looked. Sometime later I stopped weight training, and those bulging pecs returned to their normal, less impressive proportions.

By the same token, it takes constant effort to develop and sustain the traits associated with high character. In his book 10% Happier, the ABC News journalist Dan Harris talks about how hard he has had to work to develop patience and presence. An on-air meltdown prompted him to reevaluate the way he was living, and he discovered that developing a mindfulness meditation practice helped him to “neutralize the voice in the head,” as he puts it, and live more fully in the moment. Being present and resisting the urge to dwell on the past or future is something he works at — hard — every day. Some days go better than others, but overall, he notes, he is much nicer to be around and much less prone to lose his temper.

Is it possible for Joe to develop the high-character traits that Mike already displays? Yes. With the right management and a willingness to acknowledge his shortcomings, Joe may be able to change. But for this to happen, both Joe and his company would have to make an investment in him that one or both might not want to make. Yet if Joe doesn’t change and is promoted to a more responsible position, his problems may have profound consequences for the organization and the people it serves.

Smart companies seek to hire and promote high-character people like Mike for five reasons:

• They make coming to work a more agreeable experience for everyone, which is good for employee morale.

• They contribute significantly to the organization’s financial health by being highly productive and developing strong relationships with clients.

• They tend to be loyal to their employers. People like Mike stick around.

• They advance the company’s mission of enhancing people’s lives.

• They reflect well on the company, which is valuable for its own sake and also promotes positive word-of-mouth.

Assuming that Mike and Joe have the same knowledge and skills, Mike is the more desirable employee, because, at least at work, he is a person of greater character. Mike is one of the Good Ones. But how can a business determine whether the person they’re considering hiring is more like Mike or more like Joe? Let’s take a look.

Evaluating High-Character Employees

Even if we agree on the qualities that comprise high character, the question remains: How can managers determine whether job candidates and current employees possess these qualities? It’s especially difficult to assess the character of job candidates, but there are also some surprising obstacles to evaluating the character of current employees.

Scott Erker, senior vice president at Development Dimensions International (DDI), notes that there are four ways companies can gather information for the purposes of hiring and promotion: tests, work simulations, references, and interviews.

Tests

Companies like DDI create intricate tests to help determine whether a job candidate would be a good fit for a particular job. These tests are often web-based and can be taken on a candidate’s mobile device. But multiple-choice and true/false questions can’t delve deeply into the ten qualities of high character that we explore in this book.

For example, suppose one of the questions on a multiple-choice test is, “One of your company’s clients gives you an expensive watch. The policy at work is that employees may accept gifts worth $50 or less. What would you do?” The choices are:

A. Tell the client that you appreciate the gift but aren’t allowed to accept it.

B. Keep it.

C. Donate it to charity.

A problem with using multiple-choice tests for evaluating a job candidate’s character is that people sometimes lie about what they would do. Just because a candidate says she would tell the client she couldn’t accept the gift or would donate it to charity doesn’t mean she believes that’s what she would do. She might recognize that her employer wouldn’t allow her to keep the watch, so she might choose A or C on the test to demonstrate her high character, even if she knows she would do neither of these things. But even an honest response may not reflect how that person would actually behave in such a situation. A test taker might sincerely believe he would refuse the gift, but when this hypothetical scenario becomes real, he might in fact keep it. We don’t always do what we say we would do.

There is a place for multiple-choice and true/false tests in evaluating character, however. They’re useful for beginning a dialogue about honorable behavior and why some choices are better than others. This is how I use them in my speeches and workshops. We’ll see in a moment why and how conversation is essential to evaluating a job candidate’s character.

Work Simulations

Work simulations involve putting candidates into the actual context in which they would be employed and observing them. These work better for some occupations (say, teaching) than others (cardiac surgery comes to mind). Evaluating character on the job makes sense for employers who use the so-called temporary-to-permanent hiring process. “One bad seed can really have an impact on your culture,” says Mona Bijoor, the founder and chief executive of a wholesale company that hires people on a trial basis. Jon Bischke, the CEO of a recruiting software company, notes that a bad hire can kill a company with a small number of employees, like his, which is why he uses the test-drive model of employment.

But it’s difficult to see how companies that hire people in the traditional way could evaluate a job applicant’s character through work simulations. These organizations — that is, most businesses in the world — have to use other means.

References

References should be a helpful way to evaluate character in a job applicant, but often they aren’t. Several years ago, a woman whom I’ll call Nell applied for a position as my assistant. I was able to contact only one of the three references she provided, and the way this fellow described Nell, I felt I had stumbled onto someone with the charisma of Oprah Winfrey, the integrity of Mother Teresa, and the graciousness of several First Ladies. When I asked the gentleman how he knew Nell, he evaded the question for a while but eventually revealed that he was her fiancé. Small wonder, then, that he had nice things to say about her. I hired Nell, and shortly afterward she quit when a more attractive job opportunity came along. The moral of the story is that the references a job applicant provides can be deeply biased and don’t necessarily present an accurate view of the candidate.

By default, the only other option for prospective employers is to contact a job candidate’s previous employers, whether or not the job applicant has provided the information directly. The problem is that for legal reasons, many employers provide only minimal information about former employees, such as the duration of their employment.

Alan Murray, the editor of Fortune magazine and former president of the Pew Research Center, carefully listens to anything former employers have to say about job applicants. “Sometimes they’ll convey useful information about a candidate’s shortcomings even while soft-pedaling that information,” he told me. What Alan finds surprising is how rarely prospective employers contact him about employees who leave his organization. “I’ve been angst-ridden over what I was going to say when someone called me for a reference, but it’s seldom I get the call,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s laziness or a failure to understand the value of reference checks.” Alan’s experiences may be the fallout from the practice of employers’ giving little meaningful information during reference checks, which discourages prospective employers from contacting references at all.

Jeffrey Hayzlett, host of C-Suite with Jeffrey Hayzlett on Bloomberg Television, believes strongly in checking references, but only when those references are people he knows. He cites a book that had a big influence on him, his friend Bob Beaudine’s The Power of Who: You Already Know Who You Need to Know. The Wall Street Journal called Bob’s company “the top executive recruiting firm in college athletics,” so Bob knows a thing or two about how to find good employees. Alan Murray, too, has found that having a personal connection with references is a way to get information about job candidates that has played a decisive role in hiring decisions.

References are particularly useful when evaluating current employees using the 360-degree feedback instrument, in which colleagues, direct reports, and supervisors — that is, people from an employee’s immediate circle — review his or her performance. Until this method of employee evaluation came along, a manager gave a raise or promotion to an employee based on the manager’s own assessment of the person’s performance. But such a narrow focus can result in what I call the Eddie Haskell syndrome. On the classic 1950s family sit-com Leave It to Beaver, Eddie Haskell was ultra-polite to Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, a wiseacre with his buddy Wally, and a mild bully toward Wally’s younger brother, the Beaver. If you judged Eddie only by the way he talked to parents, you’d think he was the most refined kid you’d ever met. But his good manners disguised the fact that Eddie could also act like a real jerk.

As Eddie Haskell’s conduct shows, you don’t get the whole picture by looking only at how someone treats those who have more power or influence. It’s just as important — perhaps even more critical — to find out how an employee treats those who have the same or less power.

Interviews

One of the best tools for evaluating the character of a job candidate or an employee seeking promotion is a direct, in-person, behaviorally focused interview. Although character is revealed by what we do, not by what we say, a manager who pays close attention to a candidate’s responses to questions like, “Tell me about a time when you had to stand up to someone in authority,” will get a strong sense of the candidate’s character.

Interviews are a two-way street, so we’ll consider how the interviewers’ biases may prevent them from getting an accurate sense of a job candidate’s character. We’ll also look at ways that interviewers can overcome these limitations.

Why “the Good Ones”?

In the mid-nineties, a friend of mine used the phrase “one of the good ones” to refer to someone he knew. I hadn’t heard that expression before, and it stuck with me. Who wouldn’t want to be known as one of the Good Ones? Around the same time, a dental professor I knew told me, “There’s nothing worse that you can be called than a bad person.”

This book’s title has two meanings. First, it refers to employees of high character. (It could apply to anyone of high character, but the focus here is on the workplace.) Second, it refers to the ten qualities that are associated with high-character employees. Those qualities are

1. Honesty

2. Accountability

3. Care

4. Courage

5. Fairness

6. Gratitude

7. Humility

8. Loyalty

9. Patience

10. Presence

Honesty is the most important quality of all, so it heads the list. The remainder are all equally important, so, for ease of reference, I’m presenting those nine in alphabetical order.

These qualities are sometimes referred to as virtues. But if we’re going to talk about virtue, we must talk about Aristotle, which means we must first talk about Monty Python.

What’s Monty Python Got to Do with It?

When you hear the name Aristotle, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? A college philosophy class? Tom Morris’s book If Aristotle Ran General Motors? The second husband of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis? Or Monty Python’s “Philosopher’s Song,” which suggested that Western civilization’s great philosophers loved not wisdom but drinking? And what does a philosopher who has been dead over 2,300 years have to do with character in the modern workplace?

The answer is that The Good Ones owes its existence to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. There are essentially two approaches to thinking about ethics. The first looks at conduct and is primarily concerned with the question, “What should I do?” The second, which originates with Aristotle, asks not, “What should I do?” but rather, “Who should I be?”

The conduct-based approach to ethics is about solving quandaries such as these:

A. You’re standing in line at Starbucks and overhear two colleagues discussing confidential information about a client. Should you say something to them or mind your own business?

B. Your boss asks you to lie. You fear you’ll be fired if you stand up to him. How should you respond?

C. You’re attracted to your new direct report and suspect the person is attracted to you, too. Would it be acceptable to act on your feelings and ask this person out on a date?

When business ethics or ethics in everyday life is discussed in our culture, it’s almost always along these lines. Dear Abby, the Ethicists column in the New York Times, articles in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and Forbes, and heated debates on cable news networks focus on the right way to act in a specific situation. My own work until now has also been concerned with conduct and has been heavily influenced by a masterwork by Tom L. Beauchamp and James F. Childress called Principles of Biomedical Ethics. As the title of that book indicates, a conduct-based approach to ethics is based on ethical principles. Applying these principles to the above situations, for example, suggests the following responses:

A. Your colleagues are violating the rule of confidentiality, which is derived from the “respect others” principle (or what Beauchamp and Childress refer to as the principle of respect for autonomy). Because you are in a position to prevent this violation from continuing, it is better to do something rather than nothing. Unless your company requires you to report your colleagues, this means speaking privately with your colleagues about what you have overheard and encouraging them to be more discreet.

B. If the request is more significant than “Please tell me you love my outfit even if you don’t,” it would be wrong to compromise your own integrity by going along with your boss. He or she is violating several ethical principles, particularly “be fair.” Chances are you won’t be fired if you stand your ground. You’re more likely to encounter serious consequences if you lie for your boss.

C. If you pursue a relationship with a subordinate, you could wind up being accused of sexual harassment or alienating other employees and jeopardizing your career. Office romances are appropriate only when the two parties don’t work in the same department and don’t have an imbalance of power between them. According to the “do no harm principle” in this situation, the right choice is to look for love elsewhere.

Ethical principles provide a framework, not a formula, for making the right decisions at work and in one’s personal life. They’re useful for solving conundrums like the ones above. But the character-based approach to ethics is not simply about solving puzzles here and now: it aims to develop traits that prompt us to live our whole lives honorably.

Character is a much murkier concept than conduct, which may explain why discussions about it are not common in either business or our culture in general. When I began conducting interviews for this book, I started the conversations by asking how the subjects hired employees of good character. More often than not I was met with stony silence. Then: “That’s a good question.” Or “What do you mean by character?” Or a long sigh. I quickly learned that opening an interview with what seems to be an unanswerable question was not a good strategy.

Aristotle discusses character in terms of virtue, which he defines as a mean between two extremes. The virtue of courage, for example, lies somewhere between cowardice (a deficiency of courage) and foolhardiness (an excess of courage). Virtues aren’t one-size-fits-all. For a person with a meek disposition, it might require an extraordinary effort to stand up to an office bully, whereas a bold person would have no trouble doing so. Courageous would thus be a fitting term for the former person but not for the latter. Even if virtues cannot be quantified in the same way as other abilities (say, performing risk analysis in accounting, or having strong communication skills in any field), they may still be evaluated.

Outside academic circles, virtue has overtones of repressed Victorian sexuality, religious fervor, or something our great-grandparents would have fretted about. To avoid these connotations, I talk about high-character employees rather than virtuous ones, even though from a philosopher’s point of view they’re the same thing. And to avoid his unfortunate association with dry academic texts (to say nothing of Monty Python), I won’t refer to Aristotle very often either.

Wait — What about Trustworthiness?

In reviewing the ten qualities above, you might wonder, “Why isn’t trustworthiness on the list? Isn’t that really the most important characteristic of all?” Trustworthiness is essential, and it’s hard to imagine having any kind of meaningful relationship with someone you don’t trust.

But trustworthiness isn’t a single quality. Rather, it comes from a combination of several qualities, particularly honesty, accountability, fairness, and loyalty. If I hire you to work for my organization, The Ethics Guy LLC, it’s because I trust you, and the reason I trust you is that you have demonstrated that you tell the truth, you do what you say you’re going to do, you treat people fairly, and you won’t jump ship in the middle of a project if something better comes along.

You might also wonder why integrity isn’t on the list of ten crucial qualities. It’s for the same reason. Integrity is not a single trait but rather the expression of many traits. Can an employee be considered to have integrity if he or she is as honest as the day is long but is also a selfish, disloyal, and persistently angry person? No. Employees with integrity aren’t merely honest: they’re also accountable, fair, and patient.

One additional question about the items on this list requires more than a cursory answer: Don’t different cultures understand character differently? The answer may surprise you.

Character and Culture

In an episode of Mad Men called “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword,” the advertising firm Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce tries to land an account with the Honda Motorcycle Corporation. The Japanese executives present a very different way of doing business than their American counterparts, most notably by avoiding direct communication. They do so not in the way that Japanese culture is often mischaracterized (by saying “yes” when they mean “no,” for example), but rather through signals such as not sending a gift the day after their first meeting, which may indicate that the meeting did not go well.

In Business Insider, Stuart Freedman observes that “avoiding confrontation, saving face, and keeping harmony are a few of the values that influence how the Japanese communicate disagreement, or for that matter anything they think could be upsetting to another person.” Where an American executive might say “no,” directly, Japanese businesspeople might “indicate that something might be difficult,” or simply remain silent.

These cultural differences do not mean that honesty is an integral component of character for Americans but not for Japanese; rather, they mean that the two cultures both value honesty but express it differently. And that applies to all of the ten qualities we’ll examine. “Nobody would argue that patience, for example, isn’t important,” says Scott Erker. “But the way you demonstrate patience in one culture versus the next is different.”

Evaluating character has profound implications for the conduct of business today. “Global organizations are struggling with this,” Scott notes. “The world is getting smaller, people are competing on a global level, businesses are transferring executives all over the world — picking people from one country and moving them over to another — and they’re trying to figure out, ‘Who’s going to be able to operate where, and how do I know it?’ If we were able to come up with a universal character model, that would really help people.”

A universal character model is a tall order, one that may be beyond the scope of this humble enterprise, but I will present evidence that high-character employees are reliably distinguished by these ten crucial qualities. I’ll also show why it’s in a business’s own interest to place a much greater importance on looking for people with these qualities than most companies do now.

The Three Groups Who Should Read This Book

Three audiences, with some overlap, will benefit from the stories and discussion in this work:

Managers

You will gain a deeper understanding of ten qualities of high-character employees and why these qualities are so valuable to you and your organization. You’ll also learn how to identify them in job candidates and determine whether current employees seeking raises or promotions have demonstrated them consistently. If you’re charged with reducing the size of your workforce, taking these qualities into consideration will help you make informed decisions about whom to keep and whom to let go.

Job Candidates

It’s in your best interests to understand what smart employers look for in employees. You’ll put yourself far ahead of other applicants by explaining why these ten qualities of high-character people are fundamental to who you are as an employee and as a person. During interviews, talk about how these qualities help you deliver strong results. Mention them in your follow-up emails. I guarantee that few, if any, of your fellow candidates will be doing this. You will shine — and for good reason.

Employees

Whether you’re seeking a raise or a promotion or simply want to remain in good standing in the organization, demonstrating these qualities regularly will help you and your organization succeed. During your performance reviews, explain how you’ve done so and describe the positive consequences for clients and the organization. This isn’t bragging: it’s making your supervisor aware of how you benefit the company in ways that go far beyond your knowledge and technical skills. (Note: Because managers of an organization also work for it, I sometimes use the word employees to refer to both managers and members of their teams.)

Earlier I stated that honesty is the most important of the ten crucial qualities associated with high-character employees. Let’s now see why this is so and how it is essential to the flourishing of organizations and the people who work for them. You’ll read true stories that vividly illustrate how employees who evince these qualities help their organizations — and themselves — succeed.

SUMMARY

An employee’s character is as crucial to an organization’s success as the employee’s knowledge and skills are.

Ten qualities associated with high-character employees are