Much of leadership can be learned. For example, emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity, communication skills and a myriad of business knowledge, skills, and capabilities are all learnable skills. Although these are quite important and improve business effectiveness at many levels, they should be thought of as threshold competencies. More importantly, how well one learns and applies these to improve business effectiveness is often a function of what the leader brings to the table as a human being.

The most successful companies are led by women and men who have mastered these threshold competencies but are also persons of character who are secure enough as leaders to connect their heads with their hearts. At the core of this level of leadership is one’s relationship with oneself. When self-love (the opposite of narcissism) is at the core it is reflected in character.

According to Fred Kiel, character is “an individual’s unique combination of internalized beliefs and moral habits that motivate and shape how the individual relates to others.” In short, how one treats those who can in no way repay them. He identifies four defining character habits. Two are from the head and two are from the heart: 1. Integrity, 2. Responsibility, 3. Forgiveness and, 4. Compassion.

Why is character important for success in business?

Character influences and shapes leadership decisions and behaviors which affect business results. Putting it together, a company’s or a leader’s return on character is a function of who the leaders is, what the leader does, and how the leader is able to influence outcomes. But character itself can serve as a threshold competency upon which to build an increasingly conscious journey that liberates inner genius, inner peace, and remarkable adaptability.

Let’s explore the issue “Can character be learned?” since it is likely the most important and enduring foundation for leadership, creating an engaged workforce, happy customers and competitive advantage in the marketplace. To achieve this involves a different type of work. It requires commitment to reality at all costs, an essential ingredient in personal mastery. The capacity to expand consciousness in response to experience and environmental feedback is critical for character development.

In Kiel’s work the CEOs with the strongest character–and strongest business results–were self-aware (doesn’t make the distinction between self-aware and self-knowledge which is a contribution of our work at CEOE.).

Here are six neuroscience-based steps for leadership growth/change offered by Fred Kiel in Return on Character as a template for becoming a “virtuoso leader” with stellar character.

From the perspective of CEOE, character evolves from what we have left to work with after compromise formations, mental models, and neurobiology circuitry are in place, all of which fuel our existing habits. Although the brain is plastic throughout life it does not change “voluntarily.” The brain establishes rules that cause us to confuse our functional ability with our innate capability.

The slow system based on original mental models limits who we were destined to become and preserves disparities between our functional ability and innate capability over the course of our life. Ironically, our neurobiology cooperates to maintain the necessary illusion that we are close to the limits of our potential. Updating existing rules requires disruption coupled with a commitment to re-focus attention and create new pathways by re-directing the neuronal communication patterns.

At CEOE we believe it is possible to re-capture our truer selves and create greater spiritual, intellectual, and emotional freedom than our unexamined mental models can even imagine.  This is how exponential leadership is created.

Leadership can be learned. Below are some practical suggestions from our work (and books) at CEOE that leaders can begin to cultivate. With repetition and conscious intent, they have the power to change the brain and enhance your leadership abilities beyond your current aspirations:

In conclusion, at the core of leadership is character, and at the core of character is personal mastery. In order to learn leadership and create exponential results, you have to commit to personal mastery.

Above we outlined a few suggestions to help you get started. Below are additional resources that will help you go deeper into leadership, character, and personal mastery:

• Check out our books
• Get in contact to learn about our programs
• Sign up for our 5-Minute Mastery Newsletter below