In a previous post, I suggested that we best grasp the essence of leadership by looking at it through the eyes of the follower.

So instead of asking, “How can I exercise influence?” we should ask, “What kind of person would I be willing to follow?” From there, I offered this definition of leadership—

To lead is to relate to people in such a way that they trust your
character, convictions, competence, and care
to take them in the right direction.

The four C’s are:

1. Character – who you are
2. Convictions – what you believe
3. Competence – what you can do
4. Care – how you value others

The Importance of the Four C’s

Consider the importance of those four C’s—character, convictions, competence, and care—when it comes to who you’d be willing to follow.

To begin with, we should acknowledge that the weight we assign to each “C” depends a great deal on the “direction” you need to go, and yet each “C” to, one degree or another, is indispensable.

Suppose you want to get better at playing the guitar. For you, better skill at the guitar is the “right direction,” so you need someone who can take you there. So what kind of leader do you want?

Obviously, you’re going to look for someone with competence in playing the guitar. Only under very rare circumstances would you be willing to trust a guitar teacher who can’t even play the guitar.

But it also matters whether that guitar teacher has the right convictions. He might be a guitar virtuoso, but suppose he’s simply an amazing prodigy and his skills on the guitar came naturally. If he doesn’t have the right knowledge (convictions) about music theory and guitar pedagogy, he still can’t be trusted to take you the right direction.

It also matters whether he cares about you. You want a teacher who, at least to some degree, values you as a person and really wants you to excel.

Finally, it matters whether he has good character. Not that he needs to be a Mother Teresa, but you do need him to have the character to show up on time for lessons. You need him to be honest with how you are progressing. And you don’t want a teacher who is apathetic about all things guitar.

This point is this: Although the degree to which a given “C” matters depends on the direction you need to go, all four are crucial for building and maintaining trust—which is the foundation of leadership.

Quality One: Character

Let’s expand for a moment on the importance of character.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines character as “the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual.”

Think of character as the alignment of the wheels on a shopping cart. You can take a cart with bent wheels and push it in a straight line. But if you let go, it will veer off to the side. The lack of constraint revealed the cart’s character.

So it is with a person’s character. It is the particular shape of their thinking and morals that determines what decisions they will make even when they are not under any constraint.

Followers know intuitively that if a person does not have the right kind of character, that person cannot be trusted to lead. Followers who ignore this intuition often reap the consequences.

We delight in leaders whose character inspire trust. This is why we love the story of young George Washington who, after cutting down his father’s beloved cherry tree, refused to lie about it. Here is a person who, at a young age, would not surrender truth to personal convenience.

At the heart of the matter is this logic: If a person is willing to sacrifice his personal advantage for a dearly-held idea or a larger cause, perhaps that person can be trusted to take us the right direction.

In future posts, we’ll talk about the other three: convictions, competence, and care.