The Importance of Character in Leadership | Jordan Peterson

“There isn’t a lot of emphasis in our education system on characterological development, and that’s very, very surprising to me.“ Try Audible’s free 30-day trial and enjoy 2 free audiobooks here: Check out Jordan Peterson’s latest book “Beyond Order“: ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ ➤➤Speaker: Jordan B. Peterson ➤➤Video Sources: Biblical Series XIII: Jacob’s Ladder - Jordan Peterson Pexels Video Videvo ➤➤Music: “The Waking“ by Whitesand ➤➤Editor: WordToTheWise ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ ➤➤Transcript (Partial): I’ve talked to lots of business people about leadership, and there’s a literature on leadership, but it’s not a good literature. It’s—it’s pretty shallow. Partly ’cause it’s not that easy to define leadership and partly ’cause there are different, you know, people have different temperaments and different temperaments can be leaders. They just do it in different ways. Now there’s something in common about being a leader, though, and I would say one is that if you’re an actual leader, you actually know where you’re going. Right? ‘Cause what are you gonna do? Lead people in circles? It’s like, maybe they’ll follow you, but you’re not a leader, you’re just a charlatan. So you have to know where you’re going, and then you have to be able to communicate that and then people have to trust you. So you actually have to be honest ‘cause people aren’t that stupid, at least not for a long period of time. And then where you’re going has to have some value because otherwise, why would anyone want to go along with you? And then you might say, well, what—what are the attributes then that make you a leader? And I would say, well, they’re characterological, fundamentally. And this is not naive optimism or casual moralizing. It has nothing to do with that. You know, we know, for example, that conscientiousness, the personality trait, is a good predictor of long term success in most occupations, not all, but most. And that one of the things that’s associated with conscientiousness is that people keep their word. They’re trustworthy. And that’s certainly one element of a leader, especially across any reasonable amount of time. You have to be able to trust the person. They can even be harsh, right? It doesn’t matter ’cause you can see harsh leaders and kind leaders. But as long as they do what they say they will do, then you can follow them. And you know that the future payoff is—is secure, something like that. So the idea that characterological development is more important to leadership than being a first born, that’s a very crucial psychological realization, that it’s characterological development that makes you favored of God. You know, and I do think we’ve forgotten this in many ways because there isn’t a lot of emphasis in our education system on characterological development, and that’s very, very surprising to me. I think maybe it’s partly because in our fractured society, we can’t agree on what constitutes a reasonable characterological goal. So we just throw up our hands and don’t educate our kids to any degree at all, especially in schools about what an admirable person is like or even let them know that, well, maybe you should actually try to be one. You know, that that’s actually the most important possible thing that you could learn. Right. So and I also think and I—I think this is laid out very thoroughly in the biblical stories as well—is that if there are enough people who are admirable, then things work. And if there aren’t, then things... things are terrible. You get wiped out. You remember when Abraham is bargaining with God with regards to Sodom and Gomorrah, he—he asks God to save the city if there’s like 40 admirable people, right? Respectable—but let’s say admirable, right? I don’t want to—I don’t want to say good, because “good“ is being corrupted in some sense by casual usage. I mean, admirable, noble people, right?... For the full transcript: ▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂▂ Fair Use Disclaimer: Our purpose is to produce quality, educational and motivational video content, and to share it with our viewers. This video has no negative impact on the original works. This video is used for educational purposes. This video is transformative in nature. This channel’s owner claims no copyright, and cannot be held accountable. If you are the legal content owner of any videos used here and would like them removed, please contact @. Any infringement was not done on purpose and will be rectified to the satisfaction of all parties.