The Evolving Leader

‘Why Character Matters’ with Dr Edward Brooks

• Dr Ed Brooks • Season 7 • Episode 21

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What if leadership isn’t just about performance, but about character? 

In this episode of The Evolving Leader, we’re joined by Dr. Ed Brooks, Executive Director of the Oxford Character Project and co-editor of the new book The Arts of Leading. With hosts Jean Gomes and Emma Sinclair, Ed explores how cultivating human character, hope, courage, humility, and clarity, can provide the deep stability today’s leaders urgently need.

We discuss the difference between optimism and hope, why virtues like kindness and creativity are underrated in leadership, and how the arts and humanities reveal untold stories of leadership that challenge traditional views. From Plato’s cave to the quiet leadership of community organisers, Ed shares how rethinking what (and who) we value in leadership can reshape organisations and ourselves.


Referenced during this episode:

Leading With Character

Oxford Character Project

Good Leadership in UK Business Report


Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:

Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

What is character and what part does it play in leadership? That's a big question in today's red hot geopolitical environment. But of course, it isn't just confined to global political leaders. It affects us at every level of business and society. In this show, we explore why character is at the heart of what it means to be human. We talked to Dr Ed Brooks, who is the Executive Director of the Oxford character project. Dr Brooks's team focuses on the human dynamics of leadership and the qualities of character that enable leaders to build trust, think with clarity, embrace diversity, empower others and persevere through difficult times. Their work is propelled with the belief that character is the guiding core of who we are, a mosaic of personal qualities that are developed over time and govern how we consistently perceive, think, feel and act. Tune in for an important conversation on The Evolving Leader. Welcome to The Evolving Leader, the show born

Emma Sinclair:

and I'm Emma Sinclair.

Jean Gomes:

Emma, how you feeling today?

Emma Sinclair:

I am feeling, I'm actually feeling quite cosy, cosy and warm. This room is heating up nicely, which is from a belief that we need deeper, more accountable and good, because the rest of our our space is quite cold today, cosy and warm, quite present, actually, bit of a transition from a lot of things today, but present, focused, engaged. That's how I'm feeling. Jean, excellent. How are you feeling Jean? Well, I mean, you're right. Our environment is fairly monastic when it comes to heating. Being born in the 15th or 16th century more human leadership to confront the world's biggest this barn, the heating is a bit haphazard. But anyway, no, I'm feeling very excited because today we're joined by Dr Edward Brooks, the executive director of the Oxford character project, which is an interdisciplinary initiative comprised of a team challenges. I'm Jean Gomes, of scholars dedicated to exploring character and leadership in higher education, commercial organisations and international development.

Jean Gomes:

They want to foster a new generation of wise thinkers and good leaders in the belief that character is at the heart of what it means to be human, and by putting character first, they want to see their work help build a more compassionate, just and prosperous world. He's also the editor and co author of a soon to be released book, the arts of leading which takes as its non conventional approach to its

Ed Brooks:

Jean. Emma, thank you very much indeed. It's lovely to be with you.

Emma Sinclair:

How you feeling today? Ed,

Ed Brooks:

I am in this moment feeling grateful. I'm delighted sources. As they put it, rather than looking only to business, to be here and to be able to talk with you both. I'm feeling curious. I guess I've got a sense of anticipation for the conversation we're about to have, maybe even hopeful for the politics and sport, they plumb the depths of the arts and directions we might take and the way we could explore some important themes in in leadership, I think, more humanities, uncovering the life stories of a variety of leaders, broadly, right at the moment, feeling pretty determined in life. I think there's so much important stuff to get done in the world, so many challenges and so much that we need to dig both fictional and non fictional, who challenge us to into. So yeah, keen to go after some of these things and do our piece here at the Oxford character project, along with take a look at leadership anew. And I really enjoyed that book. many others like like yourselves, Excellent. Well, can you give us the origin story of the Oxford Dr Brooks, welcome to The Evolving Leader. character project. What was the impetus behind it? Certainly. So we started in 2014 so I've been going for just over 10 years now, and the impetus was really twofold. In the first instance, it connects with the purpose of educational institutions such as ourselves here at the University of Oxford, where we exist to support, to train, to educate people from all around the world as thinkers and as leaders who will engage the challenges of our time in advance the common good. And you will read that on pretty much every university website you might find around the world. So there's something which is deep down, which is articulated and re articulate about the purpose of education and the purpose of of higher education. But I guess on the other side of that, then, is a question, and the question is, Are we fulfilling that purpose? And as that question. Question was raised more than a decade ago. I guess the context was similar to today, a context of many challenges, the credit crisis, climate crisis, conflict and a crisis well observed of leadership around the world. And so the question comes back, okay, we have this ambition about raising up a new generation to lead and play their part and advance the common good. We have our ambition to raise up thinkers and leaders, but are we helping to raise up a generation of wise thinkers and good leaders? And the adjectives are absolutely all important.

Jean Gomes:

Well, this is exactly what we want to be talking about on the show. But before we get into that, when we last met, which was late last year, you said something that's continued to really resonate with me ever since, which was the value in distinguishing between hope and optimism. Can we discuss that distinction and the research that you've been conducting on the importance of hope in difficult times? Yes,

Ed Brooks:

so I'd be thrilled to talk about hope. And in fact, the the hope story keeps coming. I don't know if you've if you follow, but I think Gallup just put out their global leadership report in the last few days, and they interviewed or surveyed over 30,000 people in 52 countries around the world, and took an interesting perspective on leadership. They were asking people about kind of the followers perspective on leadership. What do we want from our leaders? And they identified four central themes, hope, trust, compassion and stability. Hope, the need to feel positive about the future for leaders to provide direction, trust, the need for honesty, respect, integrity, compassion, the need to feel cared about and listen to stability, the need for psychological safety and secure foundations. And what was topped by a mile hope was there at the at the top. I think this, this resonates, and particularly, I think, in these times. But back to your question, what actually is hope? And this is really important, because hope gets conflated with a whole bunch of things. Is hope, wishful thinking is hope. Of virtue, as it classically was understood, is hope just the same as optimism? If so, why do we need two terms? If not? How can we tell them apart? It's exactly that that I've been digging into in my research. I did a PhD, actually, on this theme of hope, and have been working over the last five years with some brilliant colleagues at Harvard, understanding and distinguishing different forms of hope and optimism. So how do we understand hope? Well, hope we can understand as a disposition to fix our attention on a future good in the face of difficulty. So it's like a kind of focused attention, and keeping that focused attention on the good, even when things are really hard and seem to make that difficult to attain, and then to consistently act in light of that and with this understanding, hope is like a muscle. It's something that we develop, cultivate over time, that we practice, that we dig into. It's not something that we just assume or stand on, but it's something we really work hard to to develop and to cultivate, and it's between two rival dispositions, presumption on the one side, assuming that the difficulty will just be easily overcome, and despair on the other side, assuming that we'll never get get through it, and Hope is what looks squarely in the face of difficulty and says, No, I'm going to keep focused on realising that positive future. And golly, do we need that in times such as ours? Optimism, but by distinction and by contrast, can be good. Maybe it can, maybe it can't. But optimism is really kind of more, a more basic concept. It's just the idea is about having positive expectations, and then it all depends on what that is based on. So we've distinguished some different forms of optimism. Have been thinking about those and how we measure them. And optimism could be groundless. It could just be a basic, okay, I'm more a half full glass half full kind of person. It could be resourced by some way, by your own abilities, or financial resources, or something like that, relational resources. It could be agentive based on the action or activity you're put in. It could be about a perspective on on a situation. But optimism is yes, depending on what it's grounded in, more or less positive hope is quite different. It's really about the idea of a focused, effortful attention on that future that we want to attain in the face of difficulties which press in all around us. And

Jean Gomes:

I think it's important just to play with that, just for a moment longer, which is sometimes when, when leaders are confronted with that concept, they conflate it with wishful thinking, and therefore don't actually like it as an idea when. And I think what you're talking about is very, very different, odd ones not I don't think. Do this right? It is fundamentally different, and it's also essentially needed to confront uncertainty.

Ed Brooks:

Yes, absolutely. So I think there's a sense sometimes that hope is something that kind of wishes away difficulty and is what you appeal to when you're not willing to kind of look at the realities that we face. And that's the opposite of that in the understanding that I'm describing here. It's about taking full account of the difficulties, resisting the either we can easily get over them, the kind of blase approach that's presumption, and resisting also the sense of we can never get we can never get there, and being committed to no okay, things are complex. Things are really complex and difficult, really difficult. Okay, we may not have all the answers. We'll see our way through, but we're going to keep pushing forward in this, in this direction, towards the good,

Emma Sinclair:

another word to help us define before he starts. Obviously he started here. But can you help us just understand and define the word character, particularly, how you make that actionable? Thinking about that from a leadership perspective? Yes,

Ed Brooks:

absolutely. And this is a really, really, really important our work is called the Oxford character project. Over the last 10 years, this is what we've been working on. But yet, character can be quite differently understood. I think one way to come at this might be to go back to this idea of human leadership that we're all talking about. A lot of people are talking about these days, we need more human leadership. Well, what do we what do we mean? You know, leaders are humans. What do we need more human leadership for? Well, I think the intuition is that we've perhaps optimised for a single domain or dimension of our humanity. So we've optimised for technical, rational, profit Max approaches when it comes to leadership, and what we need to do is to take account of the fuller sense of our humanity, so we're also relational, emotional, ethical. There are these different aspects to who we are, our creativity, imagination, judgement, and it's these broader aspects of our humanity that are going to see us through in the face of radical complexity, where, you know, we can't just work out the answer A equals B, and off we go and so on. When we're thinking about character, we're thinking about the underlying dispositions that shape, then the ways in which we think and feel and act. We're thinking about the core of our humanity, the very centre of our life and existence, as I say, the dispositions that then shape how we think, how we feel and and how we act. And these dispositions are deeply rooted, deep seated, the idea or the word character, its etymology relates to the Greek for inscription. And you can think about how we still use that, you know, characters in a in a social media post. The idea was of a character stamped on a coin. You know, what's the, what's the kind of deepest imprint on us? One of my students talks about a heart print as the idea for character thought was a kind of beautiful way of putting it, who are we at our most fundamental level? And then how do these aspects of who we are shape the ways in which we we think, feel, act and and so on. And there are many different aspects to our our character. You could think of a constellation the stars, for example. And we've got these bright spots. They might be they're the virtues, positive character qualities. Maybe there are some black holes in there as well. Those would be negative character qualities, often talked about as vices. And the idea of developing character is to cultivate these positive qualities, courage, judgement, justice, wisdom, curiosity and so on, and to mitigate and to diminish and to move beyond the aspect of our character, greed, envy, selfishness and so on, which are going to undermine our own flourishing, personally, and certainly are going to undermine the causes and the people who will seek to lead if we're in those kinds of those kinds of positions. So character is this fundamental concept, and I can keep going, if you like. I mean the ways of which it appears and follows out in in leadership before we go

Jean Gomes:

there, because definitely want to go there before we go there. I think one of the things that is probably on a lot of people's minds right now is the concept of of character as a an expectation as a norm, even if many leaders don't necessarily live up to it, there is an expectation that character, that leaders should have good character, and that that's important. The actual doing of that is, is, is, is different from the saying of it, but given now that we have a leader in in charge of the world's largest economy. Me, who doesn't seem to necessarily care much about that. How do you think that's kind of changing the conversation, and as we sort of have leaders all around the world rowing back on some of the things, like, you know, the the diversity, equity, inclusion agendas that suggest that character is no longer up there as a priority. What do you think is going on. So we're

Ed Brooks:

we're shaped by the qualities of our character, in terms of how we act, but also social beings, and shaped by the behaviours of others, by institutions and incentives, and when those turn in different directions, so behaviour changes as well. When we're thinking about character, we're thinking about the kind of agent that underlies the behaviorless person perspective. But we're shaped by these situational features, and we're seeing that the environment that we're in right at the at the moment, perhaps what's being revealed is where maybe we thought some of these things were more deeply rooted, that they were more deeply rooted in the character of leaders. Maybe they they weren't as deeply rooted as we might have liked to believe. And they've they've maybe gone more quickly than we would have expected. But I think you we have to recognise where we're, where we're at, recognise what's needed and think, Okay, well actually, how are we going to move through and what character qualities are going to be to be needed if we do want to see some important concerns advance. So I believe courage is as important forever as ever. For example, if we think of courage as the disposition to face challenges, risks, fears, for the sake of a greater good that we want to advance, it involves acting despite fears. It involves enduring hardships. It involves maintaining integrity, facing pressure, and this is going to be important to help leaders make different difficult decisions, face uncertainty, stand by ethical principles, we're going to need courage. And I think we can talk, if more and more, about the the the other character qualities which are going to need to go with it. Now. I believe these are going to be important for leaders across different contexts. I think certainly we've seen a change of leadership in the US, just just recently, and a whole lot of changes and people being pushed to and fro on the back of that. But you know, there's a long way to go, certainly over the next five years, and there are many, many more years after that. So I think we should, we should think, okay, more broadly, okay, what do we want to lead towards? What kind of world are we trying to build here, and who do we need to be in order to get there. One way to get at this, maybe, is to encourage people to think about, you know, a leader they admire. And if we think about leaders we admire, and when it comes down to it, often they'll be that the character qualities of those people will be the things that draw us to them, or a leader who you enjoy working with. And it's the it's the character features, I think, which which we come back to time and again,

Emma Sinclair:

as you're talking there, in terms of finding character. Because, as you mentioned, it's it feels almost easier to define someone else's character and what I see in that person. And she said that, you know that leader that I admire, but when we're asking our leaders now to, you know, to become even more human in this world, how do we help people actually find what's defining their character? Is it easy to look internally, to define yourself in that great, great,

Ed Brooks:

great question? Of course, we are thinking of something which is then deeply imprinted. If this idea of us students of a character as a heart print is there, and character qualities could be the ways then that shape our thinking, intellectual virtues, or our action in terms of moral virtues, or our citizenship and civic, civic life with civic virtues and so on. How do we identify where we're, where we're up to? Well, I think a few, a few different ways, certainly, we can get some feedback from others around us and who know us really well. And friendship is an important aspect of growing in character. In the classical world, there were three types of friendship identified by Aristotle, friends of pleasure, who you enjoy spending time with and share a mutual activity, friends of utility, kind of business connections, I guess, in our speak on LinkedIn, or some other, some other context, but the deepest kind, friends of virtue. And here the kinds of friendship where we help each other become the best versions of ourselves. So I think friends can really, can really help us, and they can help us, to encourage us with the positive aspects of our character, and help us tell us perhaps when we're acting out of character as well. But self reflection, I think, as you say, Emma, is also going to be going to be key here, and learning and cultivating and developing habits and practices of reflection are going to be key if we're going to. It to grow to be honest with ourselves as to where we're up to, to be self aware enough to recognise where we are acting courageously, where we're not, where we are acting with compassion, and where actually, perhaps that's somewhat lacking in an approach, in a context. And you know, we need to have times when we just stop and reflect, in order for, I think, in order for these things to be able to come to the fore and fully within us, in order that we can then kind of, think, reflect, move, move forward as well.

Jean Gomes:

How does the concept of character translate across the world? Are there? Are there competing ideas here. How did they integrate up into something that can maybe unite us a bit more?

Ed Brooks:

Yes, this is a great thought, and I think we'd if you're writing a paper on this for the last little while, and think about it in terms of concentric circles. I think there are some some human constants that we're talking about. So because of shared aspects and features of our human experience. I think wherever we are in the world, we might call it different names, but we're all going to need courage. Why? Because wherever you are as a human being, if you want to advance good things, you want to seek out some positive future and advance that, you're not going to do that without difficulty. That is just part of being human. We face challenges from from without, from within, from our environment, and so on. And so courage is going to be part of the kind of universal virtue, part of our kind of universal shared human experience. And the same we might think for a number of other virtues, and typically, there were four which were thought to be Cardinal or kind of central in this, this kind of way, practical wisdom would be. Another which is joining our thinking to our action and advancing the good in relevant ways. Temperance was another, which is to do with being able to moderate the kind of emotional impulses which are there within every single human being, because we're emotional as well as rational, as well as rational beings, justice being an important other one as well. Because if the connection between character and the good, it's just talking about a moral quality here. And if we wanted to advance the good, then that's understanding that collectively, we're going to need to be able to cultivate this, this virtue of justice. Now we may call these different things, but I think there'll be some human constants here which will go across context. But of course, there'll be many other virtues which will then and even these might be translated in different ways or understood with different foundations in different traditions and so on. But there'll be other virtues which are more specific to individual context, whether those are cultural contexts or different leadership contexts. You know, you might need a different set of virtues if you're leading in a hospital, compared to leading in the military or leading in a in a boardroom and and so on. And so we can think about the context and the roles that people play, and then their individual configurations as well, most at the at the outside of this kind of concentric circle that make up the virtues that we might think about developing.

Emma Sinclair:

Again, taking it back to leaders now, and Jean referenced this in relation to changes in the world. But if you had to talk to leaders this year, why would you suggest that character should become a priority thing for them to focus in on?

Ed Brooks:

So I think we're looking I think leaders are heads are spinning in many contexts. At the moment it was already, we're already kind of engaging massive uncertainty and major challenges on multiple fronts, and leaders are having to handle these. And that's only become it's only increased in the in the last month or two, how the leaders find the kind of stability, security, clarity that they need to be able to drive forward and to be able to give people that hope that, you know, according to this Gallup poll, they say desperately follows a desperately, desperately looking for I think it's by finding this stability in character and internally that leaders are able to do that. If you like, finding that bottom line and the bottom line not being profit, but the bottom line being being character. Character really is the bottom line for leaders and building out from there. And there are so many leaders you could, you could look to who would be able to kind of give some idea of how that's possible in in really challenging circumstances. But I think that would be the thing for me to say, Okay, well, where are you going to find. Source of your clarity, the source of your direction, okay, work on those capacities you know. Work on the clarity of your purpose. Work on the courage that you have yourself. Work on your own hope, your disposition to focus on that future. Work on humility. Work on recognising your limitations, valuing others, contributions, remaining open to learning, work on these things, and then you'll be able to find a way through, a way to cope with the kind of vast complexities and conflicting pressures that leaders face.

Jean Gomes:

You recently published the good leadership in UK business report, and that examines these virtues that are valued by UK business leaders. What insights and conclusions did you draw from that piece of research? Yes,

Ed Brooks:

I've got it here. Actually, it's on our on our website as well. So you can, you can find a copy of that good leadership in UK, UK business. So we, we surveyed over 1000 people, I think 30 something companies around the UK, asking what good leadership or how they understand, how people understand good leadership. And it was very striking that character came strongly to the four. So there were three categories in the features that were identified, character qualities, interpersonal skills, professional competence as well. And the character qualities were overwhelmingly the majority or the largest category. I should say, 52% of the features were character qualities, 35% interpersonal skills, 13% to do with professional competence. Now all of these are important, of course, but the fact that it was character that really came to the fore, I think, was very striking for us. And the kinds of things that people were talking about, leaders, having integrity, being responsible, showing commitment, being resilient, being trustworthy, honest, decisive, ethical, respectful and so on. This is what people in UK businesses were drawing out. And the survey method here presented people in the first round of this survey approach with an open box. These were terms that were generated freely by the by the participants, and not in any way planted by the researchers. We then asked the second group to evaluate these terms generated by the first group, and the second group evaluated them on a scale of zero to seven to identify their centrality. And so we could rank all of them, if you like, in the in the research, it the interpersonal aspects are there and are always important for leaders, communication, listening, accountability, giving direction and so on. This is always, always there. And leadership is fundamentally interpersonal, and the competence pieces the leaders will need to have important professional competence, to be knowledgeable, to be risk aware, to have expertise, you know, to be strategic, and so on. But at the base of it, the bottom line people are saying, again, in UK businesses, is character. It keeps coming. It keeps coming back to that. And I suppose that's the if we, if we think of even ourselves and our leadership, you know, what do we want to be or will we be remembered for? Ultimately, often, it's the way in which we've done things, not simply what we've what we've done and what we've achieved, that will be the thing that lasts and outlasts us, the kinds of cultures we've created, the ways we've empowered and enabled others. And of course, the wins will be, will be there, hopefully as well, and people will nod to those But why will we be valued? Why are leaders valued? It's because of their fundamental qualities, these qualities of character, I believe, the

Jean Gomes:

fact that you are, you know, you can ground this in Aristotle and Plato demonstrates this is a perennial, neat human need, and it's really interesting how we have to keep every generation has to keep on relearning this. Now, I know that's part in part. This is a craft skill. You can't teach people this. You have to experience it. But why do we drift to the techno kind of leader who is trying to almost iron that out of the equation? What is it that you're seeing that we have to why we have to keep on reinforcing the need for this?

Ed Brooks:

Well, I think in the modern world, we can make great advances with that kind of techno rational perspective, right? So by narrowing down and, you know, keeping out of the equation these bits that seem a bit more complicated, emotions, or, you know, relationships, okay, let's just focus on, you know, what we can know very clearly. Let's focus on one dimension, and then let's call it profit, and let's develop out technically. Well, look at what we've been able to achieve humanity through this modern, modern world. It's very impressive. And, you know, we live with the results, and we're grateful for them, and even the way that we're able to talk now this has come about through, you know, the optimization of this, this perspective. But that's not all there is. And I think that's where we're at the moment in this kind of late modern. Oh, yeah, okay, well, we we try to optimise, but we optimise this one perspective, but that's not all, and that's not that's not doing it for us. And that may be, you know, helping us to advance technically, but it's not necessarily helping us to advance in our humanity and to to flourish around around the world. Are we happier? You know, are we living in more, more peaceful societies. You know, we're struggling with with many of these things these days, and so I think this is the move to say, Okay, well, we need more human kinds of leadership. We need to take into account more of the aspects that we've that we've left behind, in order to optimise for the one that we have. But of course, the pressure is always there. You know, we can get some quick wins from somewhere. Leaders are the people who need to have answers to tomorrow's problems by yesterday. That's the pressure of of leadership and where the where the quick wins there, and we can see our way to it. You know, to just focus on the quick wins. Just focus on the next thing. Okay, just focus on the one dimension that pressure, I think, is always going to

Emma Sinclair:

be there. So if you make the, you know, the compelling argument for character, then how does virtuous character contribute to the bottom line in your view?

Ed Brooks:

Well, I think if you think about what you might need to get to the I think character is the bottom line. So I think what's your bottom line? That's the point. Yeah. So we've, we've come to in part of the techno rational perspective is, along with the in everything, it's got a number, the numbers, the profit number, that's the, that's the thing that then we we take as fundamental and foundational. Now, of course, in businesses and business drive society, profit is really important and really does matter. So how does character contribute to that? Well, think about the things that we will need in our in any organisation, in order to be able to drive profitability, but to drive profitability in a way where people also are succeeding, personally and interpersonally in our company is performing well across the board. Take one idea. Maybe you need some clarity in your company, or some clarity of purpose. Well, that comes about as it's worked out of a kind of Inner Inner clarity is clarity as a quality of character, the disposition to communicate with precision, with transparency, with insight. That's something which can be cultivated, and you see that, and that's important in in leadership, to prevent confusion, to align teams, to move in the same direction, to build trust by making complex ideas understandable, to enhance decision making by focusing on the core priorities and the core principles, and then you can see that in leaders who do it and optimise and have expressed that character quality really well. Think of Angela Merkel, and she was all about this kind of clarity. She articulated clear, reasoned policies during economic crisis, during the COVID crisis, provided steady, fact based leadership. Of course, you know there are, there are downsides to every leader as well, but this is something that anger. Merkel did very well. She had this, this character, quality and her clarity built stability. Her clarity built trust. And her clarity made her one of Europe's most respected, respected leaders. So, you know, I think, what do we, what do we need to do in order to get there with the profitability question? Well, who do we need to be as leaders in order to be able to drive those things through? And I think as soon as we get to that, that agent, standard perspective, when these character causes, it seems to me, actually drive, drive right through. Now some leaders, it gets confused, because some leaders seem to do very well without holding, without possessing character qualities, which we might consider really important. And Humility is a classic one here, right? And this is interesting in our research as well, because humility was one of the ones that came very low down on the list in our business UK business research, but yet I think humility is central to leadership, and there's some really good research that supports that as well. And we're talking here about the disposition to recognise one's limitations, so to value others contributions, to remain open to learning. And why is that important? It can prevent arrogance, encourage collaboration. Strengthen relationships, enhance adaptability. But some leaders seem to work well by kind of blasting their way through and not showing much humility, awareness of their limits. In fact, showing arrogance, which kind of seems that no limits count in any in any case. Now, it seems to me, leaders such as those can be successful for a time, but at the end of the day, someone else has got to then come along and clean up the mess that they've they've often made and left behind them, and the relationships that have been been being challenged, the the the others who have been excluded, the collaborations that have been undone, actually, if we're going to move forward and achieve what we need to achieve in an organisation, in an international context, between countries, to engage global challenges, well, those collaborations need to be mended. The relationships need to be strengthened again. Adaptability needs to be built back. So the humility has got to come back in at some point, even if some leader has kind of optimised at one point without it and managed to achieve for a limited group of people and on a limited kind of understanding of what good looks like, maybe some what they would describe as really positive outcomes.

Emma Sinclair:

You You just mentioned humility there, and I read the good leadership business in UK business report. And the other two that stood out for me that were right down the bottom there, there was there was humorous, which I, if I kind of, I thought, oh, that's entertaining. And then I then there was kindness and creativity, and working alongside Jean And those two, for me, feel very it's surprising that they are rated so low by, you know, the general sort of working population. At the moment, I'd love to, love to see if you, you know what your research suggesting that those two might, might still be important.

Ed Brooks:

Yes, and we've puzzled over this a bit, because there's some good research on humility being really important for the issue. And I've kind of sketched out some of the reasons that would be at the same for creativity, same for kindness. There's, in fact, a brilliant movement led by Pinky Leilani in the kindness awards here in the UK, sponsored by the the Financial Times, which come out and KPMG every every year, to recognise leaders have shown kindness, and kindness being so important interpersonally, and if leadership is all about relationships, actually just being able to acknowledge the challenges others are facing and to be able to show in appropriate ways, in different contexts, that kind of human appreciation and Support, how can we, how can we get on without, without that, I wonder if these ideas just aren't coming to the fore when people think about leadership, particularly and and still very strong paradigms of leadership being perhaps a kind of heroic CEO. That kind of idea maybe exist too strongly still in people's minds, and maybe there are ways in which should we need to be able to step back and reflect a little bit, but it's hard to know without following up the research with some more qualitative understandings here. Humour is funny. You mentioned humour? Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Humour was a virtue for Aristotle, and is humour important for leaders? And maybe we have to worry about it. But I think it is interesting, the way humour is so, so important putting people at ease. But also, actually, isn't it really important to be able to not take ourselves too seriously at times, and if we do, you know, we're on to a loser. If everything we do is the it is so, so important and so serious, I think it's really important for leaders to you know, to be able to be laughed at and laughed at and laugh at laugh at themselves as well. It's part of our humanity, isn't

Jean Gomes:

it? I'm just interested in what your character scorecard is for the three or four top you know, like business people in the world, you know the Zuckerberg Bezos musk, are

Emma Sinclair:

you thinking a character, Top Trumps, Jean? Don't think we should play that game.

Jean Gomes:

No, I wonder whether you, you know you've kind of thought, because it's very easy to, you know, to parody people, because you kind of create one dimensional pictures around them. But I'm just interested to, you know, to get your sense of a what you you see as the maybe, the the elements, the qualities of their character, there may be an overdrive, and therefore, you know, they're over dependent on, and where do you think that setting The agenda in terms of younger generation of leaders

Ed Brooks:

in the US election, the idea of character was kind of weaponized on both sides, and it becomes drawn into the political discourse without kind of really very much nuanced attention to what this might might mean. And of course, we don't live in a world of black and whites and kind of absolute goodies and goodies and baddies, and need to be grown up enough to see, okay, yeah, there are. There are character flaws and some in some ways, and character strengths in in other ways. And that's, of course, true of all of us, and that's fundamental to this idea, because characters are something that you either have or you don't. What we're talking about is a developmental category. These qualities or dispositions are developed over time. They're habits. They're developed by repeated, continual practice, and that practice needs to be reflective, because it's not just kind of an automated keep doing the same thing. Yeah, so it needs to be intelligent practice, but character qualities are habits, and they're developed, but none of us are kind of fully complete. We've all got our gaps in our character. Is Christian Miller, he's a friend and professor at Wake Forest has written about our characters are maybe mixed, rather than absolutely virtuous are absolutely vicious, and there are a few people at either end of those. So I think, yeah, it's we can we can look at others, and we can observe, okay, there are some ways in which characters lacking there and there. And I guess with public leaders, their virtues and vices are much more on display than than those of us who don't lead in the in the public eye. Certainly, you know, you can see, you can see how archetypal kind of ideas of leadership prioritised, you know, heroic sets of virtues and more individualistic approaches, and took certain views on, on what courage was, and so on, and perhaps excluded some other aspects of of leadership. And this is where we're talking, you know, where's kindness, where's humility, where's curiosity, and and so on. And so I think you're taking, taking a close look at, okay, well actually, what are the virtues, which are, which are relevant for for leadership, and why? How are we doing on them, and there are some great psychometrics which can help here to kind of get a good understanding of where we might be up to and to be used as reflective tools across a range of different virtues. We've just developed an online course here in our work, and we'll release that soon called leading with character. It'll be on the online, on leading with character.com and we focused on a subset of virtues, particularly courage, love and hope as key virtues we think are important for leaders in in these days, in order to lead Well, overcome challenges, work together with with others, lead well towards the future. That's not a complete list, of course, but those ones we think are going to be important for many leaders to be focusing on these days.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on The Evolving Leader have helped you in any way, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation. I

Emma Sinclair:

was wondering if we should turn to your forthcoming book based on where we are in the conversation. Yeah,

Jean Gomes:

well, I mean, thank you for sharing that, because it was fascinating. It's something, I mean, I can't, I can't wait to get the proper copy of it, because it's one of those ones that needs to be read, I think, in a deck chair or a, you know, some somewhere you can really relax and enjoy it, because it's it's fascinating, and it's a refreshingly different approach to it from the mass of leadership literature, which it's, you know, we consume a lot of that here at The Evolving Leader. So can we talk about, you know, who this is aimed at, why the more nuanced picture of leadership you describe is so important for us to recognise.

Ed Brooks:

So thank you so much. The book is called the arts of leading perspectives from the humanities and the liberal arts. It's an edited book that I co edited with a great colleague and friend, Michael lamb who's a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, and it includes chapters, 14 chapters by scholars who don't usually think and write about leadership, or at least they don't take that as their focal theme. A lot of their work relates to leadership, but we invited these scholars, who are scholars, leading scholars around the world in the humanities, to take up this theme and to think about it from their particular disciplinary perspectives. And so we have chapters in there from classics, philosophy, history, literature, visual arts, performing arts. So the music pilgrim Harrison has a wonderful chapter on Orlando Gibbons, the great composer, thinking about choral music and leadership, and thinking about leadership from the perspective of the choir and how a choir works, and the minor movements, minor adjustments from the leader in that context, which are all that is needed in order to lead well, and actually, the larger the leadership, perhaps the less of the performance. There's a wonderful chapter in there on the leadership of a couple of chapters on leadership and visual arts, one by David Lubin. He's a professor at. Of he's an art professor. He looks at the the Shaw Memorial, which is there in in Boston. And it's a memorial of Colonel Robert Shaw, who is the commander of the first black regiment in the in the US in the in the Civil War, in infantry regiment. And this memorial was was, was made by Augustus st Gordon. He's a kind of famous sculptor, and the classic way to remember a war general. You can think of the The pose is the individual on the horse on the pedestal, you know. So you've got this general elevated, you know, isolated and elevated and looking very, very apt and and heroic. And this particular sculpture is a frieze. And yes, you do have Robert Shaw on the horse, but he stared down on the horse, surrounded by all of his men and st Gordon's brings out the individuality in every single face in this black regiment, with incredible attention to detail, and it just subverts the kind of typical ideal of how you might remember the great general and war hero, not the individual elevator on the horse, but the general there with the men who individually, the soldiers, individualised, just reshaping how we might think of and imagine what the leader looks like and who the leader is. And that's so important. Why is that important? Because the kind of art that we surround ourselves with of leaders shapes our imaginary and shaping our imaginary shapes then our practice. Oh, that's what a great leader is. A great leader is the individual, individual man sitting on the on the horse who does the great and heroic deed. Okay? Well, that limits leadership to those very, very few individuals who actually they're a bit lost and lonely and isolated. In fact, maybe it's something which is much more down to earth and much more human, and maybe it's the leadership that actually individualises the people who are around. There's another beautiful chapter in the history section with Marla Frederick, who in fact is the dean of divinity at Harvard, and she has a chapter on on leadership close to the ground in the community, and does some deep work in the archive of the church in South Carolina. And identified actually that while there was this wonderful history of successive prominent pastors on the wall, actually in the records. As she dug deep down, she found the story of three amazing women, Mary Mitchell, Minnie Blair and Tilda Bush. And I always have used this previously, saying it's got this great chapter the book about the leadership of bush and Blair, and everyone you know knows who we're talking about. Except the idea is actually, no, you don't. It's these three women, and in the archives, they organise the church into existence. And just think about that. Okay, who are the hidden people in organisations who are doing the work, serving the community, organising, action, getting things done. If we could reimagine leadership in ways which could actually identify those people, not leave them there in the archives, until someone comes back and digs, digs through and says, oh, actually yes, they were. They were the ones doing it, doing a lot of the work around here. But if we were able to identify, elevate, inspire so many more people who are doing amazing things in organisations, maybe not in the boardrooms, but on the different, many, many many different parts of organisational, organisational life. You know, I think organisations would would take off. So you have these different perspectives from the arts, from the humanities, which I think they're beautifully presented through the different chapters. And I think identifies some different aspects of leadership, maybe some leadership lessons which aren't going to be, you know, nice and formulaic and in a, you know, kind of two by two box from a management consultant, but will make us pause and think and maybe give something which could lead to a change of practice and a humanization of leadership. And that's certainly the hope of the book. Well,

Jean Gomes:

I think there's a huge amount of variety in it and different points. So I think, you know, regardless of you know who you are, that there will be two or three aspects of this that will make you think, and it's difficult in a good way, because it isn't conventional. It isn't taking on the you know, here's the story. Theory of you know Joe the leader, and this is the challenge. And here's the four box model, as you described, and here's how to apply it. It's not like that at all. Another chapter by Noah Lopez, and he draws on Plato's Republic with the message that leaders should learn to philosophise. Can you talk us through that?

Ed Brooks:

Yes. So Noah has this chapter, which is based on the famous metaphor of the cave and in Plato's Republic, where you have the people in there, in the in the dark, and the leader is actually guiding them out into the into the light. And no then talks and uses this to think about the educator as leader, bringing bring insight, bringing light, and so on. But also challenges that the metaphor and challenges that Plato a little bit here as well, because of the methods that are used. And so there, the educational method is dragging the dragging the prisoners out, you know, into the light, and so on. And she suggests that we might want to think about that and think about the ways in which leaders, educators can can lead well, so maybe there's a way to think, okay, so, you know, actually teachers as leaders, but also leaders as teachers. And do we recognise our teachers in that way? Do we seek to teach? And what do we what can we learn from teachers about effective leadership in the ways which maybe doesn't drag people kicking and screaming into a different understanding, but enables them to explore, to inquire, to learn, to grow, to cultivate that curiosity which will see them come To appreciate and understand the world, the context, the challenge, the puzzle, whatever it is in in ways which which are deeper and can open up admiration, joy and positive action

Emma Sinclair:

in the way that you're talking about, the lessons potentially in this book and the you know, the challenge of leaders, who you know might be a bit time poor and picking up something that enables them just to get to the sort of the heart of that conventional answers on leadership, it sounds much more like those questions that this book unfolds for people, and I'm just wondering what your take is in terms of that way of learning and engaging in Leadership, in this kind of world of uncertainty that enables leaders to think slightly differently, perhaps to finding all the answers.

Ed Brooks:

Yes, absolutely. So I think the book does raise questions, and I think those questions are really important, and maybe this is the thing that leaders need. Yes. We do need to reach out to answers and insights which are there and readily available. There is a science of leadership which produces these insights for us, but there is also an art, and let's not forget the busy with the science of leadership. Let's not forget the arts of leading. And yes, that will leave us with with the insight, but also with more questions, and we'll need to push into those and to live out those, those questions and live our way through to towards better and better leadership, affecting that art. But that's going to be a lifetime's work.

Jean Gomes:

What is the next phase in your work at the moment.

Ed Brooks:

So a couple of things. One, we're seeking to build on our last 10 years at the Oxford character project and establish an Institute here at the university. So we have a major campaign around that just at the moment, and seeking to reach out to partners we've worked with and others around the place who might be keen to join us. That's a major focus of this year, as well as writing another book, and this one I'm writing with Michael lamb. We worked together on this last one, the arts of leading, and we're working together to write a book on strategies for character development. So how do we actually, in practice, develop our character and help others to develop their character as well, and we're working on that book, and hopefully it will be out early in 2026

Jean Gomes:

wonderful. We'll look forward to to seeing that, and perhaps maybe invite you back on if you're willing to come and talk about your work and what you've learned through that process. So for the meantime, we absolutely love this conversation. It was really rich, and really recommend that, if you're interested in this topic, listeners, that you get a copy of the arts, of leading perspectives from the humanities and liberal arts, and go on to some of the show links in terms of the resources, the reports in the Oxford character project that you'll be able to, you know, gain huge value from. So remember, the world is evolving. Are you?

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Jean Gomes

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