Personality Ethic v/s Character Ethic

(This piece of writing is taken from the book "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. It reflects his views on character ethic & personality ethic by depiction of the problem he & his wife faced while dealing the issue of development of their son.)

"A few years ago, my wife Sandra & I were struggling with a kind of concern. One of our son was having a very difficult time in school. He was doing poorly academically; he didn't even know how to follow the instructions on the tests, let alone do well on them. Socially he was immature, often embarrassing those closest to him. Athletically, he was small, skinny, and uncoordinated- swinging his baseball bat, for example, almost before the ball was even pitched. Others would laugh at him.

Sandra & I were consumed with a desire to help him. We felt that if "success" were important in any area of life, it was supremely important in our role as parents. So we worked on our attitudes and behaviour towards him and we tried to work on his. We attempted to psych him up using positive mental attitude techniques. "Come on, son! You can do it! We know you can. Put your hands a little higher on the bat & keep your eye on the ball. Don't swing till it gets close to you." And if he did a little better, we would go to great lengths to reinforce him. "That's good,son, keep it up." When others laughed, we reprimanded them. "Leave him alone. Get off his back. He's just learning." And our son would cry and insist that he'd never be any good and that he didn't like baseball anyway. Nothing we did seemed to help, and we were really worried. We could see the effect this was having on his self-esteem. We tried to be encouraging and helpful and positive, but after repeated failure, we finally drew back and tried to look at the situation on a different level.

At this time in my professional role I was involved in leadership development work with various clients throughout the country. In that capacity I was preparing bimonthly programs on the subject of communication and perception for IBM's Executive Development Program participants. As I researched and prepared these presentations, I became particularly interested in how perceptions are formed, how they govern the way we see, and how the way we see governs how we behave. This led me to a study of expectancy theory and self-fulfilling prophecies or the"Pygmalion effect", and to a realization of how deeply embedded our perceptions are. It taught me that we must look at the lens through which we see the world, as well as at the world we see, and that the lens itself shapes how we interpret the world. As Sandra & I talked about the concepts I was teaching at IBM and about our own situation, we began to realize that what we were doing to help our son was not in harmony with the way we really saw him. When we honestly examined our deepest feelings, we realized that our perception was that he was basically inadequate, somehow "behind". No matter how much we worked on our attitude and behaviour, despite our actions and our words, what we really communicated to him was,"You aren't capable. You have to be protected." We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change our perceptions.

The Personality & Character Ethics

The Character Ethic is the foundation of success- things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty and the Golden rule. These are basic principles of effective living, and people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.

The Personality Ethic includes public image, attitudes, behaviours, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction. It essentially take two paths: one is human & public relation techniques, and the other is positive mental attitude(PMA).

This Personality Ethic, I began to realize, was the subconscious source of the solutions Sandra and I were attempting to use with our son. As I thought more deeply about the difference between the Personality and Character Ethics, I realized that Sandra & I had been getting social mileage out of our children's good behaviour, and, in our eyes, this son didn't simply measure up. Our image of ourselves, and our role as good, caring parents was even deeper than our image of our son and perhaps influenced it. There was a lot more wrapped up in the way we were seeing and handling the problem than our concern for our son's welfare. As Sandra & I talked, we became painfully aware of the powerful influence of our own character & motives and of our perception of him. We knew that social comparison motives were out of harmony with our deeper values and could lead to conditional love and eventually to our son's lessened sense of self-worth. So we determined to focus our effort on us- not on our techniques, but on our deepest motives and our perception of him. Instead of trying to change him, we tried to stand apart- to separate us from him- and to sense his identity, individuality, separateness, and worth. Through deep thought and the exercise of faith and prayer, we began to see our son in terms of his own uniqueness. We saw within him layers and layers of potential that would be realized at his own pace and speed. We decided to relax and get out out of his way and let his own personality emerge. We saw our natural role as being to affirm, enjoy, and value him. We also conscientiously worked on our motives and cultivated internal sources of security so that our own feelings of worth were not dependent on our children's "acceptable" behaviour. As we loosened up our old perception of our son and developed value-based motives, new feelings began to emerge. We found ourselves enjoying him instead of comparing or judging him. We stopped trying to clone him in our own image or measure him against social expectations. We stopped trying to kindly, positively manipulate him into an acceptable social mold. Because we saw him as fundamentally adequate and able to cope with life, we stopped protecting him against the ridicule of others. He had been nurtured on this protection, so he went through some withdrawal pains, which he expressed and which we accepted, but did not necessarily respond to. " We don't need to protect you," was the unspoken message. "You're fundamentally okay." As the weeks & months passed, he began to feel a quiet confidence & affirmed himself. He began to blossom, at his own pace & speed. He became outstanding as measured by standard social criteria- academically, socially and athletically- at a rapid clip, far beyond the so-called natural developmental process. As the years passed, he was elected to several student body leadership positions, developed into an all-state athlete and started bringing home straight "A" report cards. He developed an engaging and guileless personality that has enabled him to relate in nonthreatening ways to all kinds of people.

Sandra & I believe that our son's "socially impressive" accomplishments were more a serendipitous expression of the feelings he had about himself than than merely a response to social reward. This was an amazing experience for Sandra & me, and a very instructional one in dealing with our other children and in other roles as well. It brought to our awareness on a very personal level the vital difference between the Personality Ethic and the Character Ethic of success. The Psalmist expressed our conviction well:"Search your own heart with all diligence, for out of it flow the issues of life."