The Launch with Dr Mary Crossan

In our launch episode, co-founders Dr. Mary Crossan and host Dr. Corey Crossan challenge conventional thinking on leadership development and invite you to reimagine what's possible when character becomes a daily practice.

• Mary reveals why character isn’t just important—it’s foundational
• Corey unpacks the intentional design behind Virtuosity’s flagship program
• Mary outlines what makes this approach radically different from traditional leadership models
• Together, they introduce this year’s program participants—guests who will bring theory to life
• Mary shares strategic insights on how Virtuosity drives organizational transformation
• Mary reflects on the Virtuosity app and how it brings character development into daily practice
• And finally, Mary unveils the Character Quotient—a new framework to assess and elevate the way we lead

This isn't just another leadership podcast. It's a call to those who believe that character is the next frontier of excellence.

Dr Mary Crossan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/mary-crossan-048ba5269/) is a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Strategic Leadership at the Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada.

Resources

  •  Character Quotient Assessment in Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/marycrossan/2025/03/26/from-good-to-great-10-ways-to-elevate-your-character-quotient/)
  •  Cracking the Code (https://www.cutter.com/article/cracking-code-leader-character-development-competitive-advantage)
  •  Leader Character Framework with Culture, Virtues, and Vices (https://virtuositycharacter.ca/organization/storage_production_6e2934b8-3e20-47a7-aa79-59a612f967be/990340a0-9980-4919-9456-ab5640b405a0.pdf)

About Virtuosity

• Website (https://virtuositycharacter.ca/)
• Monthly Newsletter (https://mailchi.mp/virtuositycharacter/subscribe-to-the-virtuosity-monthly-newsletter)
• LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/virtuosity-character)
• Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/virtuositycharacter/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=)

Host, Dr Corey Crossan (https://www.linkedin.com/in/coreycrossan/), is a research and teaching fellow at The Oxford Character Project where she develops and facilitates character development programs for students, industry, and university partners. Corey’s love for elite performance developed as she competed in top-level athletics for most of her life, highlighted by competing as a NCAA Division 1 athlete. Corey translated her understanding of elite performance into a passion for helping individuals and organizations develop sustained excellence. She is also the co-founder of Virtuosity Character, a mobile software application created to support the daily, deliberate practice of character-based leadership development.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome
• 1:40 Introduction to Mary
• 2:48 Character Matters
• 6:28 Virtuosity Program Overview
• 23:21 Strategic Application of Virtuosity
• 34:20 Virtuosity Mobile App Experience
• 44:55 Character Quotient
• 54:47 Bye For Now

Transcript

Corey Crossan

[00.00.09]

Every choice builds character. On the Virtuosity podcast, we explore how to make everyday a rep toward excellence. I'm Corey, your host and co-founder of Virtuosity. My journey into character development began in sport, where I discovered that strengthening my character didn't just improve my performance. It transformed my entire life. Since then, I've been gripped with understanding how we can intentionally build character to fuel both personal and professional success. At virtuosity, we believe characters like a muscle. It needs consistent training. That's why we've built a research-based system that acts as your character gym making character development practical, scalable, and accessible even within the largest organizations. On this podcast, we sit down with participants from our flagship virtuosity program, where individuals commit to a full year of daily character development powered by Virtuosity. Our guests will share why character matters to them, how they're applying it in their personal and professional lives, and the insights they've gained along the way. We hope these conversations challenge, inspire, and equip you with new ways to integrate character into your own journey. Subscribe to stay up to date with our weekly episodes and if something resonates, share it with your friends and colleagues. Ready to start your own Virtuosity journey? Download the Virtuosity Character app or visit virtuositycharacter.ca to learn more. Now let's dive into today's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to the launch of the Virtuosity Podcast. Today I'm here with Virtuosity’s other co-founder and also the co-lead of the Virtuosity program, Doctor Mary Crossan, who, yes, is also my mom. Mary is a distinguished university professor and professor of strategic leadership at the Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada. Her recent research focuses on the development of leader character as a critical foundation to support and elevate leader competencies. In 2021, Mary earned recognition on a global list representing the top 2% of the most cited scientists in her field. Additionally, she has been honored with the Lifetime Career Achievement Academy of Managed Management Distinguished Educator Award. Mary's research on leader character, organizational learning, and strategic renewal and improvisation has been featured in more than 100 articles and books. She is co-author of Developing Leadership, character and the Character Compass: Transforming Leadership for the 21st century, co-host of the Question of Character podcast and co-founder of Leader Character Associates. Welcome, Mary.

Mary Crossan

[00.02.45]

Good to be here, Corey.

Corey Crossan

[00.02.47]

So I'm going to jump into the first question, which is a question I'm going to be asking all of our guests. And it starts with, why does character matter to you?

Mary Crossan

[00.02.57]

Wow. That's a loaded question, and I wish that I had understood it a lot earlier in life. There is, I think, like a lot of people, Corey, you know, character was in my life. I had two incredible parents as role models. If I understood the science character way back then, I would have really been able to articulate why I think they were such incredible mentors and cultivating. I mean, you know, I grew up in a family with nine kids, and my parents kind of cultivated, if you want to call it a bit of a character community, which even today, as you know, is ever expanding, incredible and engaging, supportive network of people. But, you know, you talk to my bio, my background is lot in strategy, organizational learning, innovation. For the first 25 years of my career, I was really motivated to help organizations navigate uncertainty, complexity, volatility with great strategy, organization, agility, etc., and you know, motivated in that because I believe organizations are the instrument for societal change, for better and worse. And so that to me, you can have individual development, but you need it within that organizational context that enable and harnesses, right, that great innovation. And really it's a bit of an embarrassment for me to say that I stumbled into character really as the catalyst for that. And it was in the 2008 global financial crisis that I was heading up the Leadership Institute at Ivy, and we were really asking the question, what were the failures of leadership that led to that economic crisis, and what could we do about it? Myself and my colleague Gerard Seijts, Jeffrey Gandz ran these focus groups in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia to ask leaders what had gone wrong. And we discovered that it was largely failures of character, not so much competence. And yet people didn't know what character was. They debated whether you could even develop it. And if I go back in time, you know that's around then or 2009. I'm embarking on trying to understand a field that I don't really know a lot about. And thankfully, we were standing on the shoulders of giants - Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, all the ancient, you know, wisdom that comes from that area of philosophers, you know, bringing that into modern day and psychologist Martin Seligman, Christopher Peterson, who had written Character Strengths and Virtues, an 800 page research book. The journey, though, that I've had, which I think plays out into some of the other areas that we might get into a little bit later on was, you know, in the early days we were just trying to sort out what is character and why does it matter? And yet what I have found in the last 15 years is how much the area that we really need to focus on is, even though we know all of that, how do we develop character as habit? So that's really where I'm at today.

Corey Crossan

[00.06.28]

Thank you. And I think that gets us into a really good segway where since all of the guests on this podcast are going to be participants from the Virtuosity program, I thought we could start by sharing a little bit about what that program looks like, why we designed it, and after I take a few minutes to explain the design of the program, I'd like to pass it back to you to think about or share why you think this program is particularly unique compared to a lot of the other leader development programs out there. So for the listeners, we are about a few months into our year-long Virtuosity program. And really, the design around this program is focusing on the development of character. So Mary talks about moving into what character is, why it matters into the development and then embedding character. And so this program is about not just learning about what character is, but moving beyond what we call the temporary bump of learning about character to actually developing character. So the way we design this program, it's a year-long program with 12 sessions that are held on a monthly basis, and may essentially start off with a launch session to get everyone integrated into the program. And then from there, we focus on one of the 11 dimensions each across the year. So as we begin the second session in the first dimension we focus on is transcendence. That's at the top of the leader character wheel. And then we work our way around the wheel, going to drive, collaboration, etc. but the really interesting thing is that as we approach each workshop, each person in the program is focusing on the dimension on a day-to-day basis, and they get to customize their experience. So there are a certain set of behaviors that people can focus on within each of those dimensions. So each person focuses on whichever behavior is most important to them. They exercise it. They invest in it on a daily basis. They reflect on it so that when they come to that session at the end of the month, they're really ready to unpack their experiences and hear about the experiences of other people. I think that's a pretty good overview. But, Mary, have I missed anything, about the kind of higher order idea of the program? 

Mary Crossan

[00.08.40]

Yeah, I think that's a great description. And if I bring it down, then to the things that I think are incredibly important about it and that have been missing, because you talked about moving beyond the temporary bump of awareness into development. I have literally spent 40 years at the Ivey Business School doing a lot of work in executive education, working with organizations where it's not just us. Look at where I've probably been at the forefront of many schools about how we do really relevant learning and practice. But the notion of getting to habit development is it is actually a paradigm shift in leadership development, as you, because we're working in the midst of an article right now that talks about that paradigm shift. And what I find really inspirational about the Virtuosity program is that it really tackles that piece that's been missing in leadership development, the character gym, how do you bring the two streams of science, the science of habit development and the science of character together in an approach, then that provides a way that the individual can begin to transform those muscles of character. And that, to me, is a very exciting prospect.

Corey Crossan

[00.10.07]

Yeah. I think as we've been writing this article, you're talking about some of the really interesting things I find that makes this type of programming unique is that a lot of leadership programs train people within the confines of a training setting or a classroom for educators, and they try and provide some kind of tools or frameworks that can help people beyond that time. But being able to actually practice or develop your character across all the context of what you live and across time is really powerful and really important, especially when it comes to character. Because as we know, virtues are challenged to show up differently across contexts. And so the idea that in Virtuosity you get a daily exercise prompt. You look at it for 30s, and then you're meant to exercise that to transform everything else you do in your day. I think is a really powerful and new way to think about leader development, and especially in a way that's not too time consuming. You can actually implement this type of training into your daily life without having to, you know, make all these new sacrifices.

Mary Crossan

[00.11.16]

Yeah, Corey, it's like a set of glasses that you put on that allows you to see things differently throughout the day. And it is that that nature of being able to use what's already available in your day to enrich the way you engage the world. You know, to me, that is such a gift. And a lot of people say, of course, once you see it, you can't unsee it. So this idea of having the glasses, they become permanent in terms of your perspective of being able to understand your own character and that of others.

Corey Crossan

[00.11.56]

Yeah, I really like that. So we have a lot of really interesting people part of the program. And this is I think the question I have to ask you as really particular to your expertise, because your background is in the area of strategy. And a lot of people doing this program, they are doing it for themselves, but they're also doing it for an additional layer, like bringing it into their organizations for various reasons. Do you want to provide some examples of the people or organizations in the Virtuosity program and foreshadow what they're trying to do because we will have them on the podcast later. But yeah, just giving some kind of foreshadowing to what the listeners will hear.

Mary Crossan

[00.12.36]

Well, we've got, you know, a group that are in education. And so when you think about, you know, for example, in engineering and medicine, are people trained to elevate character alongside competence in higher education. And, you know, a theme that we want to pick up no matter who the person is, they really do want to start with themselves. Because once you begin to see character, understand what it is, observe and identify. Know what it takes to develop it, then you can see the opportunity to bring it into the context that that you're operating in. If I use my own example just as an educator. So I teach strategy in our executive MBA program. And the fact that I know as much as I do about character, I can elevate character alongside competence in the way that I think about strategy and engage students in that so that, you know, those glasses that I talked about putting on, well, how do I help them put on the glasses even though they haven't been through the Virtuosity program? So how do I bring character into the conversation so that they begin to see, for example, that the failures of strategy are often failures of character, not so much competence. And as an example, I have a class that I do that let's them pick their favorite example of strategic failure and with some of the toolkit around character, amongst other things, I let them examine what led to those strategic failures, and it's inevitable that they start to pick up that they're the aspects of character. So whether you're in medicine or engineering or law or it's teaching history or whatever it is beginning to think about as an educator, how could a character lens bring a different kind of perspective on what it is that we're teaching to enable competence? Now we have a number of people on the program who are responsible for education within organizations, executive development, leadership development, curriculum development and the same things apply. What we do find is that there are many of those individuals. We talk about developing a leader character 101 course so that in my in my case of strategy, I'm weaving it into strategic competence. So that's always available to people. And yet I also taught a course in our MBA program which was entirely focused on developing leadership character. So I think that both of those pathways exist for those educators, either in institutions, universities, high school, or, you know, in organizations. Then we have, you know, groups of people who are responsible for the HR practices like selection, performance management, tasked with how are we going to bring character into those practices. And I think a key lesson that we learn about all of this is you need to be developing character. You need to understand what it is in order to be able to select on the basis of character. We have people who are looking at embedding character in cultural transformation. Same, same story applies. You’ve got to be thinking about your culture is going to be a reflection of the character of the individuals in the organization. So if you know and you can develop character, now, you just have this connective tissue that you want to make that gets you into saying, so how does this relate to our culture? Like what is it that we have determined as our aspirational culture, a set of values in the organizations? And how then can we use and employ the development of character to do that?

Corey Crossan

[00.16.25]

 Amazing. And we don't have anyone in the program this year. But we had someone from a sport background last year, and of course with my background, I think it's particularly interesting even just to think about this, for listeners that might have a sport background where we find the connection between the coach and the athlete to be so important. In particular, you know, for athlete development, being able to leverage character to enhance your performance and well-being is a really powerful piece. And that's what really got me interested in character in the first place, is that as an athlete, where it felt like well-being was taking a back seat to performance. But you actually don't have to choose between performance or well-being. So that's really powerful from an athlete perspective. And then for coaches to be able to reinforce that, they have to be able to invest in character in themselves to be able to see that, you know, character is something that athletes should value. But in particular, we find that when we've worked with coaches, when we show them, for example, the Virtues and Vices Index, they just get so excited because they now have this really comprehensive vocabulary that they can use to decode in a sense, or understand their athletes and recognize that every athlete has a very unique path for development.

Mary Crossan

[00.17.36]

Yeah. That is so incredibly insightful. You and I have both done a lot of coaching. I wish at the time I had been doing the coaching that I had the language of character. And I often talk about even as a parent, in the earlier days, I wish I had understood character, because it's very easy to see somebody's strength and reinforce them to create an excess life. I know you've experienced that in your life. Uh, for sure. I remember a pivotal moment in a pivotal game where I can actually go back to that moment and I take this particular athlete tremendous accountability, tremendous drive, tremendous courage. And there were a number of errors that they were making at a pivotal point in the game. And, and I should have been activating on humility and humanity and collaboration with this particular player. And I remember activating saying, like, you know, this kind of revving them up on their drive and their accountability. But they were so revved up on those things that was just the wrong thing in that moment. And again, if I had the language of character, I would have understood that right away. I would have had the good judgment to know what dimensions of character did that person need to activate on to have both performance and well-being. So it's incredibly practical and very important, I think, for human flourishing.

Corey Crossan

[00.19.11]

And on the performance and well-being piece, we also have someone from the firefighting industry in this year's program, and that's something that he talks a lot about, is how do we reach that peak performance? But of course, well-being is so important for sustained and peak performance. So that's been a really interesting parallel to sport. And actually, when you think about it, I do feel like this whole idea of performance and well-being is a notion that really is growing in organizations. It's not just well-being because, you know, we should focus on well-being, but actually the two really do go hand in hand. So character is such an important piece into that.

Mary Crossan

[00.19.47]

And working with Jamie in the fire sector, the piece I'd also like to bring to people's attention is just the incredible role of judgment. And you see it in firefighting in many areas, you know, judgment under time pressure, under scarce resources. Of course, an area I studied was improvisation, that improvisational capability. How do you co-create solutions in real time? All that space of agility, judgment is central to that. Sure, you have practices and routines that you want to be thinking about, but that will never give you all the answers that you need to get in the moment. And so I want to give this sort of focus again if we lose sight of it around the incredible role of character-based judgment. 

Corey Crossan

[00.20.34]

Mhm. And then perhaps just to wrap off or wrap off the group of participants that we had on the program. I mean, we certainly haven't covered all of them, but we have a large group of people that are also simply focusing on character for themselves, whether it's to increase their well-being, we've heard be a better parent, for them to be able to perform better. And I think that this focus on self-development, no matter what your kind of application aspiration is, as you said earlier, that actually starting with the development of your own character is such a foundational place and it will help you see opportunity where you can apply it, whether it's different areas of your personal life and across your organizations.

Mary Crossan

[00.21.15]

I think that's exactly right. And one of the reasons for me why the Virtuosity program is a central piece of what I look for in the months. It's a conversation that I know I'm going to have once a month. And of course, the app that I'm doing every single day, it is the foundation for me going to the character gym, meaning that it's like, no, whatever sport you're going to play, you got to go to the gym, right? You have to have good exercise, nutrition, etc. to me, the app is always about, how I cultivate the best version of myself, and it's a never ending kind of progress. And it's different than actually the physical gym, in the sense that there is a bit of a limit to what our physical exercise can do, and how much can we do of it in a day. And I discover around character, you know, those glasses that you put on and the way that you can cultivate who you are, who you are becoming while you're busy doing enormous potential. And that potential is for yourself, for sure. I love this idea. You put the oxygen mask on yourself. Either, you know, airline disaster is that we've got to put the oxygen mask on ourselves so that we can be our best selves in the day, and then being able to bring that kind of quality of character contagion to all of those around us. And, you know, you ask yourself, are you the person that people want in the room or out of the room? Are they, or are you, the person that brings the best out of other people or the worst out of people? And I think the whole base about character and development allows us to see that potential for our own human development and the potential to be able to enable others in their development as well. And from that point, you then see all of these other opportunities for how you're going to transform your organization, its culture selection and all of those other good strategic pieces.

Corey Crossan

[00.23.21]

Perfect segue into our next section where I wanted to ask you with your strategic background. Well, first of all, actually, we wrote an article on using Virtuosity to make a strategic impact in organizations. It's called Cracking the Code. And I'll provide a link in the notes. And in this particular article, we talk about the strategic impact moving across to two axes. One is breadth of implementation and the other one is depth of implementation. So with your strategy background, this is really inspired by you Bill and myself. But what are those opportunities that you do see and being able to leverage Virtuosity in organizations to go across those two axes to make a strategic impact.

Mary Crossan

[00.24.08]

Well, what we have found is the subject matter expertise that I talked about on the science of habit development, the science of character, those are hard areas to develop subject matter expertise on. Of course, we think about all of that is embedded in the app. So it takes some of the heavy lifting from program development away from organizations. When I think about return on learning investment, for example, being able to rely on an app to do the heavy lifting of that science-based approach is a very practical approach. The other part of it is the customization that you need. So when we look at character, there are 62 behaviors associated with the 11 dimensions. And they're interconnected. I love the architecture of focusing in an organization or in the Virtuosity program on a dimension a month, by allowing individuals to pick the behavior that they want to focus on within that dimension, then you get this great conversation at the end of the month about the actual dimension of character and about the interplay of these various dimensions. So we're in in the midst of drive this month, I was focusing on vigour. I think a lot of people end up liking to focus on vigor because we see that there's kind of an energetic quality to our drive that we need. And because I'd been working on vigor at another time, I was further along the path. So I actually moved over. I kind of finished my lessons on vigor through the five stages in the month. I'd already kind of came in about level three on it this particular month, and I moved over to passionate. Then I get this opportunity right to see the relationship between being passionate and being vigorous. I think we can have those conversations in organizations about that. So it's this idea - imagine that the heavy lifting of development and architecture is done by the app customization of it, the learning. It can be asynchronous. People do it whenever they want to in terms of time of day. And that the piece that you might synchronize then on which I do believe is important, that touch point of in the case of the Virtuosity program that 90 minutes at the end of the month where you then can review, well, what do we learn here and how do we apply it to what it is that we're doing in organization? So that is a very important strategic underpinning. That's what gets people through. As you talked about that temporary bump of getting beyond the awareness. People love those initial workshops. And then they want to think about how do I do it. And it's a huge leap to get there. I go back to what did I do before I had the app? It was pretty sparse about trying to think about, well, what are the exercises that are going to help me do this? I can certainly keep my something like temperance front of mind in my day, being patient and calm, as an example. But what is the behavior that I'm actually focusing on changing at that point? What's the exercise that I'm doing? How do I reflect on it? Back to the architecture as well, of learning the reflection that has to go into it and etc. So let's go beyond, you know, once you have that architecture and organizations where you can rely on the learning and development of the app, now you can leverage it into discussions about culture. So what is it? If culture is going to be a reflection of the character of individuals in the organization, at the end of the month, you have this reflection then thinking about something like drive as an example, how do we measure success? What are the results that we're going after here? And when you've actually examined them for yourself, you begin to examine at the organization level, is this mapping appropriately? It's amazing how much of a gap there is between how organizations are strategically operating the priorities that they're working on that are really kind of misaligned, and that if you’re working on the development of character, you start to see that misalignment a bit more, and then you get this opportunity then to course correct. So that would be that kind of then going beyond development into how we actually going to start to rethink the way we do things like performance management in the organization or we ask ourselves the question, how did that person get promoted? They're really not character aligned, they've got some imbalances in character. So now you realize your selection, your promotion systems need some overhaul. So those are the ways, Corey, I think we could begin to think about character development more strategically and the application of it more strategically.

Corey Crossan

[00.29.12]

Mhm. Yeah. You're getting at what we talk about in the article too is the reinforcing relationship between the development of character and then the top-down processes like selection or promoting. And that example you shared with drive. I remember in one particular session we were doing with some pretty senior executives, they were talking about the need to be redefining rewards or how do you reward success. And in their organization, they're talking about the only rewards they have are incentives they have set up is when you get to the top of the mountain, is what they called it. And they thought that it needed to change. And I asked them, well, you've been focusing on your drive development for the past month. How are you defining success for yourself? And they said by getting to the top of the mountain. And it's just that kind of moment where you realize, how am I supposed to imagine anything different for my organization when this is how I do things day in and day out? And so it's actually trying to strengthen that. Imagine a new sense of possibility that you can then start to see that in your organization.

Mary Crossan

[00.30.14]

And when you do that, you really unleash the potential of individuals in the organization to make a difference. I was just in a conversation with our dean of the Ivey Business School. We were talking about the strategy of the business school. And I said, one thing we know is we certainly need to set strategic direction and priority, but the actual sort of that innovation and agility and bringing that to life comes from the individuals in the organization. Then when we pull those ideas together, then about how do you measure success? How do you think about that? I'll give you my own example about it in academia. But, you know, the primary measure of success in the system is about your top tier journal publications. And yet, even the Ivey Business School, we look at being able to engage in really high quality learning experiences. And yet there really isn't anything on your CV that necessarily captures that as a success item. So the actual business school needs to, in its strategy, ensure that it has, relative to the industry, the right strategy and then be able to cultivate that within the individual, in the school. But there is always a gap between what the organization is trying to do and the individuals. And what I love about character is that if you unlock that potential within the individual, they will always then, bring their character alongside competence for high performance and well-being, and they will begin to recognize that the metrics of the organization, or even the system that they're in, will not fully capture that which they know to be important. And that you rely on the individual judgment and decision making to enable that. I'll give you an example that, you know, when I look at picking up, recently becoming a regular contributor at Forbes and writing, it really isn't something that's sort of picked up or rewarded in any particular way. I could be doing another top tier journal publication, academic, as opposed to writing in Forbes, but I know that my accountability, if I use my character-based judgment, my accountability to the world, to what it is I do, is to have a different kind of voice and to bring that voice on a regular basis to matters related to character. And yet, in doing that, it doesn't actually negate the other measures that that I need to also pick up because, you know, recently, as I began to think about a particular Forbes article, I realized that one of the hurdles that we need to cover is the fact that over the last 15 years, I find that there are a lot of people that believe that character matters. And yet they're sitting on the sideline. I go, why are they doing that? And I realize it's because they think they've got it covered. They think that they are people of good character. They think it's covered by the values of the organization. And that prompted me to work with you then to develop this idea of a Character Quotient. And these ten questions, which will be a pulse check on the degree to which organizations are fully embracing the possibility of character, having done that, in all likelihood, will set up an entire research program that might then feedback into a top tier academic journal article. But this kind of interesting cycle if you continue to pursue the things that are important and worthy, you will find that you can start to connect the dots and you unleash the potential of the individuals in the organization to do the good work that we want them to do.

Corey Crossan

[00.34.12]

Yeah, I really love that. And the Character Quotient, we're going to come back to that in about one question from now, that'll be how we wrap up our time together. But before we get to that one, I did want to ask you about your experience with Virtuosity. And so for the listeners that don't know much about Virtuosity, the particular mobile application that we've created, as we've kind of hinted at earlier, is essentially like a character gym. And this is really inspired by some of my undergraduate work being in exercise science, where, you know, this whole idea that you can't just get fit by learning about fitness, you have to actually exercise to become stronger, to become more fit. We actually find the exact same thing with character. You can't just learn about character, talk about character, think character matters for it to strengthen over time. And actually character can atrophy over time. And so we've put the Virtuosity mobile app together as a way for people to exercise their character in their daily lives. And we've been proposing the idea of the app in an interesting way that might resonate with some listeners, where it essentially acts as a daily vitamin you can take to strengthen anything that's important to you, whether it's relationships, performance, well-being, promotion potential, anything that you want. Character is this really kind of small investment, or the Virtuosity app itself, is a small investment in time that transforms everything else you're doing in life. But at the same time, it can also work as this painkiller so to speak, where it's also something you can turn to when you're really struggling with something like, for me, I feel like there's a handful of times every year I'm on the verge of burnout. And that's where I really double-down on Virtuosity, because I turn to it and it helps me decode what's happening with me, and I can fix it really quickly instead of letting it get out of hand. So you've been using Virtuosity really, really intentionally for over a year now. And even beyond that, what are some of your experiences in terms of how it's deepened, even your understanding of character and how it's transformed the practice of your character and other impacts of that practice? 

Mary Crossan

[00.36.12]

Well, I really reinforce your notion of the meta habit, the help. In fact, I wrote that Forbes piece. Looking at New Year's resolutions is that if you're going to make a New Year's resolution, start with character, because no matter what it is you're trying to do, character underpins it. You look at things like under courage, tenacity, determination, resilience. Oh my gosh, what great, great behaviors. But you need to do what you need to do. The patience and calm that come from temperance. Amazing. You know thinking about that you can develop and strengthen these muscles. The piece that I continue to learn is how much there is to learn about them. In the month of January, February, as I moved into February working on transcendence, I was working on being appreciative. And I think I'm a pretty appreciative person. But what I realized is I rarely push into the excess, which is awe-struck And it is like I need to feel a little bit more. I want to actually feel that excess and know what that looks like more often, because I want to know I know what the deficiency looks. You know, then and I often talk about transcendence as being like that solar energy that we bring to our lives, right? It brings us that uplifting sense of possibility about things. And I remember you showing in the Virtuosity program, the visual of this giraffe with its head above the clouds and, you know, that, it was a little bit like, I want a little bit more of that, and I need to press hard on the development of my appreciative, because I'm well short of anything close to excess on that. In contrast, there are others where I'm always, you know, on the excess side and therefore the learning for me, of course, is that I need other dimensions of character to support it. So my decisiveness when we get to judgment, always going to be, it's rare for me to be indecisive about something, and it's there's a whole thing that you begin to learn about two about, well, why are you this way and why do you, you know, value that decisiveness so much. And it's in everything. It's like, I'll, I'll step up to a pot and balls and I'll read the I'll read the line faster than anybody else. I'll be make a decision and hit the putt about it. Right. Other people are walking around the hole and doing all sorts of thing. But why is it that that about me in my decisiveness? And is it impulsive, which is the excess side? Right. And importantly, how do others see me? Which I like about the app, is that it asks you to observe yourself, but also to contemplate observing others and thinking about how others observe you. I love the fact that there's a partner in it. You are my partner in the app. And I value your perspective on my character. To what degree is it operating, you know, in a deficient or accessed state? So that analogy you gave to the vitamin every morning. To me, it's way more than even that vitamin because I do take my vitamins in the morning. They do not give me the same kind of return that my opening up the app. Looking at my exercise for the day and then living my day in a much more enlightened state to, you know, strengthening that behavior throughout the entire day and then reflecting on it at the end of the day. The last thing I want to say about this, though, is I think the hardest part is not to be getting too hard on yourself, because when you realize how much more there is to develop, it isn't about a journey of saying you're inadequate, but it's really just this journey of learning that there's a pathway here, and I am doing what I can every day to strengthen that behavior. I'm not perfect for sure. And I will have imbalances, and yet I will commit to learning about them every single day. And that for me is non-threatening. And that's a place of, you know, joy in the learning and confidence that I have something that I can rely on to guide me through that learning process.

Corey Crossan

[00.40.47]

I think that's such an important point. It's that tension too, I think, between being really happy with who you are while also seeing opportunity for growth and trying to manage that tension. You're also talking about virtues and vices, and we use that language quite a bit throughout this time together. And I realize that some listeners may not know what virtues and vices are, and they think about virtues making up our character. They're a set of human excellences, and virtues operate between a deficient vice, if the virtue is underdeveloped, or an excess of ice, if the virtue is strong but unsupported by other dimensions. So when you talk about, for example, being really decisive, it could potentially become impulsive, if you're lacking patience, for example, it could be different things for everyone. But that's just one example. And I think we have that virtues and vices index, so when we show it to people, they find it to be so empowering that sometimes they will have a tendency to just stop there, actually, because the vocabulary is so powerful. I think when people give it a chance in the app and start to actually go beyond this idea of memorizing a set of virtues and vices, to actually practicing the observation of these virtues and vices in yourself and others, it deepens character so much more, and this becomes particularly important for people, there's a lot of organizations interested now in hiring on character and being able to actually practice observing how virtues and vices show up differently person to person is really powerful and important to be able to hire on character. And just to give a really basic example, bravery is a virtue, it can show up differently person to person. For some people it's saying no, and for some people it can be saying yes, and it could actually be different, even within yourself from context to context. So the app does a really good job in being able to habituate the observation of those virtues and vices, instead of just stopping at that language.

Mary Crossan

[00.42.47]

I think that's the part of that getting beyond the temporary bump where people go, oh, wow, that's so insightful. It's like discovering that, you know, you've got biceps and triceps and you understand how your core works to, you know, strengthen your body, but actually not going to the gym to do anything about it. Like, we really do want to get people to that process of being able to exercise and get to that virtuous state. So for me, that appreciative exercises that I will do to become appreciative and I love it. I love that I want to pick up maybe the stages, Corey, for listeners about this, is that the first stage as a first level in the app, is this discovery stage, right. Being able to observe and identify. The second stage is activating character. So we are using things like music and visuals and all sorts of things that are freely available for us in the day to activate on our, in my case, appreciative behavior. Then the stage three, exercising strengthening the actual behavior. Stage four, connecting it to other dimensions of character and realizing that, you know, something like transcendence, what could be getting in the way, maybe weaknesses in temperance and being patient and calm because you can't just be in the moment, you're always getting ahead. Or maybe all of this strength of accountability or drive that gets you into being results oriented as opposed to being able to think about the appreciative nature of the moment that you're in. And then there's the last stage. Very, very challenging. Does it hold up under context, different context. So personal and professional, people talk about, oh well my character is different personally and professionally. Well that kind of a schizophrenia of your character. How will your patience hold up whether it's personal or professional about it or under time pressure or in reward systems of the organization that don't match up with the judgment that you think is important about what needs to be done. So all of these tests of contexts are really test of our character.

Corey Crossan

[00.44.55]

I love it. So okay, final question. As we are wrapping up, and we can take a little bit of time on this one, it's the idea of the Character Quotient. I think it's such a fabulous idea and I'm excited to dig into it more, especially because this is going to be a question that we asked all of our guests on the Virtuosity Podcast as they come on to the podcast, they're going to have taken the Character Quotient or they are going to have calculated their Character Quotient. They're going to talk about their scores, what they are proud of, their challenge areas, etc.. Do you want to walk us through the idea behind the Character Quotient? Perhaps some of the questions and what you're hoping will come out of this.

Mary Crossan

[00.45.34]

So the motivation for it was this concern that people are sitting on the sideline. They're not getting beyond the temporary bump of saying, oh yeah, I think character is important. And, and knowing the accountability that I know now is you really the possibility is far greater than that. And I often say the world's on fire and we need more firefighters when it comes to character. We can't afford to be sitting on the sideline. The strength of character the world demands of us today exceeds our capacity to deliver on it. So I thought, hmm, what can I do? Of course, I reached out to you to talk about this issue, and I wanted to get a ten kind of pulse check set a questions that would allow people to give themselves, if you want a so-called grade on it. And this is not to, you know, pick up, you get a low grade that it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm failing. No, it's here's the potential that exists. And back to if I take this vitamin around character, I will get those benefits that we know, extensive, you know, benefits associated with enhancement, around character. I began to think about it, if when I started on this, these questions have a scale of zero where, you know, not at all to ten always. I probably would have been hard pressed to get above two when I started in this space about character. And it took, I think, even probably the first ten years of our work, putting tools and tools in place that allow me now to get up to, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten in my responses. So let me talk about what the kinds of questions are. The awareness side is important. We don't want in this case for people just to be saying, oh yeah, I understand character. It's all about integrity. I wrote another kind of Forbes piece. It's like the proverbial elephants and people describing, you know, the trunk and the tail and character was always something different depending upon where you stood, what you thought, you know. And in sports, that's all been, you know, about drive and courage. And so we have all of these misconceptions about it. So the first thing, first question, I can observe and identify the character dimensions in myself and others using the framework. So when you look at those 11 dimensions, is this all new to you or what are you doing to be able to practice that? The second one is to that deficient and excess table that you talked about. I can observe and identify the deficient and excess vice states of the behaviors underpinning the dimension in myself and others. So those when, you know, certainly people who've gone through the Virtuosity program, they're going to be up around the 9 and 10 on this. It's like the program is designed to be able to get them there. The third one, I'm aware of how my character influences my well-being and performance. So it's not just taking the vitamin, but actually observing how the taking of that vitamin affects what it is you do. So when I'm working on my appreciative behavior, how do I actually notice that? And what is built into the app is reflections every single day on well-being and performance. So I'm a hard wiring, and in the work that I do in my development that particular piece. I thought it was very interesting when we were testing these questions out and one person said to us, well, I've good at understanding how my character influences well-being in performance, but I'm learning that my performance is actually influencing my character. So when I'm not getting the performance I want, I start losing my confidence as an example. I start losing my patience. I start losing my calm. So I think actually understanding, right, the character development itself, how it relates to these important metrics. Fourth question, I can make a strong case for why character matters to well-being and performance. So it's not just that I observe it in myself, but I can begin to articulate that to others. And we find that to be really important as we're going to pick up in subsequent questions around character contagion. Five I have a daily character development program targeting my underdeveloped behaviors. So if you're sitting on the sideline, are you really doing something about that? Of course, if you're using Virtuosity, you're, you know, you've got that in your hand. Six, my character development is informed by evidence-based science on habit development. And then some examples using the seven strategies for character development, the five stages of character development. The interesting thing for me about this is this goes back to where I would have been 15 years ago. I didn't understand the science of habit development in this way, and the fact that I can now, I know it's embedded in the app, I can confidently answer, this is one of the questions I can answer a ten on, because every single day I'm relying on the app. Number seven, I champion character at every opportunity, personal and professional, through conversations and social media. Of course, I scored lower on this one, but with your help and encouragement, you really got me thinking an awful lot about why it is important not just to be sitting back and waiting for people asking for an article about something. It was one of the motivations for why I decided to pick up the Forbes contribution on it is to engage and do everything I could to make possible and available to people what we know about character. Number eight, was one that I certainly fall shorter on - my character is not conditional on my contexts. Examples, personal and professional, time pressure, reward systems, organizational culture. Oh boy, that is such a tough one. And I think all of us, in the end, when you begin to look in the mirror, how often are we blaming somebody else for our poor behavior? And when we think about it, we judge ourselves on our intention. You know, I intended to be patient or calm. What was my observable behavior? Was I patient or calm? Well, yeah, but they were, you know, they deserved it. Well really what was the conditions, right, so we need to understand that contextual pressure and then to ask questions there about application and organization. So number nine, if asked to select or promote someone based on their character I could do it effectively. I thought it was really important to include that question because so many organizations ask, they want to select on character and yet they don't know how to do it. It scares them. And I think it's a good test if you understand what character is, how to develop it, you're practicing it every day. That question is a heck of a lot easier to answer. Number ten, I actively work to embed character in my context. For example, training and development, human resource practices, organizational culture, risk management strategy. And here I find that I certainly it's a weaker area for me. It is in training and development because I have background in strategy. I've tried to engage it in the strategy of the Ivey Business School. So while I'm working helping all sorts of other organizations do this, I have to look in the mirror and say, am I doing as much as I could, enabling, that in the practices at Ivey? So those are the ten questions. And, to me, they're really a great guiding set of questions that help people identify the gaps.

Corey Crossan

[00.53.28]

Yeah. It's going to be such a powerful tool because the awareness, development and application all reinforce each other. So, as you said, hopefully this isn't going to get people down, but instead see the opportunity for growth and knowing that we have, as you always say, all the tools in the toolkit to be able to do all of these things really well. We will make sure that the Character Quotient article with the questions are included in the show notes, so that all listeners can also take that assessment for themselves. Well, I think that that is a great place to wrap up. It has been such a fun time as always exchanging thoughts and hearing your insights, Mary. I know that a lot of our listeners will be really inspired from your insights and be excited to hear from the future guests on the podcast. Thank you so much for spending your time with us today.

Mary Crossan

[00.54.20]

My pleasure Corey, and a real thanks to you. To that question, the number seven, I champion character at every opportunity, you are my mentor on that one because I look at everything you're doing to try to bring this into social media, give all of these podcasts for people, and the real thanks to you for providing that leadership.

Corey Crossan

[00.54.42]

I’m definitely trying my best. Thank you. You have just finished another episode from the Virtuosity Podcast. If you have any questions and want to connect, please reach out to me at corey@virtuositycharacter.ca. I'm also on LinkedIn, so let's connect. As always, thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.