Bridging Theory & Practice In 'The School House' with Dr Christian Breede

Dr. Christian Breede (https://www.linkedin.com/in/h-christian-breede-09481415/) is a Research Analyst with the Department of National Defence working at the Canadian Defence Academy.

Quotes From Christian

•  "Character work is not to be started in the attack position. You've got to do it before...You gotta have the sets and reps done beforehand so that when you're in those positions of having to make a quick decision, you can rely on your strength of character — your judgment is strong and you're going to make the right call."
•  "Militaries privilege certain virtues over others, which leads to unbalanced character — and that can create problems...Almost every country [Five Eyes and Ireland] under emphasized temperance, collaboration, and — surprisingly — courage."
•  "The proverbial one-and-done is better than nothing, but ultimately of little impact — what really sticks is some way we can build habituation into it — how can we make this habit-forming? That's where Virtuosity is really helpful, the daily cues to think about what you're already doing — just in a new way."
•  "I really want to highlight just how universal this idea of character really is. Character transcends space and time in a way that I think few ideas really do."

Resources

  •  Character and the Five Eyes: A Review of Anglosphere Military Leadership Doctrine (coming soon)
  •  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/)
  •  Leader Character Framework with Culture, Virtues, and Vices (https://virtuositycharacter.ca/organization/storage_production_6e2934b8-3e20-47a7-aa79-59a612f967be/8505b936-d1fd-4b36-96ed-62663e1c5b9a.pdf)
  •  Seven Strategies for Character Development (https://virtuositycharacter.ca/organization/storage_production_6e2934b8-3e20-47a7-aa79-59a6

About Virtuosity

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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
• 1:41 Introduction to Christian
• 3:56 Character Matters
• 9:48 Christian's Background
• 13:59 Character In The School House
• 28:01 Military Character Research
• 36:46 Character Development & Virtuosity
• 41:32 Character Quotient
• 46:44 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 character is 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 Virtuosity to learn more. Now let's dive into today's episode. Hello everyone, and welcome to the third episode of the Virtuosity Podcast. If you're new, I encourage you to check out our launch episode with Mary Crossan for a powerful introduction to the series. Today, we're thrilled to welcome Dr Christian Brede as our guest. Christian is a research analyst with the Department of National Defense working at the Canadian Defense Academy. A Canadian Army veteran of 25 years, Christian served with the Royal Canadian Regiment with deployments to Haiti and Afghanistan. He also is an associate professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada, across appointed Professor of Political Science at Queen's University, and an adjunct professor at Simon Fraser University's Terrorism, Risk and Security Studies Program. Concurrent with his work in DNA, Christian is also an honorary research Associate at the University of New Brunswick. Christian's research centers on the interaction between social cohesion, military culture, and technology. He has published over 25 articles, edited volumes, chapters, and monographs on these topics. Christian holds a PhD in War Studies from RMC. That is quite the comprehensive bio, and I think it's quite incredible to think about how much you've had really kind of on the field practice, but also this really academic lens. And so I'm really excited to hear about these essentially, cross-field insights that you're going to have to share with us. So welcome, Christian. 

Christian Breede

[00.03.01]

Thanks so much, Corey. That bio kind of makes me feel a little weird. So, yeah, it sounds way better than I think than it actually was. But at the end of the day, it is what it is, I guess. Yeah, you nailed it right on the head. It's that I feel like I'm speaking two languages or living in two cultures all the time, and I love it. It can be frustrating, but I think it's down right dangerous sometimes because you can do some really cool things. And I find myself being an interlocutor more than anything else, but I had a an old friend of the family tell me once that all the cool stuff happens at the intersection of fields, and I think that's super accurate and has absolutely been a reason why, you know, I really love what I do. You know, I get to find some really cool puzzles and dive right in and try to unpack them. 

Corey Crossan

[00.03.40]

Yeah. And as we get into various topics, I'll make sure that we circle back to whether you've had any interesting challenges around the knowledge translation going from one field to the to the other. So we'll make sure we come back to that. But yeah, so the question that I'm starting to ask all of our guests as we launch into the episode is just starting with this idea of why does character matter to you? 

Christian Breede

[00.04.05]

Yeah. So I'm gonna pull the old, buy some time response, which is, that's a great question. And you even prepped me with it ahead of time. And I still, it's something that I'm trying to think of, something wise or insightful to say other than just for me, it's about who I am. And, you know, I can give you the, the sort of the quote unquote textbook answer, which is that it's habits and virtues. And that's certainly in the trainings that I do. That's how I sort of pitch it forward. But yeah, when you get more personal, you want to get away from the textbook definition. And it really is, it's about who I am and sort of holding some pride and committing myself to a path of improvement to really be a better human. That's really what character means for me. 

Corey Crossan

[00.04.45]

And when did you first find yourself getting into the character area? Has this been a lifelong thing, or was it getting introduced to the framework, or how did this become an interest or a central piece of your life? 

Christian Breede

[00.04.58]

Oh, Corey, I wish I could say it was a lifelong thing and I think my family would wish it was to, but it sadly wasn't. It was something I came to pretty late in my life, and that's probably one of the key regrets I have, is I wish this is stuff I started far earlier in my career and in my life, just in general. I think it probably started when I started doing my PhD, and it wasn't that I had this grand plan to start diving in and, you know, getting serious about who I am and how I'm showing up in the world, it was forced upon me. Because I started to see that, you know, things weren't going well, you know, and I even got indications of that when I was on the operational side, prior to getting a PhD, when I was serving at the second Battalion, I didn't understand why things weren't going well. And I mean, that just in general, like why there was struggle in my family. Why career wise, things seemed a little out of whack or whatever. It just didn't make sense to me. It's just there was an unsettling, right, and as I started going through the PhD process, had some time to reflect and sort of dig into it. I got into the sort of the human dimensions of conflict is what I started to look into. And one of the first pieces of research I had published after, actually, I was even during the process of doing the PhD. So one of my first chapters that I got into an edited volume, which I was really excited about, it was on mental health and it was, I just told a story, but I had a really savvy editor who said, no, no, no, you're not just telling a story. That's auto ethnographic. That's a perfectly legitimate research method just to frame it that way. But what it was, was I told the story of what I did with my chain of command, with my team in my, the rifle company that I was acting company commander of just before I left the battalion. We just got back from Afghanistan, and I really wanted to try to destigmatize mental health. And of course, this was back in the late 2000s when that was still very much a challenge, you know, it's probably still a challenge today, but even back then, it was even more so, and we'd had a tough deployment. No question about it. But I was the platoon commander. I was working with my sergeant major. We all were on the same page in terms of wanting to really try to destigmatize the idea of mental health and treat it like any other aspect of what of unit function, whether it's training, whether it's physical fitness, whether it's weapons maintenance. You know, and I stood in front of my soldiers and I told them, I'm getting help. I expect all of you to do the same. And that really had a positive impact in the organization, which was awesome. And so I wrote about that and it got published and did a couple of talks and really liked it. So I kind of realized that maybe there's something here. And I sort of dabbled in and out of it, and it was it was Covid where everything kind of came to a head. I think for a lot of people, that moment was really impactful for this sort of thing. And I was listening to a podcast because I started searching, looking for sponsors, looking for some guidance on how to do what I later found out was called just inner work. And I listened to this one podcast called The Great Man Within, and the host was just going on a little monologue and he quoted his definition of hell, which I thought was fantastic. And it's on your deathbed, you meet the person you could have been. And that stopped me cold. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it. I was on Ontario Street, you know, in downtown Kingston, driving back from work. And it just was like, oh, wow, I got to get my life together. I gotta start digging in on this and being serious. And so my research focus started to shift towards that sort of military culture cohesion. And again, it was all a reflection of my own experiences in the operational side of things in terms of trying to make sense of it. You know, why did I feel the way I did after certain activities while on deployment? Well, in the in my old unit and it got it did get some attention. And my current boss, Bill Cummings, who I think you know, he reached out just after Covid and said, listen, I read some of your stuff. Do you want to come and help? And they were working at the professional concept and development team at the Canadian Defense Academy at this time. I was like, yeah, I'd love to. And so I ended up putting some of the finishing touches on what became Trusted to Serve, which was published in 2022 and then stayed on and said, hey, this is great stuff. I'd love to do this full time. And he said, sure, and they created a spot for me. I left RMC and joined the PCL team full time. I retired and I'm now working there as a civilian, and we put out Fighting Spirit in 2024, and that's something that we're pretty proud of, and so it's been wonderful in terms of the overlap and the intersection between my personal journey and my professional journey all just sort of molded into this one big single sense of purpose, which has been awesome. And it's, you know, it's why I love what I do. 

Corey Crossan

[00.09.17]

Yeah, that is just the ideal when you get to, as you were saying earlier before we started, just loving every single day, what you get to do. The concept that you've shared around being on your deathbed and not living up to the person that you could have been, that gave me chills as you shared that. And that's, I really think, that's an interesting motivator for people to think about trying to put their best foot forward every single day. And character certainly gives you that that roadmap, that framework. The tool is going to help you do that. You were getting into a little bit of your background, but could you share a little bit more about your background, what you're up to right now, and even some of the ways that you are starting to apply character? We'll get into more of the tangibles of what you're doing, but just yeah, an overall background of what you're doing.

Christian Breede

[00.10.04]

Yeah, sure. So like you said in the intro, I served 25 years in the Canadian Armed Forces. Probably half of that actually, at the Royal Military College, both as an undergrad when I first started and then later in my career, I came back and joined the military faculty as a professor in the political science department. In the interim there, about ten, 12 years or so, I served in the second Battalion, the Royal Canadian Regiment, did a couple deployments to Haiti in ‘04 and then once again to Afghanistan in 2000 and 2009. In between those deployments, did a bunch of courses and some exercises, served at the company level in sort of junior staff roles and then later in the battalion level and senior staff roles. Overall one of the, and again, it's just funny how things all kind of work out. When you look at where I am now and what I do and how what I did prepped me for that. One of the more challenging roles I had was the rear party adjutant for our battalion during an Afghanistan deployment. And so what that is, is I was working with a person who I ended up becoming company commander when we went to Afghanistan. So we stayed back in Canada. But the battalion deployed and we were essentially the like the name entails, like the rear party. We're the link between the families back in Canada and the soldiers deployed overseas. And that was really challenging because we've always had these positions. But during Afghanistan, of course, it was a pretty lethal mission, pretty costly mission in terms of lives and casualties. And so we were responsible for the repatriation of dead and wounded for the battalion. And that was a really, really challenging job in terms of forcing you to wrestle with a lot of emotions that for, you know, in a traditional sense, the military were told to just kind of not think about those things. And of course, now we're like, we're dealing with them every day, especially back then. And then on top of that, you're activating parts of what I now discovered is my character that we normally don't. Think you're consistent with military service, but of course, totally is. But again, it's not the stuff that back then especially that we really emphasize. And so we are now, which is great. And I've always felt that Canada's time in Afghanistan was a real maturation process for the Canadian Armed Forces. Like we grew up, right? We suddenly started taking these things, which was the back end of military conflict very, very seriously and had to get very good at it very quickly, which we did. And again, it's sort of a point of pride, but also one that was pretty challenging to work through. And so after my own deployment to Afghanistan in 2001, it wrapped up in 2009. I needed to make a change. And again, on reflection, it was my values shifted, right? I joke now that my values as a young platoon commander were three very simple things: army, army, army. I got married, had some kids, and suddenly those values weren't working anymore. And I didn't understand why. Right. I talked earlier about how I started feeling unsettled because my values shifted. Army was still one of them. Make no mistake, I was still very much dedicated to the profession of arms. But now I was also dedicated to, a new human. And my wife and I didn't know how to deal with that. And it kind of caught me off guard. So I started looking for some changes and the opportunity to go to Army and teach in the military faculty was one that seemed pretty, pretty natural fit and went and did that. Loved it. Love teaching officer cadets. Teaching is sort of the new generation of young officers in the Canadian Armed Forces. And really one of the best moments, or a consistent moment that happened all the time is what I love about the idea of military faculty at RMC is that mentorship piece, you know, having uniformed officers, not just as professors but also as mentors for these young officer cadets is really critical. And it's a piece that I think is really what sets RMC apart from other universities. And it was wonderful to be a part of that. So and then in parallel to that, you know, the whole academic piece I really wanted to take seriously as well. So I saw the opportunities to collaborate with other colleagues and of course, the university's always like to do cross affiliations and things like that. So that was a really nice opportunity to capitalize on in a city like Kingston especially. So yeah, I think that pretty much summarizes the highlights, anyway, of what I did. 

Corey Crossan

[00.13.45]

Yeah. So it's a lot that you're doing and to kind, I do continue to find the really interesting piece between the academia and the, you know, the practical things that you're up to in terms of what you're doing right now. You mentioned that you're bringing character to the School House, and I had not heard of that term before. So before we get into what you're actually doing, can you share with the listeners what you mean by the School House? 

Christian Breede

[00.14.12]

Yeah, absolutely. So School House is military slang for the individual training establishments within the military. And so it's the like, the combat training center is the School House of the Army. Within the combat training center is the infantry school, the artillery school, the armored school, the Canadian Forces School of Military Engineering, the tactics school. These are all schools that are devoted to with the, I'll set the tactic school aside because they also do intermediate officer training. But those other schools I talked, with like, the basic trade qualification for young officers. So if you're going to be a platoon commander in the infantry, sort of like 22 year old second lieutenant, you're going to go through the infantry school and learn how to do that. If you're going to be an armored crew commander, you're going to go to the armored school and learn how to do that there. Right. And then they do some advanced courses as well. But it is really where the trade specific training occurs within a military organization. So we call it the School House. And it's different from the training that goes on in the operational units, where they then will tailor the training to the deployment they're about to go on, or what's happening in the world at the time. The School House really focuses on teaching the doctrine, right. And that doctrine is the authoritative guidance that, you know, changes and adapts, but it changes far more slowly than, say, collective training in Canadian Forces base Wainwright or what a battalion would do during a regular training cycle, right, where they're sort of scanning what's going on around the world. What do we need to work on? What do we need to focus on today or this year? This month? Doctrine doesn't change that quickly, and that's what the School House focuses on. So when I say I'm engaging with the School House, it's those institutions that I'm engaging with. 

Corey Crossan

[00.15.44]

Okay, that totally makes sense now. So my next question then is what are you doing to bring character into the School House? And what are the challenges and opportunities that you see associated with that? 

Christian Breede

[00.15.55]

Oh, there's a bunch for both. So first off, I joke with Bill all the time, my boss at CDA that we're doing and we're approaching this like an insurgent, we're doing an insurrectionist approach to character, which is, you know, we've got the endorsement from the Chief of Defence Staff, that character-based leadership in a variety of forms is the way that we're going, which is awesome, but we're not waiting. And what I mean by that, we're not waiting for it to trickle down through doctrine that we largely control as well. In CDA, we write that doctrine, but we're not waiting for that. What we're doing is we're getting out there through the training that Mary offers, for example, we're leveraging that, getting the training on that, getting into the best practices, getting into these communities, getting on episodes like this and talking about it and then deploying it right away into like that middle management, high impact area, in this case into the School House. Right. So our objective is to get the instructors that are teaching the new recruits, the new officers tomorrow, get them smart on character and learning the language. And so it is very much insurrectionist and that it's whoever is willing to engage. And so I started when I first got my mandate, I just reached out to all the units, leverage some personal connections, because a lot of the folks I still know, and just said, hey, I'm here. This is what I offer. Can we chat? Are you interested? And it's been fascinating. I approach like, a sales pitch. Right? So it's like a pitch. I'm coming in and pitching to a client and some of the pitches, I don't even get a chance to sit down. And they're already saying yes, and they're scheduling me in, which is awesome, right? Like, I love that. Others, it takes a little bit more and it just it's just about building that relationship, building that trust and convincing the client like it's know that the investments worth it. Right. The benefit with our side is the investments. Only time. So we're doing this all in-house, which is great. So the other challenge, and this was interesting, one of the schools I went into, you could, as I went into the room to run the first of the three sessions. So I sort of just, I offered like a six-hour workshop, sort of a truncated version of what, what Mary and her team do. And I break it up over three sessions of two hours apiece, and I like to sort of spread them out. Right. So we get into a habit and a routine and offer space and time to try out some of the ideas we talked about in all the sessions and things like that. And so that first session with this one, one unit, I walk in and I could sense the resistance. Right. And the skepticism. And I'm a pretty thick guy. I'm not very, like, aware and emotionally attuned. Like I don't read rooms well, but I could read this room, right? And I could just tell that, yeah, there was a lot of skepticism there, like, oh, God, here. Like, I just I've been in those shoes. I've been the person in these workshops and these briefings. I'm like, oh, great, here we go again. Right? Like, this is the last thing I want to do right now. And it was wonderful because by about halfway through that first session, it just shifted. And I could just like, they were, they were in it and they were with me and they wanted more. It was so good. And it's not that everyone gets converted all the time, but you can just feel that. Yeah. the momentum had shifted and it was wonderful to see. So this is why I get so passionate about it. And it's funny because I use the same line with my soldiers when we were in Afghanistan and they were asking, you know, how do we do what do we do? How do we comport ourselves? How do we convince the Afghans, for example, that this is what I want to do? And I would just say this, say to them, you know, the stuff sells itself. Just go out there, be you, be awesome. And model what you want. Right? And it's the same thing here. One of the key pieces I start with is if you think about the exceptional leaders you've served with, they do this already because this is an easy pivot for someone who's already a very good leader. The challenge is we want to take those good leaders and instead of having them be exceptional, we want to make that the new normal. You know, I've said sort of only half jokingly that we create good leaders by accident and we need to be more intentional with that. And so that graph where you know, the normal distribution with the 2 or 3 standard deviations to the norm above, the norm is where good leaders are right and how we want to use character to shift that. Like that's such an evocative image of what we're trying to achieve. You know, and it makes good leaders even better. And it makes leaders that maybe need some support really, really good. You know, it's sort of the secret sauce to what makes a good leader tick. So again, the sales pitch is easy. It sells itself if people are just willing to put the time in, are a little curious about how they might be that 1% better. 

Corey Crossan

[00.20.07]

Yeah. And when you talk about that, that shift, when you start with those skeptics and then you, you talked about how halfway through the workshop, they were all convinced. What do you think is that light bulb moment for them, that they see the value and character? Of course it can be different person to person. Are there some examples you can think of in terms of why people are starting to see character matters for them, in the context that you're often in? 

Christian Breede

[00.20.31]

I've got two reasons. I've got to be a little careful, because I don't want to come across as tooting my own horn too much, but I probably will end up. But the first reason is, like I said before, right, good leaders do this already, so they probably recognize this as we're talking through what this actually looks like, what this actually means. They're like, oh yeah, no, I either, they see themselves in terms of when they like if they feel they're a good leader. Oh, I do this already. Okay. This is this isn't that far. This isn't that big a departure for me to buy into this, right? Or they'll say, hey, that's why, you know, my boss six postings ago was so fantastic because this is what he did, right? And that's so cool. So I think that's one thing that happens. And this is where I need to be careful. And again, it goes back to your question though. You're about living in two worlds. I think having that military experience brings some credibility and being able to speak, to speak in their language and say, hey, listen, like I understand where you're coming from. One of the big points of resistance that I anticipate is, you know, we talk in character, work a lot about reflection, right. Slowing things down, taking that time to think about, you know, is this action going to be consistent with who I want to be, or is this going to take me back? Right. And of course, in the military, and a lot of high stress environments, you don't have the luxury sometimes to take that reflection and take that time in a decision. You have to make a quick decision you have to rely on your judgment and just act. You have to do default aggressive, right? Like you just got to do something. And again, it's funny how different things kind of click. But embarrassingly, recently it clicked for me with this, which is it's not about doing the reflection like, like we say in the military, in the infantry, for example, in an attack just before you launch the assault, you're in a little attack position, you're getting everybody ready to go, and then you go, right. Doing the character work is not to be started in the attack position. You got to do it before. It's just like fitness. Again, like the fitness analogy that you and Mary have been applying to the character work is so apt and it just works on so many layers. And this is another one, right? You don't get fit in the attack position. You don't decide, oh, here's now what I'm going to get, you know, get my strength up. No, no you have to have it way before then. It's a sets and reps argument. You gotta have the sets and reps done beforehand so that when you're in those positions of having to make a quick decision, you can rely on your strength of character, your judgment is strong and you're going to make the right call. And so that's one of the big sort of pieces of resistance I think that comes up. But again, being able to speak to that with a little bit of experiential credibility, along with the research and the academic piece, I think is really powerful. And so that's why I said it kind of makes it dangerous, because you can put forward ideas and use that experience, especially in the military. Again, kind of getting to the question you wanted to get back to, one of the big adjustments I had to make when I started off in academia, and I remember the experience I get, and it was a moment, it was, I was giving a paper, my first paper at an academic conference, and I went in, I was in uniform with my medals on talking about failed states and Afghanistan, having deployed to a couple of them. You know, I just figured I got credibility. I thought I was just dripping credibility, right. Like these academics, they're going to eat this up. It's going to be awesome. I give my speech. I give my breath. I'm just in, I'm in a flow state. Like it's, I'm just telling stories. It's so cool. I flash a couple of graphs with my research. I'm going on with more stories. And it was fun. It was entertaining. The audience enjoyed it. Wasn’t academic. Because it was, it was like a competitive, conference, right where they were like, actually, they'd like 4 or 5 academics that were judging it, and I didn't even place. And I was so upset, I didn't understand. I was like, I thought it was a great talk and the audience was in it. What was up and I, I got a very nice piece of feedback and nice meaning, honest and frank, didn't want to hear it, wasn't comfortable to hear, but he said, yeah, that was a great story, great presentation. Not at all academic. You didn't engage with the literature. You didn't discuss your research method. You didn't demonstrate, show your evidence. You just showed a couple anecdotes, you know, where's the rest of it? And so that's where eventually not right away, but it dawned on me that in the military, our currency is experience. It's really what matters. And it's starting to shift a little bit. But for the most part, we value experience. That's what gives you credibility. It's the medals on your chest. It's where you've been, what you've done. That's what counts. And in academia, that's just anecdotes. In academia, it's your research, you know, how well do you know the literature? How many theories are you comfortable operating in and, and working in? How many methods are you comfortable in and using and applying and to figuring out these puzzles? Where's your evidence? Right. That's great. It's a cool story, but where's the other 1000 data points that are going to help make that actually impactful and meaningful? And so it's a huge gear shift for me that I made in a really clumsy way, but finally got there. And I had to flip it. Right. So have the story, but I need that the focus has to be on the data, on the method, on the academia. And I came across a book as I was writing my PhD, as I was writing the dissertation for the PhD by Emil Simpson called War from the Ground Up. And it's brilliant. It's hard to find these days. At least I think it is. But, it is an awesome, awesome book because he's a former serving, platoon commander, did a couple tours in Afghanistan and then did an Oxford fellowship and wrote the book that has since become considered a coda to Clausewitz's On War, which is a pretty, pretty high praise. Clausewitz's On War is a sort of the book on certainly in Western military thought about what war is. It's almost timeless, incredibly influential. And this young captain from the Royal Gurkha Rifles writes the coda to it. Right. And he does it beautifully. He's got the rich engagement with the text. It's peppered with stories, as he was when he was a platoon commander. And that's been my approach since. I really wanted to try to model that because I found it really compelling, both in terms of just a wonderful way to present information, but then it just adds that color commentary, which is really what it is, you know? But so I think it's, it's both. So that kind of answers an earlier question you had with, with a question you asked that I don't know if that did justice,

Corey Crossan

[00.26.24]

Yeah. That's amazing. And you actually even have the teaching piece too. We actually just wrote an article on the importance of this relationship between research, teaching and practice. And because of all the work that you're doing, you're also teaching. And I think it's just we think about that teaching as kind of that, that play box or the sandbox where you can play with ideas. Right? You can test your theories and get feedback quicker, and then you can put it into the research that takes longer. But I really do feel like all of those three areas are different languages. And when you learn how to speak those languages, and then you can actually use the knowledge translation across those fields, it's so important because when you do practice without research, you might limit yourself to putting all this effort in, putting all this money into things that aren't actually producing the benefits that you think that they are. Whereas obviously, the risk with research without practice is you're doing all this work, you're producing all this evidence, what does it actually for? Does it actually matter for people in practice? And so it's such a powerful piece that you're able to bring all of those three pieces together. I wanted to pick up on an earlier point you're bringing up around when you think people get inspired by the work that you're sharing, and you talked about how people see good leaders, and when you start talking about character, it's kind of this aha moment for yes, this actually makes sense. And I've often thought about it almost as looking under the hood of a car. It's actually, you start to see how the mechanisms work. And I always found this too when I was younger, I always thought good leadership - I had lots of examples of good leadership and bad leadership, and I always thought it was mystical. But when I found the area of character, it all made sense. It was like, you know, this plus this equals that. It was a lot more obvious to me. And I know you've done, some recent work with the leader character framework in particular. You did some research with the Five Eyes, and I'd love for you to dig into that research. Why did you go into it? What were you looking at, and what were some of the key findings that you had? And is that published yet? If it is, I'll make sure it's in the notes, a link to it, or we'll add it when it is officially published. 

Christian Breede

[00.28.22]

Yeah. We'll have to wait until it's published. It's sitting with a couple places right now. Or with one place right now just waiting on a decision if it's by the desk editor. So we'll see where that goes. But we have a couple places in mind. It might be a little while yet before it actually sees publication, but Mary and I are pretty excited about it. Just to back up a bit, when we say Five Eyes, just to be clear, we're talking about the five English speaking allied countries. So UK, New Zealand, Australia, the United States and Canada. But we also threw in a sixth country, as we were getting some feedback and revising it. It was a really great suggestion from one of the people that we’re in on a talk we gave, which was to include Ireland. And so we did that as well. So we have six countries that were looking at all English speaking, just it's easier to get access to the data for that, especially for the approach that we took, because we did just a very simple, quantitative content analysis. And this was what was so cool about it was when I look at the cross, like the model that Mary Crossan and her team have come up with at the Ivey Business School, with the 11 dimensions and the with the 62 different elements that make up all the dimensions - that is a beautiful framework for content analysis. Like it just it's screaming for someone to go on and say how many times these, these terms show up in a given document. You can get a really nice assessment because that model is there. It's validated. This is character okay. Great. So we've now got, the independent variables to be going out and testing. You know what is what. How well does character reflect in a given document. So we just applied that to leadership doctrine, looked at 19 different publications across those six countries and just went through very simply, did a tally double check the work, made sure it was consistent in terms of the appearance of words and the right context and things like that, like character. Many, many publications talk about the character of war. That's not what we're talking about in this case, of course. Right. So those don't get counted. But yeah, so the reason why I wanted to do this is as we started bringing character into the armed forces, seemed really interesting, really cool, ironic in a lot of ways, because character has always been a part of the Canadian Armed Forces, even in the Kings regulations and orders. It's one of the basic requirements for entry into the CAF is to be a strong character, which I thought was really cool. That's been there for decades, right? And yet we haven't really formally thought about it or unpacked it until now. So all that got me thinking, okay, we can't be the first country that's doing this, right. There's got to be others. So I just was curious. And then I come across Australia. Right. The Australian Defence Force has a document that came out a few years ago called character in the Australian Defence Force. It's a capstone, meaning common level doctrine that applies to all branches and services, whether you're Army, Navy, Air Force, very similar in terms of the level that we work at, at PCL, which is we speak for all the services and the services work within our doctrinal framework that we create. And I started from there and was curious, well, who else is looking at it? Right. And so pulled as many, high level leadership doctrinal publications as we could. And so what I mean by that is we went to each country and looked basically, went as deep as we needed to. So if the country had common level doctrine that spoke for all the services, then we just stopped there. If they didn't and some countries don't, a lot of like the United States example, they leave it to their services to write their own leadership doctrine. So then I looked at the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force to look at their doctrinal publications with respect to leadership and so forth through all the different English speaking countries. And so that's where we got the 19 from. And then just did up a giant table and looked at all the terms in their positive state. So in their virtuous states, we didn't look at the vice states of deficiency in excess, because, again, that was seen as a little redundant. It would have tripled the amount of coding we would have had to have done. But also it just wasn't required, because if we capture it in its virtuous state that's sufficient, right, we don't need to get into the bias states as well. It's sort of implied, and they wouldn't have added any value to the insights we gleaned from the data. So that's where we stop. So that gives us sort of the why for it. But, yeah, happy to talk about it more. I could talk about this all day, so. Well, I'm happy to go into as much detail as you want about the data set and what we found.

Corey Crossan

[00.32.07]

Ya, go into the findings.

Christian Breede

[00.32.09]

Okay. Sure. Yeah. So first off, the highest level finding that was really interesting was how each country in Canada included, privileges certain virtues over others. And so in the language of the leader character framework, you know, certain dimensions are privileged over others. And so, you know, militaries, we want these three dimensions. These are the three virtues that we really seek for military, which right out of the gate, leads to unbalanced character, which can create problems, which I think is an interesting deduction and sort of policy implication that flows from that observation. The other one I found was really surprising was the patterns, the consistencies in the gaps between the different countries. So for example, almost every country, so five out of the six, the exception being Canada, place a tremendous amount of emphasis relative to the other dimensions on humility, which surprised me. Especially for military, that's something that seems a little counterintuitive. Almost every country just look at the data. Every country, all six under emphasized temperance, under emphasized collaboration, and surprisingly, not a high degree of emphasis on courage, which again, I thought was really surprising. Really interesting. Certain countries placed emphasis upon judgment, with the exception of the United Kingdom. and drive, accountability and justice were all relatively under emphasized except in Ireland and in Canada. And then we in Canada were a bit of an outlier. We had well, not entirely. We, Canada in the United States, both had fairly strong emphasis placed upon judgment. So there's some consistencies, but also some really odd sort of outliers, which I thought was interesting, which from a policy implication perspective says a couple of things. One is, it's going to be unique to each country and it's worth unpacking. And we do that in the data. You can, we look at, you know, different services. But the other, the last finding was really interesting, about the 50,000 foot level, was there's very, we didn't see any real consistency between services. So like the army, our army is always thinking like this, and Navy's always think like that, or Air Force, that didn't play out at all, which I thought was interesting too. So there's definite, consistencies across sort of English speaking militaries, but within the services, there's no real discernible difference in how the services themselves treat character. They're very, very unique in their own ways, which I thought was also interesting. 

Corey Crossan

[00.34.34]

Yeah, there's so much to dive into there. The one thing I think is quite interesting too, is when you said collaboration being under exhibited, you'd think in military like so much teamwork. And I think that especially for the listeners, it's really what we find we bump up against is when we talk about collaboration as a competency versus collaboration as a character dimension, because when you actually look at the behaviors associated with collaboration, you're looking at being open minded, flexible, and those don't strike me as being, like prevalent in the military. Right? That the open mindedness. Again, I'm not in the context you are, but now when I start to think about it that way, you can start to see maybe why it's a little bit more underrepresented. 

Christian Breede

[00.35.18]

That's an awesome point. I really like that take because you're absolutely right. It also highlights one of the limitations of the model of the research which I wanted to highlight. But yeah, I think absolutely like the practice of collaboration is very different from the character of collaboration, which I think is that's awesome. It's not something an angle I had seen it through before. So I really appreciate that. That's wicked. But I think the big limitation of this reveal is, is that what we analyzed was what is said. We analyzed, like I said, the doctrine that authoritative guidance, we didn't analyze what's actually happening in practice. And your example is spot on in terms of bridging that theory practice. Um. Disparity, right? Because of course, militaries collaborate. Of course we do. But then you think about it. You know, the only one of the most famous pieces of defense policy, defense policy legislation in the United States is the Goldwater Nichols Act, which, if you're familiar with it, but it mandated collaboration. Right. It was, it came out of the, some failed efforts at joint operations in the 1980s. And as a result of the inability of the services to work together. And so they passed this legislation and said, no, you will learn how to work together. But the fact that a military had to be legislated to learn to work together at the service level, I think is really interesting. So yeah, you're right. Right. It's just the practice. But it doesn't necessarily come as a character dimension, which is kind of explains why that piece of legislation has been put forward, which I think is really cool. 

Corey Crossan

[00.36.42]

Very interesting. Very interesting. Yeah. So as we move into the practice area, I'm curious to see what are some of the actual strategies that you're already using to actually develop character. Because when we embed character, of course it can be kind of like from the top down, but it can also be developing the individual. And we were just talking briefly before we got onto the recording here, that there's a lot of, it seems like one of the biggest strategies in the military is looking at exemplars, role models, mentors. But as you have, you've just started, I think, using Virtuosity, I think for the last few months now, maybe a two part question - What are the prevalent strategies that you do see are being used in the military and what you're using. And then at the same time, what are you starting to see in Virtuosity as potential other strategies that could be used to really elevate what's already being done in the military?

Christian Breede

[00.37.35]

Awesome. Yeah. So with the exemplars piece, that's another thing, another benefit of having looked at the doctrine this way, even just through the character lens, you can't help but glean the other pieces that come out of it, too. And we all use exemplars in our leadership doctrine. We like to tell stories, right? And those stories of great military heroes that are exemplars of good character, good leadership, bravery, courage, all those things. Those are really inspirational. They serve a purpose, and it's incredibly valuable. The U.S. Marine Corps leadership doctrine is pretty much the well, I wouldn't say exclusive, but very heavy on demonstrating good leadership through exemplars, through stories. It's chock full of examples of Marines doing amazing things. The British Army's leadership doctrine is a little bit more blended between theory and those exemplars. And then in Canada, our leadership doctrine has a few of them, but it's very, very sparse. There's a wide range of different ways and depth and breadth of how much exemplars are used. But it is interesting in itself that it is a consistent feature just to varying degrees. In terms of practices that we do now, I think a big part the training in terms of raising awareness, and that is good, but it has some limitations and not just limitations in a military context, but limitations in any context where you're trying to move the needle in some way, shape, or form. When it comes to leadership and speaking to folks in the private sector as well, in terms of what sticks for leadership consulting and leadership training and development, the proverbial one and done is better than nothing, but ultimately of little impact. And that translates in the military as well. And again, you talked about the skepticism, right? You know, those two-hour sessions that everybody has to attend where someone from outside the organization is telling us how to lead better? It doesn't land. We might, a few folks might get inspired. It might get them energized for the next week, and then they're going to forget about it. Move on to the tyranny of today. What really sticks. What works is some way that we can build habituation into it. How can we make this habit forming? And so that's where I find Virtuosity is helpful in that. That's what it's focused on is it's the habit formation, the daily interventions, the daily cues to get you to think about what you're already doing just in a new way. And so with my own workshops, one, that's why I like to do workshops as opposed to one and dones. These are standalone talks. I'd much rather engage with an organization 2 or 3 times or more, or repeatedly over the course of a few months, or even for as long as they will tolerate me coming into their unit. I'm happy to do that work, to build that habituation and that practice and that repeated, consistent engagement to start thinking about not new things, but just what you already do through a new lens. And I find the embedding component the most challenging for sure. And to be frank, it's the least developed in the research as well. It's the one that is the least satisfying. But that's because it's new, you know, and it's still working. We're working way through it. You know, you talked about the teaching and research informing each other. I look, I've only been doing these workshops now for just over a year. But if I look at the first workshop I ran, compared to what I do, what I just did yesterday or two days ago at the last unit I worked with there, echoes of each other. But there there's significant evolution that occurs and I love it. I think it's great, and I think it just shows that research is so important. Because we don't have lesson plans and training points and main teaching points and things like that. We have to teach from the new curriculum that we're given. We have to create it ourselves, which I think is really cool. 

Corey Crossan

[00.41.00]

Yeah. And we were talking about this in one of our meetings yesterday. And you were talking, I think it was you that was saying that the act of teaching helps you learn and develop your character, which is so true. And it's actually, in the Virtuosity program, we have so many people that are not just developing the character for themselves, but they're actually tasked to bring it to their teams, and it elevates the way that you engage with the content. Because when you teach something, of course you have to know it that much more. You have to experience it for yourself. So that's yeah, it's really powerful when you have to teach that stuff. And that does lead us into the final question as we are getting to the end of our time here on the character quotient. So I'm asking all the guests to assess their character quotient. And so again, for the listeners, if this is your first episode, Mary and I developed a character quotient which is essentially helping people understand what are they doing essentially to kind of have an impact around character and really actually trying to help people map out what are the opportunities that they can improve on. So we have three categories: your awareness of character, your development of character, your application of character. So curious, you've taken this assessment, what was your score? And perhaps talking about the different categories, or if you're willing to share what you're proud of, why you think you've done well in that area, and then the areas that you're looking to grow in. 

Christian Breede

[00.42.21]

Yeah. So I've always been a B plus A minus student. And I continue to be when it comes to character. So my overall character quotient was 78%. My awareness was 77.5, my development was 75 and my application was 85, which, given what we just talked about over the last little bit, I think makes a lot of sense, especially when I because when I first saw this, I was like, oh God, I'm teaching stuff I know nothing about. But like, we just talked about how teaching actually helps development. So it's more symbiotic than that, which I think is useful, but I don't know. Yeah, I was, especially when you showed, like so we did this yesterday and you showed the average for the cohort that we're with. And I was on the high side, which got me thinking, okay, maybe I'm overestimating my abilities a bit, but also I have the privilege of working on this a lot. Right. Like I my day job is this as well. And so maybe I better be on the high side or else I'm doing it wrong. So I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. But, it was interesting. It was very, very interesting. 

Corey Crossan

[00.43.23]

Yeah. Yeah. And so, like, with the, I'm just trying to think, with the awareness, that one's pretty high. Do you find the awareness is high because of the teaching that you're doing, or is there anything else that you are doing to strengthen that awareness around character? 

Christian Breede

[00.43.40]

So aside from doing the Virtuosity engagements every night and trying to follow along with the program that's in that app, I also have, I've been hacking myself and I know how I operate, and so I have little reminders that pop up in my phone a couple times throughout the day to just, it asks me three times a day, how deep is your breath? Right. Just to slow down and sort of think about how I'm feeling. Now, full disclosure, I'm. I'm in counseling. I have a therapist I see weekly for my own stuff, and I meditate every morning. I have a very, fairly rigid routine. In the mornings that I do, I get up early, work out, meditate, and if I don't do those things for a few days in a row, I start to notice it. I start to feel less energized, less grounded, less willing to slow down, more agitated. So those things are, that self-care is really, really important for me. And I read, a lot of reading. I always try to have some book out there that's just for me. And I, I try to carve out time for, you know, especially with the creativity piece, you know, I'm a nerd at heart. And so I like to build scaled models. And so I'll make sure I've always got a little bit of time every week to do a little bit of that. That taps into that fills my cup. You know, so, those are the things I do to try to, you know, really be that best version of myself that I can be. 

Corey Crossan

[00.44.56]

Yeah, yeah. So many very intentional, careful structures that you've created for yourself. That's awesome. As we are almost at the end of our time here, I just wanted to throw it back to you and ask you, is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd like to share? No pressure to share anything additional. But I want to make sure that you're happy, that we've covered everything, that you know, everything that's great about character.

Christian Breede

[00.45.16]

Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Thanks so much. I just I think the one thing that I really want to highlight is just how universal this idea of character really is. It's one of the things I really appreciated as I was doing the research into bringing this into the CAF, one of the things we're very sensitive to is we want to make sure it is truly universal. We don't want just another sort of Eurocentric, Western philosophical thing. That's another thing that's based on the Greeks. Right? That's not where we want it to go and to see through, you know, Peterson's work, the work that you guys have done and other scholars are completely independent, you know, whether we're talking about Ray, Staller, and Culp and their better humans, better performance, they all have centered on this idea that character is universal. And in fact, we see it in our indigenous communities as well, with the Seven Sacred Teachings and IQ. We're all talking about the same stuff, and I think that just shows how valid this work really is. It is truly transformative. And it transcends space and time in a way that I think few ideas really do. So this is tremendous potential, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. 

Corey Crossan

[00.46.15]

That totally resonates with me. When I first got into the character research, I wanted something that was going to have a universal truth to it in a sense that could help all people, and just because we might have some different language around it, the essence, when we actually exchange that language and talk about it, the essence of these different virtues and character is something that is agreed upon across all cultures and ages. So it's just incredible. I couldn't agree more. 

Christian Breede

[00.46.38]

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much Corey for this chance. It was great. Great chat. 

Corey Crossan

[00.46.43]

Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm so excited for the listeners to be able to hear your stories and learn from your insights. So thank you so much for joining us today, Christian. 

Christian Breede

[00.46.52]

My pleasure. 

Corey Crossan

[00.46.54]

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.