Character matters.
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“Research suggests that people who take the VIA Survey consider about five of the 24 strengths to be signature strengths on average. Explore these top strengths within yourself. Find new ways to express them at home, work, in relationships, and in your community. If you do, that is part of what is referred to as “being authentic.”
Based on the same theory of Strengths Finder, this framework of signature strengths for character is a powerful tool for character development. In fact, I have all my graduate students take the free VIA Character Strengths survey which takes only about ten minutes but pays huge dividends in the form of increases in happiness, wellbeing, meaning, and purpose, as well as the promise of healthier relationships and a lifelong source of personal power for accomplishing your goals.
While I think that some of the 24 categories do not work as well as others, just the idea that we have natural strengths, identified by the 3 e’s: essential, effortless, and energizing, related to cultivating 6 key virtues (wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, transcendence) strikes me as empowering and inspiring. The concept of underutilized and overutilized strengths resonates with my lifelong devotion to finding Aristotle’s golden mean, and the examples ring true, with plenty of ideas for improvement. This official guide to character strength provides suggested implementation plans for activating character strengths, recognizing them in others, and employing them especially during times of trial.
A special feature of the book is that it whets the appetite for improving in all these virtues, which is, after all, the point!
The Power of Character Strengths by Robert E. McGrath and Ryan M. Niemiec (VIA Institute for Character, 2019)