Importance of Personal Character in Your Career
About 2 min read
There are three types of character traits that affect your career: personal, social and cultural. Your personal character consists of the attitudes you have toward challenges you face in your career. Having positive personal character traits will improve your chances of success and in achieving your goals. Negative traits hinder your efforts and your job performance.
Questions you may have include:
- How do personal character traits affect job performance?
- What are positive character traits?
- What are negative personal character traits?
This lesson will answer those questions. There is a mini-quiz near the end of the lesson.
Performance factors
Personal character traits are sometimes called your work ethic. They concern your attitudes towards performing difficult tasks, fulfilling requirements and specifications, following orders, being organized and working up to your capabilities.
There are other factors in your personal character traits that indirectly affect your ability to complete tasks and achieve goals. The manner in which you spend your money or take care of your body can affect your performance.
Positive character traits
Positive personal character traits relate to attitudes you have toward challenges at work. Typical traits are determination, organization, courage and responsibility.
Harry had an assignment that needed to be completed by Friday. It was a difficult task, but he was not afraid to work hard to complete it. His boss knew that that Harry had the type of character where he would commit to overcoming the difficulty and achieving the goal.
After the job was done, the boss gave Harry recognition for a job well-done.
Having a good work ethic will result in having good performance.
Negative traits
Negative personal character traits include carelessness, sloth and irresponsibility.
Phillip was a very skilled worker, but he often was careless in what he did. He figured his work was good enough, especially since he wasn’t too interested in the task.
Sometimes the work he did had to be done over by someone else. Although Phillip was talented and skilled, he was a drag on the department’s bottom line and was ultimately laid-off.
These negative character traits or attitudes can deter your ability to achieve goals or to satisfy job requirements.
Summary
Personal character consists of the attitudes you have toward challenges in your career. Having positive personal character traits will improve your performance and chances of success. Negative traits hinder your efforts.
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Always do your best
Resources
The following are resources on this subject.
Websites
Mini-quiz to check your understanding
Self-check your understanding
Why are good attitudes important?
How is being well organized on the job a positive character trait?
Why is doing as little as possible a negative personal character trait?
Pick an answer to see instant feedback. Re-read the lesson if you miss one.
If you got all three correct, you are on your way to becoming a Champion in Advancing in your Career. If you had problems, you had better look over the material again.
What do you think?
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Also see Answers to Readers’ Questions.