Character and Personality
Character is who you are internally. Personality is who you appear to be from the outside.
A person with good character and good personality is the ideal person, the person we should all aspire to be.
A person with good character and bad personality is misunderstood. If you’re this person, as I was, you should work on your personality. Especially in jobs where you deal with new people regularly, like a consultant, as opposed to a full-time employee, where people would, over time, understand your character and not give undue weight to your personality. Or if you’re in sales, where you’re by definition dealing with new people all the time. In such cases, a bad personality will doom you.
A person with bad character and bad personality is jarring to talk to, but at least he’s showing clearly on the outside what he is on the inside:
So you can walk away from this person before you’re hurt.
A person with bad character and good personality is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This kind of person is dangerous.
How do we protect ourselves from them? By showing a small amount of vulnerability1. For example, I, as a consultant, was once talking to another consultant to approach a lead together. We were discussing how to talk to him. As part of this conversation, I told him, “I don’t know how to respond to this question.” He immediately said, with anger and derision in his voice, “Say something like” followed by a soundbite. The soundbite had nothing to do with the question asked. However, the client would not know this, since he wasn’t skilled in that field2. I realised with a shock that this consultant wasn’t interested in being honest or serving the client, only himself. His modus operandi was to use his knowledge not to help people but to fool them. He looked down on me as being dumb for not being able to mislead the client. I learnt this only by showing a small amount of vulnerability, by saying, “I don’t know how to respond to this question.” So, to identify people with bad character and a good personality, show some vulnerability.
A friend of mine says that to judge someone’s character, sometimes we need to ignore their words and instead look at their actions. Observing people’s actions carefully and judging them based on these actions is a solid principle. We should all do that. In addition, listen to what a person says carefully, observe his actions, and see if the two match. If not, give him the benefit of doubt and ask why he did something different from what he said. If he gives a thought through, logical explanation as to why this situation merited handling differently, great. If, on the other hand, he reacts dismissively or with annoyance, you know not to trust his words, which translates to not trusting the person anymore.
This is why we’re wary of smooth-talking salespeople. We’ve all dealt with salespeople who have a great personality, and only after you buy do you realise that you were misled, which reflects poorly on their character.
The distinction between character (who we are) and personality (who we appear to be) is why social media mobs are frustrating — when someone accidentally uses the wrong words or are politically incorrect and a thousand people pounce on him and attack him, he may have a good character, or at least not such a bad character as to deserve so many attacks. People should be criticised more for their character than for their personality, but social media mobs are more about the latter.
In general, if we don’t know something, we shouldn’t hide it.
This is why we’re vary of smooth-talking salespeople.