Leadership
Is Character the New Skill for Tomorrow's Leaders?
Technical skills get graduates hired, but character determines career success. How schools can bridge the gap between credentials and leadership.
August 25, 2025
Why Character Matters for Career Success
Today’s graduates are technically brilliant, but professionally unprepared.
“Employers are telling us new professionals are not prepared for workplace realities, like working well with others or navigating conflict,” says Adrian Piccoli, Government and Education expert at Korn Ferry.
And while technical skills and competencies might get students hired, character will determine how far they go in their careers—and how effectively they lead. Leaders at the World's Most Admired Companies share traits like strategic innovation, change readiness, and a move-forward mindset. These attributes define the character of future leaders, who will increasingly need to navigate ambiguity and disruption.
The question is, are schools responsible for helping young people develop character as well as knowledge and skills?
Defining Character
Character is hard to define, but at its core, it speaks to the traits that influence how you make hard decisions, according to Piccoli.
“Character gets tested during difficult, complex times. Whether it’s the right thing for the person next to you, for your community or humanity, you need to be able to make hard decisions,” he says.
Leaders face constant pressure to choose popularity over principles, with social media amplifying every decision. That’s when character differentiates those who create lasting impact, and those who simply react to what’s trending.
Character Traits That Matter
These character traits of effective leaders enable them to simultaneously perform and transform:
Purpose: Being responsible for using your talent to serve something bigger than yourself. It's what drives leaders to keep going when the work gets hard.
Courage: The ability to spot problems and opportunities, even when addressing them is unpopular, frightening or seemingly impossible. This separates leaders from followers.
Self-Awareness: Requires deep and continuous learning about yourself. It’s what allows leaders to unite and inspire teams.
Inclusion: Recognising that you can multiply your impact by connecting and including others. This means leaders can tap into their team’s potential.
Integrative Thinking: Recognising that complex situations require creative solutions that balance multiple tensions and perspectives.
“Will you do the right thing by people? Can they trust you, when the stakes are high?” Piccoli asks. “You have to have the courage to spot and address challenges, or say no, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Leaders with character also create cultures where others feel safe to take risks and innovate.
When people trust their leader, they're willing to experiment, fail, and try again—exactly what organisations need to thrive in uncertainty.
Character Education at Barker College
Your relationships, experiences and interactions with different systems shape your character and values from early childhood. When we face dilemmas, tough decisions, and experiences that require deliberate action, it can be a catalyst for positive growth.
And educational institutions can be a safe space for students to have those formative interactions and experiences. While they don't necessarily need to "teach" character, they play a crucial role in making students aware of how important character is to their future careers and life success.
“Education is about holistic development and learning, so students are ready for a world that's changing more quickly than ever before,” says Peter Gibson, Head of Character Education at Barker College, an independent pre-Kindergarten to Year 12 school in Sydney.
“That means having good quality relationships, being a leader who is able to inspire and bring people together, and lead as their best selves all the time. We want our students to be on a good trajectory of their character formation.”
Catch and Seek: Intentional Character Development
Developing character isn’t like teaching Math or English. As Gibson says, “it’s caught and sought through all the different aspects of life.”
Students “catch” character from role models they admire—teachers, coaches, leaders. And they seek it by actively pursuing challenging opportunities.
Gibson also believes character can be taught through intentional and explicit approaches. Barker College distils character into three parts:
- Wise heads: making good, wise, moral, and ethical decisions.
- Loving hearts: motivations are admirable, good, loving, compassionate, and humble.
- Useful hands: what these look like in action.
Putting Character Development Into Action
The college has developed a series of initiatives to allow students to progress on their journey of character growth.
For example, Barker’s Extended Stay program sends Year 9 students to Central Australia for a month, walking the Larapinta Trail and spending time on Indigenous country. Students confront discomfort, uncertainty, and their own limitations—and are separated from technology.
Its Year 10 Character and Enterprise program partners students with a social enterprise to solve real-world operational challenges—combining character development with entrepreneurialism. Students can also participate in events like the World Leading School Association’s Global Student Conference for the opportunity to voice their opinions, engage in dynamic academic exchanges and build cross-cultural bridges.
Barker is also part of the Round Square community, a network of 270 schools from across the world that considers character development, student leadership and global awareness as central to a great education. This membership means Barker students engage in a variety of initiatives to develop their confidence and courage to contribute positively to the world—from conferences, community service projects, and exchange programs, to study labs and school collaborations.
Forging Future Leaders
The stakes are high. When trust is fragile and change is constant, future leaders need strong characteristics to create organisation-wide cohesiveness, unite people over a common goal, and foster inspiration.
Schools already have the power to forge these leaders—they just need an intentional approach.
The question is: are the people shaping your students equipped to model and develop the traits that matter most?
Do your leaders have the right character? Learn about Korn Ferry Leadership Development to find out.
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