What Is More Important: Character Or Personality
Character is the more important of the two. Personality is the impression you make on people, and it can be read in a single meeting; character is who you actually are, and it takes far longer to reveal itself. Personality can win you an opportunity, but character is what decides whether you keep it, and character is ultimately what your reputation is built on, both in the room and in search results.
Personality can open doors, but only character can keep them open. Elmer G. Letterman
What is character?
Character refers to the sum of the individual qualities a person has that set him or her apart from everyone else. Character is simply a unique set of mental and moral qualities. Character is something that comes from within, and it is usually long lived. A character takes far longer to figure out. It takes in attributes that reveal themselves only in specific, and often exceptional, conditions: qualities such as honesty, integrity and generosity. Research has shown that these qualities are determined to a great extent by heredity and are largely permanent. The seemingly more significant qualities of character, on the other hand, do keep changing, though never without real effort. Character attributes, rather than inherited qualities, rest on convictions (for example, that honesty and treating other people well matters, or that it does not), and while convictions can be changed, it is far harder to do than most people realise.
What is personality?
Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive persona. Personality is easier to read, and we are all specialists at reading it. We judge people as interesting, outgoing, lively, hopeful and confident, or as too serious, lazy, negative and timid, if not in the first instant then soon after it. We may need more than one interaction to confirm that these sorts of traits are really there, but by the time we decide they are present we have usually gathered enough information to justify the judgement.
How is character different from personality?
Personality is treated as fixed, while character is something that gets developed. Personality is what you seem to be, whereas character is who you actually are. Building character is not about looking good and wearing expensive brands. It is also about developing your inner self and being a decent human being. A good character definitely helps you create a winning personality. Character is the foundation of the personality you build over the years. Just as no worthy building can be erected without a good foundation, no lasting good personality can be built on a weak character.
Why do we mistake personality for character?
We unwittingly connect personality to character for two basic reasons: we want to like the people we already find likeable, and the only dependable way to assess someone's character is slow and tedious. We have to watch people in genuinely character-testing situations before we can draw reliable conclusions about who they are. For instance, if we watch someone lie easily, we can be reasonably sure from that single occasion that they have done it before and will do it again, because the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. In summary, the key point is to be careful about the difference between being drawn to the outer self (personality) and being drawn to the inner one (character). A relationship cannot be founded on personality alone; it is character that builds the relationship and leads to fulfilment and a productive partnership. Character is therefore of much greater importance, because it inherently moulds your personality and makes it permanent.
How does character shape your reputation?
You must have come across this line quite often: "Reputation matters, but character leads the way." Reputation is the basis of leadership. It is built over many years, one word at a time, one action at a time, one deed at a time. Reputation is one of the most powerful assets you have, because it is what other people think of us, and it is the foundation of how we are told apart from everyone else. The key goal in shaping that reputation is keeping personal character as the driving factor. But what happens if you have a strong character and still cannot build the strong reputation that should go with it?
What if your character is strong but your online reputation is not?
In an advancing digital world, businesses and public personalities are constantly worried about their online reputation, because it is under attack from reputation-damaging drivers such as negative publicity, bad reviews, unflattering articles and derogatory comments anywhere on the internet. So when businesses and individuals already have the character to excel, what they need next is an online reputation management system in place to monitor how people perceive them on the internet. Online reputation management services deal with addressing and monitoring negative content about you or your brand online, and use customer feedback to clean up derogatory remarks made anywhere on the internet. Businesses and personalities often outsource that monitoring to the best online reputation management agencies. Online Reputation Manage is one such agency, with the industry expertise and the online reputation management tools to monitor how you or your brand is seen across the online community: blogs, articles, online forums, search engines and, of course, social media.
If the search results for your name no longer match the character behind them, that gap is fixable. Our team has removed 4,000+ complaints, collected 5,000+ reviews and served 300+ clients, with a 98% success rate on the work we take on. Tell us the name you want checked and a specialist will scan the results and send you a private report on what can actually be removed or pushed down. Call +91 8700 450 757 or get in touch to start.