{"id":79429,"date":"2023-01-20T04:00:51","date_gmt":"2023-01-20T09:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=79429"},"modified":"2023-01-19T18:08:28","modified_gmt":"2023-01-19T23:08:28","slug":"how-to-evaluate-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/01\/20\/how-to-evaluate-character\/","title":{"rendered":"How to evaluate character"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The Honest Broker<\/em>, Ted Gioia<\/a> is in an advice-giving mood so he’s sharing his own eight techniques for evaluating character:<\/p>\n

I wish somebody had told me these things when I was younger. I now practice them when I need to get a fast assessment of people I don’t know well. <\/p>\n

1. Forget what they say \u2014 instead look at who they marry.<\/strong>
\nThis is a sure-fire technique, and it tells you important things about people you can’t learn any other way. A person’s choice of a spouse \u2014 or if they aren’t married, their closest lifelong partner \u2014 is much more revealing than anything they say or do in public.<\/p>\n

This choice tells you about their own innermost longings, expectations, and needs. It tells you what they think of themselves, and what they think they deserve in life (or will settle for). It is, I believe, the clearest indicator of priorities and values you will ever find. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This advice is diametrically opposite to what I was taught as a youngster, but I think Ted is probably right here. I’d go further and say that observing how the person interacts with a spouse or significant other will tell you much more about that person’s character. If they’re abusive or dismissive of their nearest-and-dearest, how will they treat you?<\/p>\n

2. See how they treat service workers<\/strong>
\nPeople reveal their true natures when they deal with others who have no power and can never return a favor. They feel immune and free of all consequences \u2014 so they let it rip. Their true self comes to the forefront.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is one I figured out for myself in my first few jobs. Bullies and sadists just can’t help themselves when they find themselves in a situation where they can lord it over an underling with no repercussions. It’s disgusting to watch this kind of performative power imbalance and should be a red flag for anyone you hope to do business with.<\/p>\n

3. Discover what experiences formed their character in early life<\/strong>
\nThis is another CEO story, but with a positive lesson in this case. I met this particular corporate power broker when he interviewed me for a project, and we later became quite close.<\/p>\n

In the interview, he started by asking me about my earliest experiences \u2014 entirely focused on what I did before reaching the age of twenty. I thought this was just small talk, and eventually he would change the subject in order to inquire about my qualifications and plans for the project.<\/p>\n

But he never changed the subject. We spoke for more than one hour, and solely about my childhood, my teenage years, and how I grew to adulthood.<\/p>\n

Later he explained to me that he lets other people in the organization worry about boring things like credentials<\/em>. His belief is that people’s character and ability to handle challenges are almost entirely formed during the first two decades of their life. It’s an unusual case, he said, for people to change in any substantive way after that point \u2014 not impossible, but very rare. So those early years were always the focal point for his inquiries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think I’ve ever encountered this in the working world. Occasionally, I might have been asked a little bit about my early life, but never to this kind of extent. I suspect such questioning today would be very likely to raise hairs in HR or even provoke lawsuits if pursued to this degree.<\/p>\n

7. If they cheat at small things, they will cheat at big things.<\/strong>
\nI recently heard a man complaining about a bad business deal. His partner had robbed him, and he should have known better.<\/p>\n

When they first met, they had played golf. Afterwards his wife told him: “I saw him move the ball when you weren’t looking \u2014 don’t get involved with this guy.” He had laughed at this. Why get worked up over a tiny thing like this? It’s just a few inches on the golf course.<\/p>\n

But, of course, if someone will break the rules for something as unimportant as a game, what will they do when higher stakes are involved? In this instance, he had a useful warning, but didn’t take it \u2014 because he thought it was so small. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this is excellent advice in business and in life. Character revelation in the smallest of details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The Honest Broker, Ted Gioia is in an advice-giving mood so he’s sharing his own eight techniques for evaluating character: I wish somebody had told me these things when I was younger. I now practice them when I need to get a fast assessment of people I don’t know well. 1. Forget what they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831],"tags":[139],"class_list":["post-79429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-kF7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79431,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79429\/revisions\/79431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}