Leadership & Character | Winston-Salem, NC

Members of the Alumni Council, their spouses, and Wake Forest staff gathered on September 14, 2017, at Graylyn Conference Center in Winston-Salem to discuss leadership and character.

Our conversation focused on leadership and character, and we began with each guest answering the discussion prompt:

We tend to speak about “character” when it is noticeably absent. Consider the opposite and tell us about a time when you saw character in action.

A common thread to our conversation was that “character” means consistently doing the small things, and doing what is right, even when it is also the difficult action to take:

• Character means doing ordinary things in an amazing way.
• Quietly do the right thing, the thing that is better for the whole than for the individual.
• You never know who is watching – act in a way that makes you proud when nobody is watching and you know there will be no credit/recognition.
• Honesty, integrity, selflessness, focus, action/doing are some traits consistently practiced by leaders of high character.