It’s been said that we hire for competence and fire for character. Consider Boeing, which has been brought low by poor leadership decisions that have severely compromised its planes’ quality and safety, and hence public trust, forcing its CEO to announce a year-end departure. And yet the debate about who should be the next CEO of the troubled airplane manufacturer has centered on the merits of engineers versus accountants — that is, competencies. Missing from the conversation is the recognition that what’s needed is a leader with strong character-based judgment. As potential new leaders have been discussed, there’s been no talk of relative strengths or weaknesses in character.

While managers often think that they hire for character, most have equated character with values fit. They’ve tended to give too much weight to character dimensions such as drive and accountability and too little to humility and temperance — which can result in bringing toxicity and weak judgment into the DNA of the organization. That often prompts individuals with strong character to either leave the organization or disengage. This is especially so when yet another high-profile promotion signals that the organization values a limited or unbalanced set of character behaviors.

Understand the Differences Between Competence and Character

Many people think they are assessing character when considering candidates for hire or promotion because they assess some isolated elements of character, such as courage, along with traditional knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, this is a severely limited perspective: Research has shown that character comprises 11 interconnected dimensions, with an associated set of observable behaviors. (See “Leader Character Framework.”) And character can be developed, as explained in an earlier article I coauthored in MIT Sloan Management Review.1 The critical point is to assess character comprehensively rather than simply naming a few qualities thought to be desirable in isolation. This is because any of the character dimensions will manifest as a vice if not supported by the other dimensions. Emphasizing courage and not humility is one example of where things can go off the rails. If high levels of courage are unrestrained by strength in humility, the result can be a tendency toward reckless judgment.

Elevating assessments of character to the same level of importance as assessments of competencies requires an appreciation for how these processes differ. Research has found that unlike competencies, which vary between organizations and often between levels of the organization, character attributes are universal.2 And while competencies may be evaluated independently of each other, character attributes are interconnected and need to be considered holistically. To do this well, hiring managers and HR leaders need to understand what character is, how it manifests, and how it can be developed.

When hiring based on competence, the classic approach is to use structured interviews and associated assessment rubrics to evaluate what someone can do or how they would do it. Every person being interviewed during a particular process is assessed in the same way to minimize interviewer bias and foster objectivity. In contrast, character is about who someone is and how they became that person and thus is unique to the individual. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, with a standard list of questions, for evaluating someone’s character. Instead, character assessments are more free-flowing and personalized conversations. They are objective and rigorous yet also honor individual differences.

The rigor and objectivity come from the extensive science revealing what character is, how it can be assessed and developed, and how it can be embedded in organizations, including HR practices. The individual differences arise because every person’s life story is different when it comes to the development of their character — and we can honor that uniqueness. Because character is not static but is a habit being developed over a person’s lifetime, assessment of character can be ongoing and repeated, whether it be in hiring or promotion decisions.