The Who Factor
Who you are either reinforces or diminishes what you teach.  When it comes to shaping a culture of character at your school, the Who Factor is even more critical!  Let’s get practical and personal.  Here are three arenas where your personal role modeling will make more of an impact than whatever approach to character formation your school chooses.

Attitude
Typically, the Who Factor begins with your attitude.  Attitude is influenced by a combination of what you learn by experience and what you learn by intentional study.  My assumption is that experience plays the greater role in shaping attitudes.  What is going on in your thought process is a cumulative summary of the conclusions you draw about yourself, about others and about the world you live in.  In some ways, this is your functional worldview.  That worldview influences what you think and feel about yourself, others, and the world. 

Your attitude can be positive or negative, hopeful or hopeless, blessed or cursed.  Attitudes shape the first thoughts when you wake up in the morning…the last thoughts before going to sleep at night…and every thought in between!  The people who see you in the best or worst of circumstances pick up your attitude much more quickly than you ever imagined (or hoped would be the case).  The perception of your attitude by others influences how they receive everything they hear you say.  Attitude is contagious.  Attitude is a choice.

Words
Words are the primary currency of your relational world.  This is the verbal aspect of the Who Factor.  Words paint pictures of the attitudes you have developed.  Those pictures influence the behaviors of your best and your worst students.  Words can inspire or deflate.  Words can inform or criticize.  Words can encourage or deter.

Your ways of expressing words can say much more than the words themselves.  Consider your vocal tone.  Evaluate your emphasis.  Measure the intensity of your passion for what you are talking about.  These determine the value of the currency of your words.

Plan your word choice ahead of time.  Learn the emotionally intelligent signals of how you are expressing those words.  Ask for feedback from a trusted colleague.  Be intentional with what you say and how you say it.  Attitudes shape your choice of words, and words often precede behavior.

Behavior
Students quickly develop a perception about your attitudes.  In addition, they listen to your words on a daily basis.  The third arena of the Who Factor is in your behavior.  The daily routines of what you do (or don’t do) and the habitual ways of how you do it communicate whether your actions match your words.  The alignment and congruency between what you say and what you do is a powerful teaching tool. 

Walk the talk!  Practice what you preach!  These are great slogans that can be taken for granted.  Your “blind spots” are the areas of life that you are not yet in touch with.  Even though you are blind to those things, others see them very clearly.  The only way to reduce blind spots is to ask for honest and constructive feedback.  You need that trusted colleague who will help you identify the misalignments and the incongruencies among your attitudes, your words and your behaviors. 

“Integrity” describes the person whose attitudes, words and behavior are all aligned to communicate consistently.  “Hypocrite” describes the person who is play-acting.  You are one person on the inside but another person on the outside.  Your students have a greater chance of becoming a person of character when they first see positive character in you before learning about it from you.  That’s the Who Factor!

Join me in developing a culture of character,
Dr. Dick Daniels
President, Changing Lives
dickd@mark1.org
www.teachingtochangelives.com
www.coachingtochangelives.com
800-932-7235