Character Is More Important Than Which Side You’re On

I have been fortunate to spend most of my life around people who were different from me. Really different.

I grew up in Honolulu, what people sometimes call the Melting Pot of the Pacific. Japanese. Chinese. Filipino. Korean. Samoan. Tongan. Hawaiian. Portuguese. And every mixture of those you can imagine.

Then I moved to Los Angeles and discovered that I did not understand diversity at all.

Growing up in Hawaii, white people were basically just “haoles.” That was the category.

Then I got to Los Angeles and discovered there were all kinds of white people. Irish. Italian. Eastern European. Western European. Families here for generations. People whose parents had just immigrated.

Apparently “white” was not nearly as useful a category as I thought.

Imagine that.

Los Angeles added more layers.

African-Americans. But also Africans from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Eritrea, and dozens of other places with completely different histories and cultures.

There is a Little Ethiopia on Fairfax. Drive north from the 10 toward the Grove and you pass right through it.

There is Chinatown. Koreatown. Little Tokyo downtown. There is the Japanese community around Sawtelle. Thai communities. Persian communities. Armenian communities. Mexican. Salvadoran. Guatemalan. Indian. Vietnamese.

And on and on.

One of the things I love about Los Angeles is that I can drive twenty minutes and feel like I have traveled to another country.

Living around all these people has taught me something that seems ridiculously obvious once you see it:

Groups are abstractions. People are people.

The closer you get to someone, the harder it becomes to reduce them to the label you originally put on them. Knowing someone complicates the stereotype. That is the whole point.

What McChrystal Saw

I recently watched an interview with retired General Stanley McChrystal that caught my attention.

He described something most of us have experienced without ever putting it into words.

You tend not to like the people you do not know. The people in the other town. The people with the other religion. The people from the other background.

But then he described commanding soldiers from completely different racial, economic, and cultural backgrounds.

Once they were together in the dirt doing the mission, those differences started looking different.

Not nonexistent.

Different.

McChrystal realized that one of the biggest differences between people was simply their life journey.

That really stuck with me.

Because if I had lived your life, experienced your childhood, had your parents, suffered your setbacks, lived in your neighborhood, received your opportunities, and faced your obstacles, there is a pretty good chance I would see the world differently too.

That does not mean I would agree with you.

Understanding why someone reached their conclusions is not the same as endorsing those conclusions. But it does make it harder to dismiss them as stupid or evil.

Once you can say, “Given where they started, I see how they got there,” you have moved from tribal reaction toward something more honest.

And this is where I think we have screwed up the conversation.

Somewhere along the way we got the idea that respecting someone means agreeing with them.

It does not.

You can respect someone and think they are completely wrong.

You can like someone and disagree about politics.

You can train with someone who believes something you find ridiculous.

You can work beside someone whose religion makes no sense to you.

You can care about someone who voted differently than you did.

That is not weakness.

That is maturity.

Character Before Tribe

McChrystal made another point that I think applies far beyond the military.

Character matters because character governs what you do when the situation becomes difficult.

Anybody can talk about values when nothing is at stake.

Anybody can claim integrity when integrity is convenient.

Anybody can preach tolerance when everybody in the room agrees with them.

Character shows up when there is pressure.

When your tribe wants you to hate someone.

When your friends expect you to repeat something you know is not quite true.

When everyone around you has decided that “those people” are idiots, evil, dangerous, or beneath contempt.

What do you do then?

Do you think for yourself?

Or do you follow the crowd?

Here is the part nobody talks about.

Standing apart from your group has a cost.

You might lose friends. You might lose status. People who trusted you yesterday might call you a traitor tomorrow.

The loneliness of your own judgment is real, and it can be more painful than going along with something you half-know is wrong.

That is precisely why character is not tested when it is easy.

It is tested when doing the right thing costs you something you would rather keep.

That may be one of the biggest leadership questions of our time.

Because leadership and followership are not determined by whether you have people reporting to you.

You can have a huge audience and still be a follower.

You can have a fancy title and still be a follower.

You can run a company and still be a follower.

If your beliefs change depending on which crowd is cheering, you are following.

If you automatically hate whoever your group tells you to hate, you are following.

If you repeat slogans without examining whether they are true, you are following.

If somebody tells you “people like us believe this” and that is enough to stop you from thinking, you are following.

A leader does something harder.

A leader stands inside a group without surrendering his judgment to the group.

I still remember when I first went to visit Amy's family in Egypt in 2004, I was shocked at how many people told me to not go, that they will kill me.

Every time I asked, "Do you know any Egyptians, Muslims, Arabic or African people?"

And they would all say, "No..."

So I went and had a wonderful time around amazing Egyptian people.

Diversity Is Supposed to Create Friction

There is something else we get wrong about diversity.

We often talk as though the goal is for everybody to get along.

I do not think that is the point.

The value of diversity is partly that people do not see things the same way.

They bring different experiences.

Different blind spots.

Different assumptions.

Different questions.

Different solutions.

That creates friction.

Good.

Friction sharpens us.

In martial arts, you do not become good by training exclusively with people who move exactly like you.

A tall opponent gives you one problem.

A short opponent gives you another.

A wrestler creates one problem.

A flexible guard player creates another.

Someone stronger than you exposes things that someone your size may never reveal.

You do not complain that they are different.

Their difference is what improves you.

Life works the same way.

If everyone around you thinks like you, votes like you, looks like you, worships like you, and consumes the same information you do, you might feel comfortable.

But comfortable and correct are not the same thing.

Sometimes the person who irritates you is exposing something you need to examine.

Sometimes they are wrong.

Sometimes you are.

Most often, both of you are seeing different pieces of something larger.

A leader is curious enough to find out.

The Mission Has to Be Bigger Than the Tribe

One of the reasons militaries can unite people from radically different backgrounds is that there is a mission larger than the individual.

The person beside you does not have to agree with you about everything.

He has to do his job.

You have to do yours.

And both of you have to care about something larger than yourselves.

I still regret sometimes not being able to join the military due to my asthma.

But, I saw a version of this throughout my career in construction too.

On a jobsite you could have Republicans, Democrats, Christians, atheists, immigrants, guys born five miles away, people who barely spoke the same language, and people who would probably never voluntarily spend Saturday night together.

But the conduit still had to go up.

The equipment still had to work.

The building still had to get finished.

And everybody needed to go home safely at the end of the day.

The mission created common ground.

On the job, the electrician and the carpenter did not need to agree about immigration policy. Whether the foreman went to church on Sunday was not the point.

The question was narrower and more practical:

• Can you do your job?
• Can I count on you?
• Will the work be right when you walk away from it?

The mission does not require affection.

It does not require ideological alignment.

It requires reliability.

And reliability, over time, builds a respect that has nothing to do with agreement.

​Martial arts does this too.​

When you are trying to stop someone from choking you, political affiliation becomes surprisingly unimportant.

The mat has a way of stripping away a lot of nonsense.

You learn who someone is through what they do.

• Do they help the new student?
• Do they protect their training partner?
• Do they lose their temper?
• Do they make excuses?
• Do they keep showing up?
• Do they use their skill responsibly?

That is character.

Not the flag in their bio.

Not the bumper sticker.

Not the slogan.

Not the tribe.

Behavior.

A Unifying Leader Does Not Require Uniformity

This might be the distinction we need more than ever.

Unity is not uniformity.

A unifying leader does not get everyone to think alike.

A unifying leader helps different people work together without demanding that they surrender who they are.

That requires character.

Curiosity.

Humility.

Courage.

And probably most of all, the ability to resist the pull of us-versus-them thinking.

Divisiveness is easy.

Tell people they are good.

Tell them another group is bad.

Give them an enemy.

Repeat it often enough.

Now you have a tribe.

Leadership is harder.

Leadership says:

Slow down.

Who is this person really?

What happened to them?

What are they seeing that I am not seeing?

Where are they wrong?

Where might I be wrong?

What do we still share?

What are we trying to accomplish together?

Here is how the difference shows up in ordinary life.

A divisive follower hears a rumor about someone in the other political party and repeats it without checking because it confirms what their group already believes.

A unifying leader says, “I do not know if that is true. Let me find out.”

A divisive follower decides a person’s character from one vote, one opinion, one mistake.

A unifying leader waits for more data.

A divisive follower treats every disagreement as proof of moral failure.

A unifying leader asks whether a different life journey might explain the disagreement before deciding it reflects moral failure.

That does not make you neutral.

It does not mean refusing to stand for anything.

It actually requires stronger values, because now you have to decide what you believe without outsourcing that decision to your tribe.

Choose Character

I do not care whether you are on the left or the right.

I do not care whether you are religious or atheist.

I do not care whether you grew up in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Alabama, Nigeria, Korea, or some tiny town I have never heard of.

Those things shape you.

They matter.

But they do not tell me your character.

Your actions do.

How do you treat somebody who cannot help you?

How do you behave when your group is not watching?

Can you admit when you are wrong?

Can you disagree without turning someone into an enemy?

Can you stand against your own side when your own side is wrong?

Can you work beside someone you disagree with toward something that matters to both of you?

Can you remain curious long enough to understand another person’s life journey before deciding who they are?

Those are leadership questions.

And maybe that is what we need to demand from ourselves before we demand it from presidents, politicians, CEOs, or anyone else.

Because it is easy to complain about divisive leaders.

It is harder to stop behaving like divisive followers.

Do not let someone else decide who you are supposed to hate.

Meet people.

Talk to them.

Train with them.

Work beside them.

Break bread with them.

Ask questions.

Listen.

Disagree.

Learn.

Stand for what you believe.

And have enough character to remember that the person standing on the other side is still a human being.

That is not weakness.

That is leadership.

So here is my invitation, if you want one.

This week, notice the moment you are about to dismiss someone because of the group you put them in.

Just notice it.

Then ask yourself:

Do I actually know this person? Or am I reacting to a category?

You do not have to change your mind.

You do not have to abandon your principles.

You just have to stay curious long enough to see a human being before you reach for the label.

A strong person can do that.

A leader does.

⚔ The Dojo Drill

Today’s training:

The Warrior’s Journal

Answer three questions:

1. Where am I?
2. How did I get here?
3. Where do I want to go?

This is one of your signature drills.

📚 Leader’s Library

​The Scout Mindset by Julia Galef​

Why?

Galef draws a useful distinction between two ways of approaching the world:

• The soldier defends a position
• The scout tries to understand the terrain
• The soldier asks how to win
• The scout asks what is actually true

We need both.

There are moments when you have to commit, act, endure, and hold the line.

But there are also moments when strength means becoming curious enough to discover that your map is wrong.

P.S. Know a martial arts gym owner who’s stressed about money or student numbers?

Do them a favor: send them to The Leader's Dōjō, my website where I help owners get more students and keep them longer with simple systems.

One forward from you could change their gym: The Leader's Dōjō​

Chuck