Earlier this year someone suggested that I read “How Children Succeed” by the aptly named Paul Tough. It is an excellent book that deals with the question of how to help influence the character of children and how in turn that character contributes to their success as students and in life. This had already been on our mind and one of the things we were struggling with was how to measure character so as to give our children some kind of baseline and see how that changes over the year. So we were intrigued to find that both KIPP and Riverdale are now using a character survey based on work done by Angela Duckworth and Christopher Petersen.

While we are still trying to track down the precise instrument used by KIPP and Riverdale we discovered that there are several online resources available. The University of Pennsylvania is offering a free 240 question character survey which gives you a rank ordering of your character strengths. If you are willing to spend a bit of money ($20-65) you can get a more detailed analysis by heading over to Viame which offers a 120 question survey that is based on Peterson’s work. 

Unlike the idea of personality types a la Myers Briggs, these character surveys produce more actionable results because they help you identify strengths and weaknesses. The perspective of the research on which they are based is that people can grow and change (especially when they are young but even when they are adults). As a practical matter I have seen relatively few adults change but I think in no small part this is due to a lack of actionable measurement and people resigning themselves to having a certain personality type.

Therefore not only are we getting our kids to take these assessments (there are special versions for children available) but we are also taking them ourselves. So what did I find? Among my strengths are curiosity and perseverance, whereas I definitely need to work on my social intelligence and  – ahem – kindness. The latter stung a bit but I think is a fair assessment. I often get super task / outcome oriented and when I do that I wind up neglecting people in the process. I have some ideas for how to improve that and will report back.