# Best Character Qualities: The Six Families and the Ones Work Rewards Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-character-qualities/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-character-qualities.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving professional behaviors at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer The best character qualities, from honesty and humility to hope and kindness: six families of character strengths and the ones that count most at work. ## Key facts - Title: Best Character Qualities: The Six Families and the Ones Work Rewards - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Teamwork - Primary keyword: best character qualities - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-character-qualities/ ## What this page covers - The best character qualities, from honesty and humility to hope and kindness: six families of character strengths and the ones that count most at work. - Practical guidance for best character qualities - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation The best character qualities are the ones other people can count on: honesty, reliability, humility, kindness and fairness, carried by the energy of hope and zest. Psychology's most widely used map sorts 24 character strengths into six families: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. At work, a quality only counts once others can see it in what you do. That last part is where it gets tricky. Naming good qualities is easy. Knowing which ones you really have, and how anyone would notice, is harder. The answer has less to do with the qualities themselves than with where they become visible. ## Six families of the best character qualities Asking for the single best character quality is a bit like asking for the single best tool: it depends on the job. A more useful question is which kinds of good character exist, and what each kind does for you and the people around you. The VIA Classification, developed by Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, answers that with 24 character strengths grouped under six virtues. As Ruch and Proyer noted in *Frontiers in Psychology* in 2015, the strengths were assigned to the virtues on theoretical grounds, and that assignment still needs empirical verification. Statistical analyses of the strengths tend to produce fewer, differently shaped dimensions. So read the six families as a map, not a league table. Each one covers a different part of what people mean by good character. ### Wisdom Creativity, curiosity, judgment, love of learning and perspective: the strengths of how you think and learn. What sets this family apart is that it is about gaining knowledge and using it well. At work it shows when you ask the question nobody else thought to ask, weigh the evidence before reaching a verdict, or help a colleague see a problem from a wider angle. Judgment in particular builds trust slowly, as people learn whose conclusions hold up. ### Courage Bravery, perseverance, honesty and zest. This is where honesty sits on the VIA map, and the placement makes sense: telling the truth often takes nerve. [Admitting a mistake](/knowledge/confidence/making-mistakes-at-work/) before someone else finds it, or saying you are behind on a deadline while there is still time to fix it, is courage in its most everyday form. Perseverance and zest complete the family: the willingness to keep going, and the energy you bring while you do. ### Humanity Love, kindness and social intelligence: strengths of caring for and relating to other people one at a time. Their distinguishing feature is that they concern how you treat individuals, such as the colleague who is struggling, the new hire who cannot find anything, or the person whose name you make the effort to remember. Kindness at work is rarely dramatic. Mostly it is noticing. ### Justice Teamwork, fairness and leadership: the strengths of group life. Where humanity is about individuals, justice is about how you act within a group. It covers whether you pull your weight, give credit where it is due, and hold everyone to the same standard regardless of title. Fairness is one of the qualities people notice fastest when it is missing. ### Temperance Forgiveness, humility, prudence and self-regulation: strengths that protect against excess. This family is about holding yourself back where it matters. Humility belongs here, and for anyone new to a workplace it is one of the most visible qualities of all. It shows in listening before advising, asking questions, and [taking correction](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-take-criticism/) without getting defensive. Self-regulation and prudence show in [the angry email](/knowledge/professional-behaviors/managing-anger-at-work/) you decide not to send, or the commitment you think through before making it. ### Transcendence Appreciation of beauty, gratitude, hope, humor and spirituality: strengths that connect you to something larger and give your effort meaning. If well-being is the measure, this family has a strong claim on the word "best." A 2021 study led by Fabian Gander in the *Journal of Positive Psychology* found that zest, hope and humor were the strengths most common among well-rounded, psychologically healthy people. Two of those three come from this family, and zest comes from courage. Energy and optimism, in other words, deserve a place on any list of the best qualities alongside the classic moral virtues. ## The character qualities that count most at work At work, the list narrows. The qualities that carry the most weight are the ones colleagues can observe and rely on, and three stand out: - Honesty and integrity: saying what is true, including about your own mistakes, and acting the same way whether or not anyone is checking. - Reliability: doing what you said you would, when you said you would. Small promises kept consistently build more trust than one grand gesture. - A [constructive attitude](/knowledge/personal-qualities/good-attitude-characteristics/): looking for what can work rather than what is wrong, without pretending problems do not exist. These three lead because a workplace runs on people trusting each other's commitments: that the figures are correct, that the task will be done by Thursday, that a problem will be raised rather than hidden. Early in a career, they are the qualities that get judged first and most often. Humility and kindness make all three easier to live with, and fairness keeps them from being applied only to the people you like. ## How to show good character without claiming it Character is judged by behavior, not by self-description. Nobody can see your integrity or your humility directly. They infer it from what you do again and again: keeping promises, owning mistakes, sharing credit, treating the intern and the director with the same respect. That is why "I am honest and hardworking" carries so little weight on its own, and why one concrete example of each carries so much. This changes the task. The goal is not to collect the right adjectives but to practice the behaviors that make them visible, and behaviors can be learned. The qualities people see in you are built from habits you can choose to practice, without becoming a different person. It also means your own view of your character is only half the picture. You know your intentions; everyone else sees your conduct. If you are not sure how your everyday behavior at work lines up with the qualities you value, a structured self-check can show you [where your work habits stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/). Anything that comes out weaker than you hoped is a habit to build, not a flaw to hide. None of this means performing a polished, ideal version of yourself. If the pressure to come across as the flawless candidate feels familiar, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work gave us this advice, which we noted down roughly as follows: > Be yourself — from the very start. Otherwise, you end up spending too much energy on being someone else. Good character works the same way. Energy spent acting out qualities is energy not spent practicing them, and over time colleagues tell the difference. ## The skills that let good character show Look back across the six families and the qualities work rewards, and the same thread runs through them all. Each quality becomes real through conduct other people can see, and through an honest sense of where you stand. That makes them less a matter of temperament than of practice. **Professional Behaviors** is where much of good character turns into daily conduct. Treating everyone with the same respect, showing humility, taking a genuine interest in others, looking for the positive and expressing appreciation are the qualities on any "best" list, described as things you do. Their opposites, such as arrogance, negativity or manipulation, are just as recognizable, and just as correctable. **Building Self-Awareness**. Knowing which qualities are genuinely yours starts with your natural strengths: what you do well, how doing it feels, and the results it produces. Feedback then reveals the blind spots, the gap between how you mean to come across and how you actually do. A strengths survey can prompt that reflection, but it is not a verdict on your character. **Teamwork** gives honesty and reliability their working meaning. Trust in a team grows when you are sincere and walk the talk, reliable in what you commit to, authentic, and willing to forgive others when they slip. That track record is what turns your character into something colleagues can vouch for. Rather than guessing which of these needs the most attention, you can [see your own results for each](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) in the **free Job Skills Test**, which covers these three as part of a broader set of work skills. Each one is learnable, whatever your starting point. Some of this may already sound like you. If you are the one who raises a problem in the team chat before it grows, or who remembers to thank the colleague who helped you out, honesty and appreciation already have something real behind them. The qualities that feel thinner right now are not missing pieces of your personality. They are habits you have not yet had a reason to practice, and you can grow into them while staying exactly who you are, starting with whichever matters most for you right now. As your work begins to affect more people, your character tends to speak for you before you get the chance to. That is a reason to shape the habits behind it now, while they are still easy to adjust, and knowing where your skills stand today is the obvious place to begin. ## See which skills stand behind your best qualities The only step left is to see it for yourself. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: about 7 minutes of questions that map where you stand across all twelve and point to the ones that would make the biggest difference to how your character comes across. **[Discover my skills](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Free, takes 7 minutes, results shown instantly.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? The best character qualities, from honesty and humility to hope and kindness: six families of character strengths and the ones that count most at work. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Professional Behaviors. It also relates to Building Self-Awareness, Teamwork. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/professional-behaviors.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/self-awareness.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/teamwork.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/best-character-qualities/ Preferred summary: "The best character qualities, from honesty and humility to hope and kindness: six families of character strengths and the ones that count most at work." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.