# Character Qualities List: Which Ones Matter and How to Show Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/character-qualities-list/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/character-qualities-list.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 A character qualities list sorted by what each quality does: moral qualities that earn trust, performance qualities that get work done, and how to prove yours. ## Key facts - Title: Character Qualities List: Which Ones Matter and How to Show Them - Category: Personal Qualities - Primary skill: Professional Behaviors - Related skills: Building Self-Awareness, Teamwork - Primary keyword: character qualities list - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/personal-qualities/character-qualities-list/ ## What this page covers - A character qualities list sorted by what each quality does: moral qualities that earn trust, performance qualities that get work done, and how to prove yours. - Practical guidance for character qualities list - How this topic connects to Professional Behaviors ## Detailed explanation A useful character qualities list sorts qualities by what they do. Moral qualities such as honesty, integrity, respect, fairness and responsibility make people trust you. Performance qualities such as diligence, perseverance, [self-discipline](/knowledge/confidence/self-discipline/) and initiative let you do the work well. The ones worth naming about yourself are the few you show consistently. That last part is where most people get stuck. Choosing five impressive words for a résumé or [an interview answer](/knowledge/personal-qualities/key-strengths-of-an-employee/) takes a minute. Choosing five that are true, and that you could back up with something you actually did, takes more thought, and only the second kind convinces anyone. It gets much easier once you see how the qualities fit together. ## How a character qualities list is organized There is no single official list, but there is a solid structure underneath the long ones. The VIA Institute on Character's classification describes 24 character strengths as the basic building blocks of character and groups them under six virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. The character educators Thomas Lickona and Matthew Davidson offer a simpler split that is especially practical at work: moral character and performance character. Add the idea of [signature strengths](/knowledge/self-awareness/how-to-identify-your-strengths/), and you have three lenses that turn an endless list of adjectives into something you can actually use. ### Moral character qualities Moral character is the relational half: how you treat people, and whether they can rely on you. In Lickona and Davidson's framework it covers qualities such as integrity, justice, caring, respect, responsibility and cooperation. In a workplace they look like this: - Honesty and integrity: saying what is true, including that you made the mistake, and keeping your standards when a shortcut would go unnoticed. - Respect: treating the receptionist, the new intern and the department head with the same courtesy. - Fairness: giving credit to the person who did the work, and judging ideas on their merits rather than on who suggested them. - Caring: noticing that a colleague is overloaded and offering a hand before being asked. - Responsibility: seeing a task through to the end, and owning the outcome when it goes wrong. - Cooperation: putting the shared goal ahead of your own moment in the spotlight. Honesty tends to head the list in almost any job, because a truthful colleague is one others can depend on: the numbers will be right, the status update will be real. The VIA classification files honesty under courage and describes it as authenticity and integrity, being true to yourself and sincere without pretense. That placement fits working life well. Telling your manager you do not understand an instruction, or that a deadline is slipping, takes more nerve than any list makes it sound. ### Performance character qualities Performance character is the mastery half: the qualities that help you do good work and reach your potential. Lickona and Davidson name diligence, perseverance, ingenuity and self-discipline, and initiative belongs in the same group. - Diligence: doing work that is actually complete, not work that merely looks finished. - Perseverance: staying with a hard problem after the first two attempts fail. - Self-discipline: tackling the dull task that is due first before the interesting one that is not. - Initiative: spotting something that needs doing and offering to do it. - Ingenuity: finding a workable way around an obstacle instead of stopping at it. Lickona puts the relationship between the two halves in a single line: moral character inspires us to be good, and performance character enables us to do good well. Neither half is enough alone. Writing in *Education Week* in 2007, Davidson, Lickona and Khmelkov argued that students need performance character to do their best work and moral character to build the relationships that make good work possible. The same logic carries straight into a first job. Performance qualities get the work done; moral qualities are why colleagues want to keep working with you. That gives you a quick test for your own list: if every word on it is a synonym for "hard-working," it is lopsided. Lickona and Davidson also describe eight broader strengths of character, among them the diligent and capable performer, the ethical thinker and the self-disciplined person. The pattern is useful: qualities come in clusters. "Dependable," for example, is honesty, responsibility and self-discipline working together. ### Signature strengths The third lens is personal. The VIA framework calls the strengths a person shows strongly and consistently across many situations their signature strengths. Out of 24, most people have a handful that stand out. These are the qualities worth putting your name to, because they are the ones you can prove: they show up in your coursework, your part-time job and your group projects alike, not only on a good day. Some qualities matter for your own sake as well as for how others see you. In a study of 5,299 adults published in the *Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology* in 2004, Park, Peterson and Seligman found that hope, zest, gratitude, love and curiosity were the strengths most consistently linked to life satisfaction. A character qualities list, in other words, is also a list of what tends to make a working life feel good to live. ## Turning qualities from the list into evidence A quality becomes believable when it arrives with an example. When an interviewer asks you to describe your character in a few words, naming the qualities is fine. The answer lands when each word is tied to a specific moment: the week you rebuilt a group report after a teammate dropped out (perseverance), or the time you flagged your own error before the client saw it (honesty). A résumé works the same way. Let the [bullet points](/knowledge/soft-skills-at-work/how-to-list-personal-skills-on-resume/) show the quality instead of announcing the adjective. Three habits make this easier: 1. Start from what you did, not from the list. Write down a few moments you handled well, then name the quality each one shows. 2. Match the role. Look at what the job actually requires and lead with the overlap between those qualities and your own. 3. Keep both halves in view. Pair at least one moral quality with at least one performance quality, so the picture is of someone who does good work and can be trusted. Choosing qualities that are genuinely yours also saves effort later. If borrowing a more impressive set of words feels tempting, you are in good company. One of the young people we interviewed about starting work gave us this as her advice for anyone beginning a new job; what follows is our note of what she said, not her exact words: > Be yourself — from the very start. Otherwise, you end up spending too much energy on being someone else. The same holds for the qualities you claim. They are not fixed traits you either have or lack; they are patterns of behavior, and behavior can be practiced. If a quality you value is not yet one you show consistently, that is a gap you can close, and it helps to [see which work habits already show](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) before you choose the words for your next application. ## What makes these qualities visible at work Look back over the list and something stands out. Nobody can observe your integrity or your perseverance directly; colleagues piece them together from how you treat people, how well you know yourself, and whether you keep your word. Each of those is something you can practice. **Professional Behaviors** is where much of the moral half becomes everyday conduct. Showing respect to everyone, showing humility, taking a genuine interest in others, expressing appreciation and staying open to change are the qualities on the list, seen from the outside. Their opposites, being passive, arrogant, manipulative or constantly negative, say just as much about character, and they can be unlearned just as deliberately. **Building Self-Awareness** is what lets you pick the right words in the first place. Paying attention to what you are genuinely good at, how that work feels and what results it produces, and then asking others how they experience you, turns a borrowed list into an accurate one. It also points to the qualities worth growing next, not only the ones already there. **Teamwork** gives words like integrity and dependability their working meaning. Trust between colleagues is built by being sincere, so people know you mean what you say; reliable, so commitments get kept; authentic; and willing to forgive when someone else slips. That record builds up over months, which is exactly why it carries weight. The **free Job Skills Test** measures all three of these directly, alongside the rest of the **twelve workplace skills** it covers, so you can [find the skill worth practicing first](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) instead of guessing. Every one of them can be learned, wherever you start. Parts of this list may already describe how you work. If classmates hand you the final proofread because they know you will catch what everyone else missed, that is diligence other people have already noticed. The qualities that feel thin right now are not verdicts on who you are. They are habits you have not had much reason to build yet, and you can grow into them while staying entirely yourself, starting with whichever matters most for the role you want next. As people begin to rely on you for bigger things, these qualities tend to speak for you before you have said a word. That makes now a good moment to know which habits are already strong and which deserve attention. ## See which skills stand behind your qualities All that remains is to see it laid out. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of your work skills: in 7 minutes it shows where you stand across all twelve, and which ones would make the biggest difference to how your character comes across at work. ## 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? A character qualities list sorted by what each quality does: moral qualities that earn trust, performance qualities that get work done, and how to prove yours. ### 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/character-qualities-list/ Preferred summary: "A character qualities list sorted by what each quality does: moral qualities that earn trust, performance qualities that get work done, and how to prove yours." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.