Character Strengths: What Really Makes a Team Stronger

Most organisations try to build better teams by adding something new. A new tool, a new process, a new hire. Positive psychology suggests a simpler place to start. Look first at what your people already bring.

Character strengths are the positive qualities a person shows when they are at their best. Curiosity, perseverance, kindness, fairness, teamwork, hope, and eighteen others make up the Values in Action (VIA) classification of 24 strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). They are not skills you install through a course. They are qualities that are already there, waiting to be recognised and used in each individual. And a growing body of research shows that when teams learn to see and use them, real results follow.

Strengths matter most where people work together

Harzer and Ruch (2014) studied 426 employees across two samples. They looked at how the 24 character strengths related to four parts of job performance: task performance (doing the job itself), job dedication, interpersonal facilitation (helping and cooperating with colleagues), and organizational support (backing the team's shared goals).

The results held up across both samples, and across both employee self-ratings and separate ratings from their supervisors. So this is not just people rating themselves generously. Character strengths were clearly linked to all four areas. But the link was strongest not with individual task performance. It was strongest with the three areas that depend on working with others. Organizational support was the area most consistently tied to character in every sample.

Put simply,

Character Strengths show up most in how people work together.

Using strengths matters more than having them

Having a strength is not the same as using it. A study of 1,111 working adults (Harzer & Ruch, 2013) found that the more of their signature strengths people could actually use at work, the more they experienced job satisfaction, along with pleasure, engagement, and meaning in their work.

What made the difference was whether the job gave people room to use what they were good at. Simply having the strengths did little on its own. Using them changed the result. For a team, the lesson is clear. Engagement does not come from perks.

It grows when the daily work lets people do what they naturally do well.

Strengths help teams cope under pressure

Teams are not tested on easy days. They are tested when the pressure is on. A third study speaks to this. Harzer and Ruch (2015) studied 214 employees and a separate group of 175 nurses. They found that character strengths were linked to how well people cope with stress, and that they softened the effect of work stress on job satisfaction.

Among the nurses, whose work depends on close and constant contact with others, interpersonal strengths mattered more for coping than they did in the general group. Where people work side by side, the strengths that build good relationships carry real weight. Second, thinking strengths such as curiosity, love of learning, and judgment partly absorbed the impact of stress on satisfaction.

Strong teams do not avoid pressure. They handle it better, and character is part of the reason.

Why this is about training, not just hiring

The most useful finding across all three studies is that character strengths can be trained. The researchers describe them as qualities people can develop, at work and outside it. They are resources you can grow, not fixed traits you are stuck with.

Harzer and Ruch (2014) also found that the number of strengths a person could usefully apply at work was linked to performance. That number can go up when people learn to spot their strengths, and when teams are set up to use them well.

This is where a strengths-based approach becomes something an organisation can actually build. Naming strengths gives a team a shared language. Using them turns that language into a daily habit. And practising them together, through structured and evidence-based work rather than a single workshop, is what builds a team that performs well, stays engaged, and holds steady when the work gets hard.

Bringing it to your team

At GRAAM Academy, our Character Strengths for Teams programme is built on this research. It helps teams name the strengths they already have, use them where the work happens, and build the shared habits that turn personal character into team capability.

Every team already has something to build with. The real work is helping them find it, and put it to use.

References:

• Harzer, C. & Ruch, W. (2013). The Application of Signature Character Strengths and Positive Experiences at Work. Journal of Happiness Studies.
• Harzer, C. & Ruch, W. (2014). The Role of Character Strengths for Task Performance, Job Dedication, Interpersonal Facilitation, and Organizational Support. Human Performance.
• Harzer, C. & Ruch, W. (2015). The relationships of character strengths with coping, work-related stress, and job satisfaction. Frontiers in Psychology.
• Peterson, C.Strengths & Seligman, M. (2004). Character strengths and Virtues