This has been a big debate for years. Personality gets the thing done, character adds the sincerity to it. (Please don’t confuse it with the moral character of a person :))
Let’s take two example to understand:
- Giving one speech: Person X can just memorize the speech, get the speech from someone else and practice it enough to look it really real. Judges are judging it on the basis of Person ‘s presentation skill (personality) irrespective of whether Person X feels a damn about the words spoken. Character is when the person puts his opinion that he/she feels is correct. Person Y may have worked in the field has a lot to say from real life examples and so on. (Who will win the competition?) (Probably Person X, I have written many speeches for people, when I write, I write it from my feelings but when the person says it, it is merely the presentation.)
- Donating food to poor: Person X is very well dressed in white and is put all the things to be labeled as the best spiritual leader. He distributes the food as he was accompanying a friend. Person Y is also very well dressed but he is doing it as he feels about the poor. (Was there any difference between feeling for poor and just showing off? Probably not)
In both the above example’s Person X and Person Y has used their personalities to do the work. The inner feeling can be termed as Character (motive/feeling behind the action). So is personality more important or character?
Now lets take Person X and Person Y again.
- Surprise Speech and Q&A: There was a surprise speech on a similar topic. Person X fall short of words and ideas whereas Person Y is more comfortable with the speech. Even in the Q&A, Person Y does better than Person X (assuming that none of them prepared for the Q&A sessions)
- Need volunteer for regular food distribution for poor local organization Who will volunteer for this poor local organization? Probably Person Y as Person X was doing it without much feeling and Person Y feels about poor.
So what is more important personality of character?
I always advocated for both. Personality is required for a short term with short conversation impact whereas without character personality can fade out soon. At many times you don’t need character level work (Example: Presentation on goat (assuming that you are not in a goat business)), you just need to prepare enough so that you can score good marks in this presentation.
But you will have to learn at character level for your related topic. When a student of marketing put a presentation on niche marketing, the purpose behind the presentation is that the person learns niche marketing really well, he/she will have to learn it in deep. Even after the presentation the person should go back and learn it at a character level. If the student doesn’t learn it at character level then later in some stage he/she will face a surprise question on niche marketing with some goodies for effective answers. For the presentation you may not be able to learn niche marketing at character level, for the presentation you just need to do enough at personality level to get enough marks.
What is personality and character?
Personality is the part of action that gets the work done. Character is the part of action that works behind the action. Some important points about personality and character:
- Personality is what makes the character: When you visit the orphanage you may not feel anything but your personality (where you went to orphanage) helps you see a lot of things, experience a lot of things and then teaches your self (Character part) about the importance of working with them. When you visit again and again, you may start feeling it from inside. Another example is: When you read a book or topic, you may not understand it but reading it again and again can make you a master of it. Reading is personality and understanding it is character.
- Character alone is useless: What if you feel for poor (Character level) but never takes an action (personality) to help them. What if you understand the subject like nobody else (Character level) but can’t explain it or use it (personality level).
- Personality alone is dangerous: A girl with great make up without original beauty can surprise her admirers when seen without a makeup. Doing makeup is good (personality level) but take care of things like health, drinking water, eating habits etc (that makes the beauty) is required for long term and true beauty (Character). So one will have to do makeup when required but one must be more careful in there day to day activities to develop a true beauty.
- Character doesn’t need preparations: When you know the subject and you have good presentation skills (Presentation skills again has to be at character level, not just for one speech but for any speech, it is developed slowly slowly), you can present yourself without any preparations.
- Character is the difficult part of both: Personality can be achieved quickly whereas character takes a lot of time to develop. You can learn how to distribute food to poor but make you feel for poor is a difficult and time taking job.
- Character is more desired: Character is more desired as a man with character can be taught the personalty but not vice-verse.
- Don’t be discouraged for character: I don’t feel good about the subject so whats the point in learning it. This is a common question. We all went through this at times but after reading it for a while (without much understanding) we started feeling it. There are many who comes to Church/Temple just for fun but someday the start feeling about it. There continuous actions (personality) taught their inner self(Character). So never get discouraged about not having the character just keep working with personality and keep focusing on developing character. When we worked in SEO field, at times we did not understand what we were doing, we just did what was instructed to us. BUT WE WENT BACK HOME AND LEARNED THE WHY PART OF WORK. So slowly we started developing the character.
Final word: Personality is very much required to get the work done. Character is very much required for long term and for unprepared times (Unprepared is the key, so keep developing everything at character level)