You have to be the same person all the time and none of us is perfect. – Tim Marks

“Character is leadership in motion and leadership is character in motion,” stated Tim Marks during his recent coliseum-sized leadership development class. “If you don’t get the character part of it right, everything else will crumble and fall apart in your job, family life, your spiritual life, your church, whatever you want to achieve. Wherever areas of life you want to grow in; if you don’t have the character down then you’re going to have problems,” Marks told thousands of busy note takers.

Tim Marks Favorite Character Quotes

"He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he who loses courage loses all." – Miguel de Cervantes

“The time is always right to do what’s right.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

click here to listen to Tim Marks about Motion in leadership

You know the first thing about character is that we all need to understand that none of us are perfect. And the person that usually struggles with the character the most is the one that thinks he has it all figured out. Character should be a really easy thing to define but it depends on where you’re drawing all you’re conclusions from. Right? I think everyone would agree there are some basic, simply truths in life that to live by. For instance, thou shall not murder, thou shall not steal, that shall not commit adultery, thou shall not lie, thou shall not covet, those types of things. Everybody agree with those…? (Cheering)

“Because people are losing focus of those moral absolutes, it becomes kind of foggy. I really think character comes down to this - be who you say you are and then do moral and right things. But doing what you’re saying, that’s the hard part,” cautioned Tim.

“If you hold a line on your character you don’t have to have as good of memory. You don’t have to remember all these lies and these things that you should have done, ‘Boy, what did I tell that guy?’ If you just do the right thing you don’t have to worry about it. (Cheering)

“We’ve all seen different leaders fall in our country and most of the time they fall because of a character flaw. Not because of lack of ability or they weren’t good at math or something like that. It’s because of a scandal. We all need to keep an eye on ourselves and not keep an eye on everybody else.

Daily Self-Examination And Reflection

“And it’s not like a once a year inventory thing. This is like a daily thing because every leader that has fallen into some kind of moral problem, they didn’t just wake up a great person one day and they woke up the next day and started having these problems. It was a process, just like the process of being a person of good strong character. It takes time.

“The point is - if you’re character is not for sale, you need to remind yourself to self examine your actions, everyday. Just kind of run through it in you’re head.

Character Will Require Courage

“It takes courage to have character,” stated Tim Marks. “To be a person of character you’re going to have to make some decisions that aren’t necessarily popular. You’re going to have to make some decisions that people aren’t going to like. You’re going to have to make some decisions people are going to whine and complain and say you’re wrong and whatever. But you still have to stay and make the right decision.”

Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The time is always right, to do what’s right.” He was right.