Character: A Differentiator for Athletes, Employees, Teams, and Business

By Matt Amerlan

Director of Workforce Development

The concept of the “dual threat” playbook is to help athletes “connect the dots” that through sport, they are developing highly sought after skills that transfer to success in life and career.

Positive Athlete was founded to be a platform that recognizes high character, leadership oriented student-athletes that make an impact on the culture around them. We celebrate student-athletes not for their stats, but for their character, resilience, service, leadership, and the impact they make on their schools and overall communities they are a part of. For the NFL fans out there, think Walter Payton Man of the Year, but for our boys and girls high school student-athletes across the country.

The Skills Gap and the Differentiator for Athletes

As we’ve discussed in previous pieces, athletes learn important soft/durable skills firsthand through sport that are highly coveted by the workforce. A workforce that is telling us that there is a gap in our talent pipeline possessing these needed soft skills. Having these skills is a differentiator for athletes entering the workforce.

Another differentiator (which is the case for the 72,000+ Positive Athlete nominations we’ve received overall and in the 2025 year alone, representing over 25% of the schools in the country) is character. Whether it's a sports team or a business, there will always be a baseline of talent that is needed to perform depending on the task and the competition. With that being the case, soft (sometimes called durable) and/or character skills can be a differentiator for individuals, teams, and companies.

Insights from the Pros

Pauline Fournier of ClearRock, a leading professional training and coaching firm out of Boston that helps organizations and individuals optimize their talent, discusses in depth how soft skills and character skills can be a differentiator. Pauline shares in the opening of this article from the context of individual job seekers:

“I’ve seen a lot written recently about soft and/or character skills. Many job seekers struggle to demonstrate such skills. Being able to listen and speak about your soft and character skills could give you a competitive advantage over candidates who list only the technical skills required to do a job.”

Character in College Recruiting

With character being a differentiator for individuals seeking a job, character is also a differentiator in the sports landscape. While difficult to obtain, a goal for many high school student-athletes is to be recruited to compete in their sport in college.

Someone that I’ve recently connected with on LinkedIn, Taqueta Braxton, just wrote a great article with information about why character matters in the college recruiting process for coaches. Taqueta has an extensive background in the landscape of college recruiting and in her piece she shares that:

“Coaches will often choose a leader with work ethic and character over a more skilled athlete who brings problems into the locker room.”

Taqueta goes on to explain that a reason for this is that, “skill can be developed, character issues cost time, culture, and trust.” In other words, just as character can be a differentiator for job candidates, character can also be a differentiator for candidates looking to fill athletic rosters.

The Bottom Line for Teams and Companies

While character is a differentiator for individuals, teams and companies that understand this as a competitive advantage will have a leg up on their competition as well. In both the sports and work setting, having high-character individuals that make up your program or organization has a positive multiplying effect on your team’s performance.

This will show up in the form of wins, or the balance sheet of your company. Having high-character individuals positively affects the culture, team chemistry, showing up every day with energy, going above and beyond to perform, and results in less turnover of the individuals in your program (which has a high cost to it as well). The bottom line is that character matters for success, whether you are an individual, team, or company. There is an opportunity to utilize character as a competitive advantage to set ourselves apart.

Dual Threat Playbook Tip: Differentiate with soft/durable and character-related skills.