When leaders of large corporations step down amid controversy, their character is often called into question. Recently, Volkswagon CEO Martin Winterkorn stepped down from his post when news broke that the German automaker installed technology intended to defeat emissions testing.

Though he claimed not to be aware of the wrongdoing, Winterkorn is known as being a hard-driving perfectionist bent on securing the top spot among global car manufacturers. Winterkorn’s resignation also came on the heels of a dispute with the chairman of the company, who claimed to have "lost confidence" in his leadership despite VW’s financial success.

Though it may take years to parse Winterkorn’s role in the company’s current crisis, there’s now evidence that the character of a person—especially those in leadership positions—can also translate to bottom-line success. According to KRW International, a leadership consultancy, CEOs whose characters were highly rated by employees had an average return on assets of 9.35% over a two-year period, almost five times as much as CEOs with low scores whose return on assets averaged just 1.93%.

Scoring emotional intelligence wades into squishy territory. One person might give a coworker's ability to empathize high marks when a colleague from another team would not. To determine how to rate character, Fred Kiel, KRW’s founder, and his team of researchers combed through a list of 500 behaviors and traits from a classic study of anthropology to boil it down to four universal principles:

• Integrity
• Responsibility
• Forgiveness
• Compassion

Over the course of seven years, Kiel and his colleagues surveyed 8,500 employees at 84 companies in the U.S., asking them to rate their CEOs. They also analyzed the organization’s financial results. The leaders’ marks ranged from what Kiel calls "virtuoso" to "self-focused."

At the top of the leaderboard were 10 executives who received high marks for the four traits and had the most business growth. For instance, Dale Larson took the helm of Larson Storm Doors after his father died of cancer. He grew the family business from 30 employees to more than 1,500 and gained a market share of 55%, according to a report in Harvard Business Review.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, VISI INC.