A recent dual-survey study shines an unusually bright light on the people who guide families through loss. Sixteen funeral-service professionals, drawn from the Montana Funeral Directors Association Convention, completed two validated assessments: the 60-item HEXACO Personality Inventory and the 96-item VIA Character Strengths questionnaire. Taken together, these tools sketch a living portrait of temperament and values.
The first notable finding lies in the HEXACO scores themselves, which measure six facets of personality: Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness. Conscientiousness registered a group mean of 4.21 on a five-point scale, driven chiefly by very high diligence (average 4.58). That numerical peak fits the daily realities of funeral work, where every certificate must be filed and every timing detail is checked twice. Honesty-Humility followed closely at 3.81, anchored by sincerity (4.06) and fairness (3.95). When practitioners say, “There are no hidden fees,” the psychometrics suggest they probably mean it. Emotionality, by contrast, sat lower at 3.06. In practical terms, the staff keep their composure: They empathize without becoming overwhelmed. Extraversion and Openness both hover near 3.5. This results in a profile that is sociable and intellectually curious without tipping into showmanship or novelty seeking for its own sake.
Layered on top of those big picture traits are the rankings from the VIA Character Strengths questionnaire, which assesses 24 different character strengths. Here, the previously described pattern becomes even clearer. Nine of 16 respondents, an outright majority, showed Honesty as their single strongest quality. Curiosity and Humor tied for a distant second, each endorsed twice and solidified the value of the previously mentioned HEXACO model findings.
Once every strength is mapped back to its virtue, it was found that the Courage domain dominates: honesty, bravery, perseverance and zest collectively account for more than half of the group’s top picks. Humanity, the virtue family that hosts kindness, love and social intelligence, takes a respectable second place with three endorsements. Wisdom and Transcendence claim two each, while Justice and Temperance receive none. The absence of Justice-type leaders does not mean staff are unjust; it simply means no one sees teamwork or fairness as the one trait that defines them. Likewise, Temperance’s blank column flags a relative scarcity of people who self-identify primarily with prudence or self-regulation.
Those self-regulation signals become louder when we flip the lens to bottom-ranked strengths, with Self-Regulation and Love being named as the lowest common shared character strengths, each cited three times. Low Self-Regulation dovetails neatly with HEXACO Prudence scores, which, while respectable, trail the rest of the Conscientiousness facet bundle. In day-to-day practice, that might show up as skipped lunch breaks, rushed paperwork after a long service or difficulty pivoting between tasks. Love ranking low suggests certain staff perceive a gap in close emotional connection, either with colleagues or with clients. Single mentions of Humility, Bravery and Appreciation of Beauty round out a tail that is thin yet instructive: No acute weakness dominates.
Gender added one more shade to the portrait. Although the sample was small (six women and 10 men), a chi-square analysis flagged a non-random distribution of signature strengths. Women clustered in Curiosity and Social Intelligence, whereas men leaned toward Humor and Kindness, though both groups met on the common ground of Honesty. In a workplace context, that means mixed-gender teams already contain complementary assets: Women bring investigative thinking and nuanced reading of emotional cues, and men contribute levity and tangible acts of care. Leaders can thus assign roles — for example, family-intake meetings, after-care follow-ups and community-outreach events — by matching those natural inclinations rather than forcing the fit of employees.
One might wonder whether these results generalize beyond funeral homes, and in many ways, they do. Any profession that navigates high stakes, strict regulations and intense human emotion — think hospice care, emergency medicine or family law — would benefit from the same combination of forthright diligence and measured empathy. What this study adds is empirical confirmation that such a blend does indeed manifest in the wild, not merely in professional ideals. Moreover, it shows that blind spots are measurable and therefore coachable. When Self-Regulation lags, leaders need not rely on guesswork; they can deploy evidence-based tools. The same principle applies to Love, Justice or any other virtue: You cannot manage what you do not measure.
In summary, funeral-service professionals emerge from this dual-survey analysis as diligent truth-tellers who keep their composure amid sorrow but could gain from deliberate work on self-care and relational depth. Their Courage provides the ethical steel, Humanity supplies enough warmth to soften the edges and sporadic sparkles of Wisdom and Transcendence keep curiosity and humor alive. By reinforcing existing strengths and patching the identified gaps, funeral organizations can create a culture that is not only legally compliant and operationally smooth but also resilient, compassionate and ready for the evolving needs of the families they serve.
