Service Overview
What if the most powerful leadership tool available to your team wasn’t a new framework to learn, but a deeper understanding of what each person already does best?
The VIA (Values in Action) Character Strengths Assessment is a scientifically validated instrument that identifies each individual’s unique profile across 24 universal character strengths — qualities like curiosity, leadership, fairness, kindness, honesty, teamwork, and social intelligence. Unlike behavioral assessments that describe how you communicate, the VIA surfaces something more fundamental: the core values and virtues that naturally drive the way you think, act, and lead.
Partner with us
We believe in the power of collaboration. By partnering with OSI, you’ll receive customized solutions tailored to your unique business needs. From initial consultation to implementation and evaluation, we’re with you every step of the way.
Discover how our programs can transform your organization and unlock new opportunities for growth.
Benefits and Outcomes
- Authentic self-awareness — Participants gain language for the strengths they’ve always had but may have struggled to articulate, helping them lead with greater intentionality and confidence.
- Values alignment — By mapping individual strengths to organizational values, teams discover how each person’s authentic way of working contributes to a shared mission — not despite their differences, but because of them.
- Strengths-based communication — Understanding your own strengths — and those of your colleagues — creates a richer, more nuanced framework for collaboration, feedback, and conflict resolution.
- Accountability rooted in character — In URI OSI’s leadership programs, VIA results are used to build 90-Day Values-Based Accountability Agreements, so that accountability isn’t imposed from the outside but grown from the inside out.
- Resilience under pressure — The VIA helps leaders understand which strengths they draw on instinctively when stakes are high, and how to leverage those strengths — rather than abandon them — during organizational stress or change.
Customization and Implementation
The VIA assessment is offered as a standalone tool or integrated into URI OSI’s broader leadership development programming.
Delivery options include:
- Individual VIA assessment and debrief — Participants complete the assessment online in advance and receive a facilitated debrief session exploring their Top 5 Strengths, how those strengths show up in their work, and how to leverage them more deliberately.
- Team VIA debrief and strengths mapping — The team’s collective strengths profiles are analyzed together, revealing the depth and diversity of strengths across the group and creating a shared language for how the team works best.
- Integration into leadership development programs — The VIA is woven into URI OSI’s signature programs including People-First Leadership and Accountability, Change Leadership, and Fostering a Culture of Inclusion and Belonging. Participants use their results to anchor the program’s content in their own values and lived experience.
- 90-Day Values-Based Accountability Planning — For cohort-based programs, VIA results form the foundation of personalized accountability plans that translate self-awareness into measurable leadership action.
The VIA assessment is completed online prior to the program’s first session, giving participants time to reflect on their results before the group work begins.
Why Choose This Service
Skills can be learned and forgotten. Character strengths are durable, intrinsic, and energizing. When leaders understand what drives them at the level of values, they make better decisions, communicate more authentically, and sustain their commitment to growth even when conditions are difficult.
The VIA is developed by the VIA Institute on Character, a nonprofit organization founded to advance the science of character strengths, and is backed by decades of positive psychology research.
URI OSI uses the VIA because it works across sectors, seniority levels, and organizational cultures. Whether your participants are emerging leaders building self-awareness for the first time or senior executives looking to deepen their impact, the VIA meets them where they are — and gives them a framework they can carry into every leadership moment that follows.
Who should attend:
- Leaders and emerging leaders at all levels seeking deeper self-awareness
- Teams navigating change, culture building, or improved collaboration
- Organizations committed to values-based leadership development
- HR professionals designing strengths-based talent and development strategies
- Any cohort participating in URI OSI’s people-first leadership programming
