Personality vs Principle- based Character

Was reading the first few chapters of Stephen Covey's '7 Habits for highly effective people' on the journeys back from work and realised something that stood out biblically in his book. He talked about many 'quick fixes' to today's problems found in self-help books which addressed 'personality' issues.

He stated that "Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviours, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction." Positive mental attitude slogans like "Your attitude determines your altitude" or "Smiling wins more friends than frowning".

Not saying that any of the above are wrong, some have contributed to defining the principles in alot of people's successes, but some parts of this personality approach are clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of other to get out of them what they wanted, or to intimidate their way through life.

'Today we come across a person who behaves like an automaton, who does not know or understand himself, and the only person that he knows is the person that he is supposed to be, whose meaningless chatter has replaced communicative speech, whose synthetic smile has replaced genuine laughter, and whose sense of dull despair has taken the place of genuine pain. Two statements may be said concerning this individual. One is that he suffers from defects of spontaneity and individuality which may seem to be incurable. At the same time it may be said of him he does not differ essentially from the millions of the rest of us who walk upon this earth.'
-- Erich Fromm

Addressing the 'Principle' issues however, touches the essence of who we are. Principles are like lighthouses which ground us. Covey talks about principles like making them natural laws in our lives which cannot be broken. Which i believe he was referring to biblical principles (honouring your parents, tithing, the fear of the Lord, etc) that are enduring and have permanent value to be used as basic guidelines in our lives.

So are you personality geared or principle centered?