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I’ve been in my profession for almost 20 years and spent many more
years observing successful and unsuccessful individuals and organizations. After giving some thought to what the successful
individuals and groups have in common, it became clear that we rise and fall on
many qualities, but two are the most common:
integrity and communication. I’ll
write more about communication in another post but let’s focus on integrity
today. For the record, the definition of
integrity I use is your values matching your actions, forming a unified ethical
whole. Most people associate integrity
with honesty, but it goes further than that.
Integrity is like a good sense of humor or good driving skills: Everyone thinks they have it. Some would even argue – as did some recent college
graduates I interviewed – that they always live in a state of integrity; they
always live their values. The truth is
that no one has perfect, unfailing alignment between their values and actions. We all occasionally – hopefully rarely -- do
things that are out of step with what we believe we should do or be. Some people, however, have more alignment
than others, and organizations, like individuals, can “walk the walk” (or not),
too. This is important for ethical reasons, of course, but it also has pragmatic benefits as well: That level of integrity is part of what
determines success.
The reason integrity is so important in terms of leadership and success
is that it is one of the major factors in creating trust. Without trust, you simply cannot have
effective working relationships, whether it’s with supervisees, supervisors,
colleagues, customers, constituents or any other group or individual you work
with. Can you work effectively with someone
you can’t trust? Probably not. You can work with them, sure, but I’m
guessing that you will be guarded, the interactions will take longer because of
the need to verify and follow up, and you will almost always attempt to lessen
or avoid contact with those untrustworthy individuals because working closely with them costs you too
much emotionally and temporally. Those
relationships are the key to doing anything at all, whether it’s selling a car
or teaching a student. Trust is the foundation of those relationships
and integrity is the concrete that makes up that foundation.
So how do you know you have integrity?
Here
are five ways to see if your professional integrity is showing.
What do you do to ensure trust and integrity?
