Is Your Integrity Showing?

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?

Do You Work How You Dress?

Last week, I talked about Facebook profiles and what they say about potential team members you may be hiring (or about you, to potential supervisors).  But what about a low tech work influencer like your clothes?

We’ve all been given some form of advice about “dressing for success,” such as dressing “one step up” from your current position so that senior executives or administrators can more easily see you as one of them.  Most workplaces have a dress code and most of the time that code is about communicating what your clothes say about your organization.  “Business casual” clothes can send the message that you are a laid-back or fun organization while more formal attire or a uniform (such as a doctor’s coat) can send messages about authority and expertise.  Did you know, however, that how you dress at work can affect not only how others see you but how you actually perform?

New research shows that people do better on certain cognitive tasks when they are dressed in clothing that they associate with positive qualities like attentiveness or professionalism.  I have used this advice in the past when I had a phone interview I did from home.  It’s tempting to put on something casual for comfort, but I’ve found that wearing interview attire even when the interviewers can’t see me helps me get in the right frame of mind for the conversation. 

There’s a catch to all this, of course.  (Isn’t there always?)  To have such a positive influence, you have to be wearing clothes that you associate with professional qualities and that varies somewhat across individuals.  Wearing a suit, in other words, does not mean the same thing to everyone.  Read here to find out the full story and to start your thinking about the workplace attire of you and your team.

2WUWWD83K96Z

Facebook Profiles and Job Success

We’ve all heard the advice to clear our Facebook pages of compromising photos and we know that potential hiring authorities peruse social media to see what we may have posted that is publically available.  If you’re in charge of hiring, you are doing this as well for your prospective hires and for current staff if a problem emerges.  (Some are even going too far by asking for their potential employees’ log in information, but that is a topic for another time).   These efforts are aimed at finding “dealbreaker” information about job candidates, such as a tendency to broadcast risky behavior.  It speaks to your maturity and judgment and can be used against you, as a Secret Service agent found out recently when he posted unprofessional comments on Facebook about his time protecting Sarah Palin.

But did you know that other things in your or your team members’ Facebook profiles could do more than predict failure, that those profiles could indicate success factors, too?  Researchers had participants take personality inventories that measured conscientiousness, emotional stability, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness.  Three raters looked at their Facebook profiles and rated them as well.  Six months after getting hired, supervisors rated each participant on job performance and there was a correlation between the Facebook ratings and performance, even stronger than the relationship between the personality inventories and success. 

Two quick caveats should be noted:  One, correlation is not causation, so no one is saying that having a great Facebook profile that shows how open to new cultures or fun you are causes success.  They are saying that the two are related, meaning that who you are in terms of those five characteristics and your likelihood of success are reflected in things like your Facebook profile.  Two, this is a small study so wholesale changes to screening policies based on these findings should wait until more research is done.

This story does provide you with a good chance to evaluate yourself, however.  You’ve already scanned for compromising things, but take a moment and look at your Facebook page as objectively as you can.  What does it say about you, when viewed through the lens of a potential employer?  Do you have lots of arguments with friends, venting or other caustic comments, or are you supportive and happy?  Do you talk about reading a smart new book (or classic old book)…or the latest trashy novel?  Do you have pictures of yourself on your trip abroad…or pictures of yourself doing something that would put off most supervisors as they picture you at a conference or trade show away from the office?  Take this opportunity to use Facebook as a mirror, showing you habits or trends in your life that you might want to rethink or change.  This type of feedback is vital to improvement.

Want to know more about the five characteristics mentioned here, in terms of this research?  Look here.   

Introverts, Embrace Your Strengths and Network Like a Pro

Let’s just admit it:  The world is skewed toward extroverts and it adds an extra challenge for introverts.  Being an extrovert married to an introvert, I’ve had my eyes opened to how this affects people.  (For the record, introversion is a preference for the inner world and thoughts, which is where introverts get their energy and where they process things. It’s often used interchangeably with shyness but the two are not the same.) The world is, however, finally starting to see that introversion has its benefits, as evidenced in the recent popularity of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.

Networking and connecting with others in social or quasi-social settings is an extroverted activity and it’s critical in many, if not most, fields.  It can be exhausting, even prohibitively so, for introverts.  There are some useful strategies, however, that will help introverts manage these events and realize their benefits.  They include:

1.     Appreciate your introversion.  It’s not a weakness.  It’s a preference.  Many times, it is even a strength as it may make you more predisposed to listening and observing things that the more talkative might miss.  At events where you need to connect, seek out one conversation at a time and ask questions.  This will help you budget your energy reserves and connect with others because it displays your interest in the other person.

2.     Reach out first and try pre-introductions before events.  If it’s possible, use social media to connect with a few people who might be at an event to ease the way.  Let them know that you are looking forward to meeting them, which will make it easier when you actually do.  If that’s not possible, practice being the first to offer a friendly contact when you meet someone in person – those old standbys:  a smile, your name, and a nice handshake – because everyone responds well to this.  Then you can use your introvert strengths (see #1 above) to wow them. 

3.    Recharge your batteries.  An introvert friend once told me at a conference that she was going up to her hotel room for an hour because she was “extroverted out.”  This was a great idea because it gave her quiet time to power up internally and prepare herself for more  events to come later that day.  Use the time you need to recharge after these types of events and you will feel better about them.

Click here for more information about these tips and happy networking!

There Are Really Only Three Interview Questions

Professional recruiters tend to believe that there are really only three interview questions.  They are:

Can you do the job?

Will you love the job?

Can we tolerate working with you?

George Bradt, author of The New Leader’s Playbook, will tell you more about those questions and how to prepare for answering them here.

Job Searching Advice from the Founder of LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a major player in job searches.  Not surprisingly, its co-founder, Todd Wasserman, has some insightful tips for anyone who is job searching and some of his advice runs counter to come classic career advice.  He says there’s no need to “find yourself” to find the right direction or position because your “true identity” is constructed, not discovered.  You certainly have some strengths and preferences for how you work, but your environment and experiences also influence you all the time.  Some self-knowledge is certainly helpful, but not the “be all, end all” that it’s been made out to be.  So you can stop trying to figure out what color your parachute is and start figuring out if you like where it’s taking you. 

Another piece of advice he offers is being able to explain what value you bring to an organization in very specific terms.  You are competing with other talented individuals, but what makes you different from others? 

Want to know more?  Find Wasserman’s eight tips here.