Specific situations require different management approaches and styles—but how do you feel about the term situational integrity? We’ve seen that if integrity applies only in specific situations, it’s not integrity at all but expediency. Do you believe in absolutes or does everything derive from your point of view, your (temporary) advantage? To answer that question with another question, you might ask what your family or your company or our world would be like if everyone had your ethics. The choice is yours. We’d either be in terrific or terrible shape. Of course people do cheat to get ahead; you know that. But when you maintain your integrity at all costs, even if you feel you might suffer in the short term, you’ll win hands down in the end.
Most importantly, you’ll be an inner winner, with victories no one can ever take from you. Is stealing paper clips, note pads, and rubber bands from your office anything to worry about? A person of integrity is not tempted down that slippery slope that can lead to more serious situations, even embezzlement. Is integrity a primary consideration in a practical, profit-making organization? Not to have it courts the risk of sophisticated surveillance equipment, disgruntled employees, and whistle blowers. Ethics deprivation can lead to inner rot. The company building may be located in a high-rent district. It may be made of the finest steel, chrome, and glass—but it will decay from the inside.
Can you think of a successful relationship without integrity? I doubt it. All are based on mutual trust. Break that trust and you break the relationship. Subvert it and it’s almost impossible to put together again. Creating a long-term relationship takes two or more people—whether executives, representatives of labor and management, or husband and wife who are grounded in and operating on the same non-situational integrity. Nothing less will last.
When Fortune magazine asked the CEOs of many Fortune 500 companies what they considered the most important qualities for hiring and promoting top executives, the unanimous consensus was that integrity and trustworthiness were by far the key qualities. That survey of leading businessmen—not of preachers or motivational speakers—speaks for itself.
Here are some tips to help you further embrace integrity in your personal, business, and family life:
- Justice and fair play are integrity’s core values. Go out of your way to be helpful and make others Number One in your life. A smile will almost always be returned with a smile—and you’re none the worse for wear even if it’s not.
- Set high standards of ethics for yourself and expect others to do the same. Your single most powerful teaching tool is not talking about what’s right but quietly doing it. A businessperson or a parent who lectures about obeying the rules but constantly breaks them is making an especially powerful negative statement. The old "Do as I say, not as I do" is severely damaging to children and subordinates.
- Give of your best in the worst of times. Personal integrity knows no season and doesn’t hinge on the weather, the stock market report, or the leading economic indicators. You have it or you don’t.
- Respect diversity in culture and heritage. The world’s rapid transportation, interactive media, virtual reality, and global communications network means we must learn to live in harmony with other human beings. The dictionary tells us that integrity is wholeness, which implies mutual acceptance. Don’t make the futile attempt of trying to be an island. Welcome the foreigner. Work hard at understanding other cultures, languages, and points of view.
Your children and subordinates will do what they see you do. Your job as a leader is enormous, but so are the rewards. A life of principle—of not succumbing to the temptations of easy morality—will always win in the end, leading you to the real wealth of the 21st century.
Question: Do you interpret “diversity” as something you see immediately with your eyes? Or do you look at diversity as the richness in heritage, culture, and experience of those with backgrounds different from your own?
Action: Reach out to someone today who is being excluded from your circle of colleagues or friends because of their apparent differences. Seek to include him or her.
Be a role model, not a critic.