You are Showing Integrity by Reading This!
You are Showing
Integrity by
Reading This!
If you ask company executives to reveal their “core values,” integrity is always one of their first answers, says Joel C. Peterson, chairman of the board of JetBlue Airways and a Stanford University professor of management. The single most important ingredient to business success is trust, Peterson says, and trust starts with integrity.
Entrepreneur and angel investor Amy Rees Anderson borrows from C.S. Lewis’s famous quote, defining integrity as “doing the right thing all the time, even when no one is looking—especially when no one is looking.”
Anderson offers many examples of acting without integrity: CEOs who overstate their projected star Alex Rodriguez’ use of performance-enhancing drugs.
But what does a person acting with integrity look like? Positive examples may be harder to find. Anderson, who lectures on entrepreneurship at the University of Utah, believes “there aren’t enough of us saying that sometimes it’s better to lose than to lose your integrity.” A plaque in Anderson’s office reinforces her philosophy: “Do what is right; let the consequences follow.”
That holds true in both personal and professional relationships. “If you don’t have integrity, it bleeds over into other parts of your life,” she says. Peterson agrees, saying that integrity can’t be compartmentalized—that “there is a kind of integrity across all of our behaviors.”
How many times in the past have you gone against what you know is “right” and then almost instantly regretted it? How often have you received and email, become annoyed and had a knee jerk reaction and shot back an answer immediately – and then thought to yourself “ I wish I hadn’t said that now”
Often it is worth while pausing before making a snap judgement and then deciding how you want to respond.
A person who lacks integrity will make decisions based on how it will make them look rather than how it will benefit others. They look at their actions as a performance to be rated for approval rather than a step toward doing the right thing for the community.
Integrity is a word that we hear almost every day but we seldom take the time to think about it. Integrity is similar to ethics, honesty, and trustworthiness—they are a moral code of values that affect our behavior. Integrity is about doing the right thing in every situation, whether it’s convenient or not.
The world is so competitive that some people will lie, cheat, and bribe to get what they want, either for themselves or their children. Integrity is pushed to the side but people who don’t want to be featured on the front page from a scandal will need to scrutinize their lack of integrity and moral codes to a far greater degree than they have in the past. Leaders, entrepreneurs, and business owners must accept that they are held to a higher standard of integrity than others.
Another example of being out of integrity – of which I am sometimes guilty – is other people’s driving!
We all have to share the roads, no matter how annoying that reality might be. How you drive says a lot about you—how you treat people you don’t know; how you handle anger; and the extent to which you suffer from entitlement.
Perhaps you’d like to believe that someone who drives slowly or non-aggressively is simply less busy than you, but driving in a cooperative manner that is mindful of your fellow commuters is actually a sign of integrity. Let us all try to practice it more when we’re behind the wheel.
With Love & Light,
Roger