Integrity; Don’t Leave Home Without It…
After surveying thousands of people around the world and performing more than 400 written case studies, James Kouzes and Barry Posner* identified those characteristics most desired in a leader. In virtually every survey, honesty or integrity was identified more frequently than any other trait.
That makes sense, doesn’t it? If people are going to follow someone, whether into battle or in business or ministry, they want assurance that their leader can be trusted. They want to know that he or she will keep promises and follow through with commitments. When we talk about integrity today, we generally use other, closely related terms such as ethics and morality. But a clear understanding of the concept of integrity requires clear thinking about all three words. Each has a distinct meaning. When properly used, they bring clarity to a crucial but often misunderstood leadership essential:
- Ethics refers to a standard of right and wrong, good and evil.
- Morality is a lived standard of right and wrong, good and evil.
- Integrity means “sound, complete, integrated.” To the extent that a person’s ethics and morality are integrated, that person has integrity. To the extent that a person’s ethics and morality are not integrated, that person lacks integrity.
You can have a high or low ethic. You can be moral or immoral. The choice is yours. But if you want to have integrity, you must choose your ethic and live to match it. Anyone who wants to lead at least owes it to prospective followers to let them know what they are getting into.
This presentation is a shirt sleeve, round table, eyeball to eyeball discussion about the most important character trait of the human personality. Are you and/or your organization up to the challenge? If so, contact Mike Lisi.com…
* Kouzes, James M., and Posner, Barry Z. Credibility: How leaders gain and lose it, why people demand it (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993)
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