Integrity is Priceless and Costs Nothing
Timothy R. Clark
Oxford-trained social scientist, CEO of LeaderFactor, HBR contributor, author of "The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety," co-host of The Leader Factor podcast
On one occasion I was training leaders at a Fortune 500 corporation. I brought a large for-sale sign into the room, you know, the kind you plant in your front yard to sell your house. Then I posed the question, “Are you for sale?”
If you don’t have an ethical creed that goes to your marrow, you will eventually go to the highest bidder.
Through the course of your professional life, you will run an ethical gauntlet. You will be propositioned to lie, steal, cheat, extort, bribe, indulge, silence, swindle, defraud, scam, evade, and exploit.
Even if you don’t go looking, the opportunities for ethical misconduct will find you. At the very least, you will be asked to remain purse-lipped and silent as you witness soft forms of crooked behavior around you.
Anticipate the obstacles. Prepare for their arrival. When an ethical dilemma presents itself in the moment, the situation suddenly becomes pressurized. Negotiators call it “deal heat.” Be ready for that dialed-up intensity. And be alert because ethical issues do not announce themselves. Howard Winkler, manager of ethics and compliance at Southern Company, said, “When an ethical issue arises, it does not come gift-wrapped with a note that says, ‘This is an ethical issue. Prepare to make an ethical decision.’ It just comes across as another business problem that needs to be solved.”
Know too that at least once in your life you will face a monumental obstacle, a severe trial, a crucible affliction that will try your integrity to the breaking point. You may well experience, as writer Victor Hugo said of his character Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, “the pressure of disproportionate misfortune.” That day comes for all of us when our integrity goes on trial.
It came for Sir Walter Scott, the beloved Scottish writer, when his publishing house failed and he found himself buried under crushing debt. In his personal journal, he described it this way: “Yet God knows, I am at sea in the dark, and the vessel leaky.”
Integrity is priceless and costs nothing. Get some.
(Exerpt: Leading with Character and Competence: Moving Beyond Title, Position, and Authority (Berrett-Koehler)
Trainer/ Inspections civil/mechanical
8 年Mark I can't tell you how many times I have named my price and no one has stepped up as of yet! lol Integrity some people should look up its meaning rather than think they know what it is! Good post!