If you have integrity, nothing else matters.
If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
Alan Simpson
Are you integrated, dis-integrated or just dis-interested?
In some respect we are all leaders. If you lead no one else in this life, because of the fact that we are born with free will, you lead yourself. You also lead your family members, and often you will have opportunity to lead groups of people at work. Frequently we are unaware of the impact that we have on people’s lives. The most important aspect of your roles as leaders is to be consistent and integrated. What do I mean by integrated?
Do all of your pieces fit together?
Do all of your pieces fit together, or is there some part of your leadership that is out of joint? Your thoughts, should match your core values, which should match what you say and all of this, of course, should match your walk. Your walk is simply the way you go through your daily life. How you act, how you speak, what you speak about, how you do things, what you choose to do…everything. How often have you seen a leader who has been successful at guiding others by saying one thing and then doing something completely different? Not very often, right? That because it just doesn’t work!
People learn a great deal more about you by watching the way you act than they ever do by listening to the words you speak. What is at work in our hearts and minds will eventually show through our actions. When you try to teach principles without also modeling them for people with the right behavior, those principles will eventually fall by the wayside for those you are trying to instruct, as well as on a personal level. When you are in positions of authority, whether it is interacting with your teenagers or sitting in the corner office, it is of utmost importance to lead by example if you expect to gain any measure of compliance.
What happens when you are dis-integrated?
What happens when you try to teach certain life principles to people, but allow your own actions to demonstrate otherwise? Three things:
- Those people you expect compliance from will very quickly learn to resent you, especially if the principles you are teaching are a challenge for them to perform or difficult for them to incorporate into their own behavior.
- You run the risk of gaining a negative reputation as an ineffective leader or teacher as you continue to lose sight of the very actions you wished to teach. You lose credibility.
- There will be dissension in the ranks. Cases of rebellion will continue to grow as more and more people feel they’re being dictated to rather than being led. From here it continues on a downward slide: defiance, disobedience, resistance, undermining of your authority, and finally mutiny.
Importance of Integrity
- People learn to support principles based on results. For example, if you are teaching honesty, when people can observe for themselves that you can gain the trust of others by being honest, they will likely get on board with the program because they begin to see the benefits of being honest themselves. If on the other hand you are teaching honesty, and you are frequently caught in lies, a totally different lesson emerges.
- People actually understand the principles. Just saying principles, or hanging them on the walls of your office, is rarely enough. In fact, most people come into situations and jobs with their own ideas of what is to be expected of them, which is probably different than what you expect them to produce, based on their background and education.
- It brings cohesion and cooperation to your team. The whole team is working with the same or similar expectations. When everybody is on the same page, processes, departments and even families run much more smoothly and cohesively.
- Respect. When others can see that you are fully complying with the principles we are teaching, you will ultimately gain their respect and trust.
How do you start?
If you think your leadership style is unstable, or your ethics compromised, take a deep breath, stop, and reassess.
Write down your goals. It is a very easy place to begin when you can clearly write out your expectations. This will also help to make it clearer to you what you want. You have heard it said before that, “knowing is half the battle.” Well, it’s the easiest half. It takes a lot of effort to really walk your talk and to practice the behaviors that you want others to imitate. But you can get started practicing this positive principle on a daily basis with only a small amount of effort.
Start with the smallest circle of influence you have.
- Give yourself the opportunity to impart morals and good belief systems on your immediate family and close friends. Generally speaking, if you cannot get any of these people on board with your program, then outside success seems less likely…Generally speaking.
- Tackle the principles one at a time. People will not respond well to a whole new set of rules and behaviors dumped on them all at once. Break it down into manageable and do-able tasks.
- Work hard at allowing it to become an integral part of your own everyday life. New habits take time to develop, so you must be diligent.
- Celebrate and reward all successes. Be uplifting when you talk about the wins and the “almost-wins.”
- Once you have mastered one, and then move on to something else. But remember, it’s vitally important that you to be able to give testimony to the fact that there is actually greater benefit to adhering to that particular principle than not adhering to it. There is a certain element of fulfillment when you can show others just what kinds of actions, thoughts and behaviors contribute to a better, more wholesome and less stressful outcome.
Walking the talk, being integrated, having integrity is a lifelong journey, and a full-time commitment. There will be times that you will fall below your own expectations and the principles you aspire to uphold. However, what’s important is that you recognize it and take the necessary steps to get your integrity back on track as soon as possible!
Thoughts?
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lumaxart/2137737248/sizes/z/in/photostream/
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