And there you have it. What’s more important…how do you judge…how do you develop options for behavior that delivers on all fronts – soft and hard; philosophical and business outcome; personal and group – you get the picture…

Seems to me it boils down to what we carry in our core; how we engage across all fronts; what we want to be seen and remembered for – listen to this:

“It is our choices…that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”
~J. K. Rowling

And there you have it. Look at how many of the so-called “biggest and best” have fallen – remembered for nothing more than the poor choices they made; the people they hurt; the chaos they left in their wake.

And now think of the flip side – the formerly unsung heroes who did the right thing; made the right choices; maybe didn’t have the profile or the power shot but in the end counted the most.

I know both types – what do you think?

Here is my take – almost by definition integrity demands that you change your environment. That you influence your peers, create an atmosphere conducive to truth and honesty, and that you, under no circumstances, allow your surroundings to affect you in a negative way.

In fact, I’d argue – will in fact argue – that the following quote says it all:

“Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.”
–Al Watts

Check any list of the best places to work – anywhere in the world – and I am ready to bet that you will find a company built on ideals – and a company built on ideals supports people with ideals and you get the point.

Ask yourself – does your integrity extend upwards and outwards and embrace and cajole and nudge and teach and occasionally push until you have created an unbroken chain of ideals? Or do you stay in your corner, keep your head down, and watch the deals go by?

Your call…now what do you think?

I always find it helpful to look up synonyms for words I get enamored with. I had an English teacher in High School, Mrs. Edith Schrank – we called her Dame Edith – who drilled the Bard into us and planted in me a lifelong obsession with reading the New York Times every morning before work (school in her case). “Children…all successful people read the New York Times in the morning. It gives you something to talk about…fuel for intelligent and thoughtful conversation….” Back to synonyms – besides literature and newspapers, she loved words. And she taught me the proper use of a thesaurus to better understand language, connotation and denotation – check those two words.

Anyway, back to Integrity – truth, honor, reliability, and uprightness. I used only a few – but look at the broad yet interconnected associations. From the basic tenet of truth to the near religious experience of uprightness. From the heights of pure admiration to the down and dirty of good old dependability. Integrity is rich with meaning and association.

It’s also instructive to look at antonyms – opposite meanings. And, here, the source is unforgiving and brief – dishonesty. Slam dunk.
Based on this, I have found a quote that I felt encapsulated the idea:

“If you have integrity, nothing else matters; if you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”
–Alan Simpson
May nothing else matter….

What’s your view?

To get the ball rolling – we all have power – power is not a function of status (amount of power or type of power might be, but that is another posting) – power is how we get our jobs done, no matter if we clean the floors or advise a President.

Listen to this:

I repeat…that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise…
–Benjamin Disraeli

A critical thought – do I hear integrity in here?

Do I hear you?

But here is the thing – I get the quality focus and the “get it right” philosophy process – like Six Sigma – no? What does Integrity have to do with it? Ethical behavior as a way to create quality control? Efficiency? Anyone pay attention to the news lately….

And then it struck me…that is the point – read the news and look at the mess much of the corporate world has gotten us into. It seems honesty might be a debatable virtue and even a line of defense. The sad and dirty truth is that many of the rules (or lack of them) allowed bad behavior and manipulation – ergo, there was “honest” behavior – or an approximation of honesty if you allow that all you did was push some rules to the limit in some cases, and in others as there were no rules, how were you to know?

And there you have it – honesty is just not enough. So what then is integrity? How do you define it so that it makes clear what mere honesty seems to leave in the world of fuzzy thinking.

And here is where today’s quote hopefully brings some clarity:

“Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not.” – Oprah Winfrey

Do you see it?

Real Integrity has nothing to do with the rules – written or unwritten. It has nothing to do with who’s watching or not or how many regulatory bodies have you in their sights or how many promises you have made or papers you have signed.
It has everything to do with what you know is right or wrong – and with how you deal with that knowledge in the quiet and solitude of your own soul when your only audience or monitor is yourself.

I can point to just about every great relationship I know – business or personal – and bet that if it’s successful there is a high level of integrity involved. And I’m ready to bet the higher the integrity, the closer the relationship and the greater the level of trust. And the greater the level of trust, the more you can get done…see where this all goes.

Integrity – a mantra for a world where honesty has taken a clear beating and has lost so much value – a way to develop trust and credibility – a filter for our own behavior that is truly one’s own to be applied in the darkest dark of night when no one else is watching….

What do you think?