Leadership Traits: Integrity

Sorry!  Looks like I got ahead of  myself a little bit.  Integrity comes before Loyalty in the acronym, but is no less important to your leadership tool belt.

Loyalty and integrity are a lot alike.  While Loyalty tends to indicate a focus on specific groups, or people, integrity is has a much broader scope.  Both are reactions by you according to your ideals, and morals.

If you are not integral, you probably wont be in business very long, you wont be employed very long, and you probably wont have many friends.

It’s very odd to me.  I’ve known people who would lie, cheat, and steal … and not because they had 20 starving children at home.  They would demonstrate a lack of integrity because they thought it was how to get respected … made them cool.  I know I didn’t want anything to do with them after demonstration of their lack of integrity.

The girls of my generation had an adage, ‘Never date a guy you would trust with your car keys.’  I didn’t understand this.  I never understood how someone could embrace another person lacking integrity.  What I do understand is that my generation has had an inordinate number of single mothers organized society has been obligated to finance.  There are also an inordinate number of penniless old bachelors out there who’ll  live in shanties the throughout their adulthood, and die toothless and wrinkled on the production line.

If you lack integrity, you reap what you sow pretty quick.  Most people inherently follow the principle of once bitten, twice shy … and that principle is normally applied immediately.  It takes a long time to reverse the effects from a lack of integrity.  Furthermore, when others observe you acting less than integral, they’ll remember, and be less apt to hand you kibbles through the fence.

If you are in a leadership position, guard your integrity.  Execute your morals, and ideals uniformly, and with good judgment.  If you’re not in a leadership position, you may never get there if you don’t.

Till next time, remember, you are spectacular.