Not long ago, I overheard a disagreement between an employee and the owner of a company. The basic gist of the dispute was that the owner had directed the employee to take actions that the employee felt were both deceptive and dishonest. The owner of the company brought the disagreement to a close when he said, “Sometimes you take integrity to an extreme!”
Later, I found myself wondering, how can integrity be taken to an extreme? Isn’t integrity a bit like being dead or alive? One is either dead or one is alive. There is no real middle ground. Isn’t integrity something that a person either has or does not have?
Great leaders recognize that cutting corners in matters of right and wrong can quickly become a slippery slope. Once it becomes acceptable to tell a small lie, it becomes acceptable to tell the big lie if it means getting the deal done, making the sale, acquiring the customer. The problem, of course, is that one lie leads to another; and, when the deal doesn’t live up to the promise, the product doesn’t deliver what was promised, the customer loses faith not only in the person who told the lies but also faith in the firm that the person represents.
Great leaders who are employers and managers also know that integrity is paramount when leading their followers, their employees. They know that promises made must become promises kept if they are to retain credibility with their followers. Once promises are broken, future assurances become meaningless. Employees who know that their bosses don’t keep promises have no reason to believe that the promised incentive will actually be delivered. The boss never understands why the worker fails to make the extra effort to earn the promised reward; never realizes that his or her own past failures to honor commitments have forever destroyed the employee’s willingness to make the extra effort. The employee has learned to see the promised reward is just another false pretext to get more work, more production. The employee knows (perhaps rightly, perhaps wrongly) that the reward will never be received; the bonus will never be paid; the extra vacation time will never be approved.
If we are to be great leaders, we must begin by recognizing that integrity really is that important. Without it, are we even worthy of the title “leader”?