Foundation of Leadership

Integrity – The Foundation of Leadership
By Wally Adamchik

In the post-Enron world of the early-21st century, integrity, and its cousin ethics, are words that get plenty of air time and even more lip-service. They’re tossed around carelessly, but the deeper, more difficult, dialogue on what integrity is and why it matters is critically absent. Your own definition of integrity may involve nuances different from the CEO across town. But, ultimately, the quality of integrity is based on strong values. It is the most-cited response to survey questions of what employees want in a boss. This top-ranking transcends generations and cultures. Universally, people want to work for someone they can trust.

Steelcase, the office equipment manufacturer, regularly conducts surveys of the worldwide office environment. In 1991, being honest, upright and ethical were very important to 87% of Canadians, and 72% of Japanese respondents. Jim Kouzes and Larry Posner, in Leadership is a Relationship, cite honesty as the most important supervisory trait in every study they have done since 1981. Over the years no fewer than eighty-seven percent of respondents listed honesty as number one.

Trustworthy

Integrity is the corollary to commander’s intent – the direction we receive from the boss. It is the trait that sends the message, “You can trust me to guide you in the right direction, and to watch out for you.” The reciprocal of trust is leadership in its most basic form. A leader says, “Here is what I want you to do, and I trust you to do it.” The follower says, “I will do it because I trust you to do the right thing.”