Maintaining Honesty and Integrity

(Excerpted From Cultivating An Unshakable Character)

For a leader, honesty and integrity are absolutely essential to survival. A lot of business people don't realize how closely they're being watched by their subordinates. Remember when you were a kid in grammar school, how you used to sit there staring at your teacher all day? By the end of the school year, you could do a perfect imitation of all your teacher's mannerisms. You were aware of the slightest nuances in your teacher's voice - all the little clues that distinguished levels of meaning, that told you the difference between bluff and "now I mean business".

And you were able to do that after eight or nine months of observation. Suppose you had five or 10 years. Do you think there would have been anything about your teacher you didn't know?

Now fast forward and use that analogy as a manager. Do you think there's anything your people don't know about you right this minute? If you haven't been totally aboveboard and honest with them, do you really think you've gotten away with it? Not too likely. But if you've been led to believe that you've gotten away with it, there might be a good probability that people are afraid of you, and that's a problem in its own right.

But there is another side of this coin. In any organization, people want to believe in their leaders. If you give them reason to trust you, they're not going to go looking for reasons to think otherwise, and they'll be just as perceptive about your positive qualities as they are about the negative ones.

A situation that happened some years ago at a company in the Midwest illustrates this perfectly. The wife of a new employee experienced complications in the delivery of a baby. There was a medical bill of more than $10,000, and the health insurance company didn't want to cover it. The employee hadn't been on the payroll long enough, the pregnancy was a preexisting condition, etc,etc,..

In any case, the employee was desperate. He approached the company CEO and asked him to talk to the insurance people. The CEO agreed, and the next thing the employee knew, the bill was gone and the charges were rescinded. Then he told some colleagues about the way the CEO had so readily used his influence with the insurance company, they just shook their heads and smiled. The CEO had paid the bill out of his own pocket, and everybody knew it, no matter how quietly it had been done.

Now an act of dishonesty can't be hidden either, and it will instantly undermine the authority of a leader. But an act of integrity and kindness like the example above is just as obvious to all concerned. When you're in a leadership position, you have the choice of how you will be seen, but you Will be seen one way or the other, make no mistake about it.

One of the most challenging areas of leadership is your family. Leadership of a family demands even higher standards of honesty and integrity, and the stakes are higher too. You can replace disgruntled employees and start over. You can even get a new job for yourself, if it comes to that. But your family can't be shuffled like a deck of cards. If you haven't noticed, kids are great moral philosophers, especially as they get into adolescence. They're determined to discover and expose any kind of hypocrisy, phoniness, or lack of integrity on the part of authority figures, and if we're parents, that means us. It's frightening how unforgiving kids can be about this, but it really isn't a conscious decision on their part; it's just a necessary phase of growing up.

They're testing everything, especially their parents.

As a person of integrity yourself, you'll find it easy to teach integrity to your kids, and they in turn will find it easy to accept you as a teacher. This is a great opportunity and also a supreme responsibility, because kids simply must be taught to tell the truth: to mean what they say and to say what they mean.

"Praise is one the world's most effective teaching and leadership tools. Criticism and blame, even if deserved, are counter productive unless all other approaches have failed."

Now for the other side of the equation, we all know people who have gotten ahead as a result of dishonest or unethical behavior. When you're a kid, you might naively think that never happens, but when you get older, you realize that it does. Then you think you've really wised up. But that's not the real end of it. When you get older, you see the long-term consequences of dishonest gain, and you realize that in the end it doesn't pay.

"Hope of dishonest gain is the beginning of loss". I don't think that old saying refers to loss of money. I think it actually means loss of self-respect. You can have all the material things in the world, but if you've lost respect for yourself, what do you really have? The only way to ever attain success and enjoy it is to achieve it honestly with pride in what you've done.

This isn't just a sermon, it's very practical advice. Not only can you take it to heart - you can take it to the bank.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

To order Jim's best selling CD series Cultivating an Unshakable Character (6 CD's) from our Inventory Blowout Product Special, go to http://jr3.jimrohn.com

Reproduced with permission from Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine. Copyright 2005 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved worldwide. To subscribe to Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine, go to http://Jim-Rohn.InspiresYOU.com

---

The River of Life

I've always loved the awesome majesty of mountains. They are,... Read More

Today is Yesterdays Tomorrow

The problem with waiting until tomorrow is that when it... Read More

Motivational Posters - A Source Of Inspiration?

What Inspires You? What motivates you to get up in... Read More

Anam Cara - Going Beyond The Good

In Corrogue I receive a gift of love.I awake to... Read More

What Life is All About?

When we look at lives in any places in this... Read More

A Cat In The Hand Is Worth Two Birds In The Bush!

I bought this computer just over two years ago with... Read More

Fashionably Late

Direct Answers - Column for the week of January 6,... Read More

Get Out Of Your Own Way

One of the biggest obstacles to our self growth and... Read More

Listening to Your Heart!

Trying to predict stock price movements is necessary, of course.... Read More

Important Things to Know / Remember About Life

I love you not because who you are, but... Read More

Beyond the River: Kabbalahs Guidance for Our Times

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and... Read More

Who Is Dr Robert Anthony and Why Is He One of My Mentors and Heroes?

So who is Dr Robert Anthony?He is the best-selling author... Read More

Getting Past Those Blah Days

Get It OutWhen something is bothering you, whether be a... Read More

A Lesson From A Hum Of A Bamboo Clump

Have you heard a nature hymn? For example, a whir... Read More

Have You Been Lucky In Life?

Each moment in life, "lucky" or "unlucky", is to be... Read More

Supercharge Your Dreams!

We all accept the fact that the lighter the backpack,... Read More

Breaking Through Uncertainty - Welcoming Advertisty

We all question our ability at times. Uncertainty plagues us.... Read More

Lessons about Life in an Unexpected Place

Did you ever receive a gift in an unexpected place?I... Read More

Forgotten Dreams: At the End... Part I

Treasures of a lifetime...At the end of your life will... Read More

How I Made $10,000 In One Day By Swimming Underwater!

"Without health, life is not life; it is only a... Read More

Go Ahead, Toss the Starfish!

There is an old story that tells of a man... Read More

Letting Go Of Perfection

"The power of discovery enables us to achieve excellence without... Read More

Playing With Fire

Direct Answers - Column for the week of October 21,... Read More

Its Not My Job to Free Tibet

I hate saying that. It feels so very wrong. It's... Read More

The Serpents Genesis 1 and 2

Not long after the beginning a being fell from the... Read More

Lance Armstrong an Inspiration

Lance Armstrong has already proven he is the greatest athlete... Read More

Play It Forward --Living A Life Youve Always Wanted!

What would your life be like if you lived each... Read More

Duplicity

Direct Answers - Column for the week of January 26,... Read More

A Plan Of Attack

Direct Answers - Column for the week of October 28,... Read More

Anamchara - Living An Essential Life

What is essential in your life? This question contains one... Read More

Reality Check

Direct Answers - Column for the week of September 16,... Read More

I Dare You To Be Successful

Just imagine how it would feel to be successful...., to... Read More

The Challenge To Succeed

So much has been written about success that one often... Read More