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 The CEO agreed, and the next thing the employee knew, the bill was gone and the charges were rescinded.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

---

Seven Things You Must Give to Others if You Want to Achieve Success!

A major part of the process of achieving success and... Read More

Wanna Trade Places?

Even immediately after my car accident, every single person who... Read More

Lisas Christmas

Lisa was born into a loving Christian family and went... Read More

Everybody is Somebody

I wrote about my life and all that I have... Read More

The Fuel for Creative Vigor

Writing a book or creating a killer headline requires a... Read More

Lifes Purpose

To every life, there is a purpose; a purpose of... Read More

Why Should We Keep Our Thoughts Clear?

From my experience some healings come instantly or during short... Read More

A Life of Purposes Extraction

Purpose. What is purpose? Drinking coffee when you wake up... Read More

Good-Bye Yesterday, Hello Today

Many of us are unable to move forward with our... Read More

Beluga Whale Hits the River

Wonders never cease. Just when those in our area of... Read More

Surrender, Complete Healing, and the Garden of Eden

In 1982, I found myself in Eden. What I found... Read More

Get Out Of Your Own Way

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

Spring Quotations - Top 30 Quotations About Spring Time

"Is it so small a thing To have enjoy'd the... Read More

What an Artist Experiences When Working With the Angels

I am an Angel artist on a passionate spiritual journey... Read More

Without Love

Direct Answers - Column for the week of December 30,... Read More

Oldies

Direct Answers - Column for the week of January 5,... Read More

The Minds Fancy Dress Party -Or- A Brainstorming Session

In Berlin a restaurant opens for anorexics and in Buffalo... Read More

The Most Powerful Question Ever Asked?

What if every experience in your life is sent to... Read More

Repeat Offender

Direct Answers - Column for the week of July 8,... Read More

Stand Up!

One of the most undervalued blessings is God's will to... Read More

The Priceless Gift of a Knee-High Smile

She was just over knee-high standing next to me in... Read More

Essential Ingredient

Direct Answers - Column for the week of September 15,... Read More

A Childs Plight

In the streets of Bogotá, a child - named Simon*... Read More

Need A Boost? Take a Look at How Far Youve Come

Too many of us are too hard on ourselves, always... Read More

7 Strategies to Overcoming Anxiety and Panic Attacks

You Can Overcome panic attacks and anxiety! That is great... Read More