Written by: Cheryl Gray Hines, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Integrity is congruency and consistency between your words and your actions. It is honoring your agreements and the values you profess to hold true. It is having conversations to address issues and completing what you have committed to do. It is not letting your values be become tainted out of fear of rejection, potential conflict, or short-term gain. Having integrity means taking responsibility not just for the good things but when you screw up as well. It is recognizing that where you have fallen short of what you have committed to with yourself, in your interactions with others as well as professional responsibilities and pursuits in the past, present and making it right going forward. It means acknowledging that the direction, actions, or commitments you believed were the best that may not have been.
Whether you are the CEO, executive, D&I or HR leader or a rising star in middle management, an attribute of an effective and respected leader is being honest and leading others with integrity. In the Leadership Challenge, 6th edition by James Kouzes and Barry Posner data was collected from over 100,000 over 30 years and 87% identified honesty as one of the most admired characteristics of a leader. People across all types of industries and organizations want leaders who they can trust because of their integrity.
Integrity is about more than glaring examples of personal or professional misconduct and large organization catastrophes. Everyday integrity matters in how you show up, interact with others and how we manage the systems/processes within our organizations or social structure.
It is your everyday actions that support what you say and either demonstrate or diminish your integrity. Everyone has times when they fall short in integrity like not following up as promised, setting a personal or professional goal and not doing all you can to reach it, or committing to something you don’t have the capacity or resources to accomplish.
One thing to recognize about integrity is that you will never have 100% integrity. There will undoubtedly be promises broken, commitments made that were not fully considered that you cannot keep, areas where you do not follow through, false statements made in the name of expediency or without sufficient understanding or information which compromise your integrity. That is when you must go into restoration mode to restore your integrity.
Restoration mode may be in the form of an apology or acknowledgement that you were wrong, which can be a blow to the ego you are safeguarding. It may require listening to or even seeking out other perspectives because your approach quite frankly is self-serving and is not contributing to what you said you wanted to accomplish. It may require a reassessment of what you have the capability or capacity to do. Restoration of your integrity may be acknowledging that you cannot handle everything on your own and need the assistance of others.
The good news is you can restore your integrity!!!
To restore integrity, you must communicate it to the appropriate person(s), as soon as you realize you’ve blown it with a commitment, when know you are not going to do what you said or recognize you are unable to do what others expect of you. It means communicating without getting into reasons or excuses, acknowledging the impact of not keeping your word, and making a new promise, which you then keep.
Let’s look at an example of in the workplace that diminishes your integrity and then steps to restore your integrity.
There is a new project that you have been procrastinating on doing. You have had it on your priority list for weeks to complete the first phase. You have set time aside to focus on it, yet it keeps slipping off your schedule because you can do it tomorrow and there are more pressing items that take its place. Some of areas of preparation could be delegated but that will take time to explain you say you don’t have. You have let yourself become distracted whenever you get started telling yourself you don’t have enough information to start, you need to get more perspectives, you need more time to really go in depth, you just have too much on your plate and continually push it off your schedule. Tomorrow you have a meeting where you are supposed to talk about project however you are not prepared and have to reschedule the discussion. The delay will now impact other people being able to make decisions and act.
So you affected your workability and created feelings of inadequacy. So how do you restore your integrity now?
Here are five steps to restore your integrity:
1. Give up the story.
Story is the fabrication that you create in your mind because of an absence of information or to create a scenario that better serves you. Story is all excuses you made up like: you can do it tomorrow, it will take time to explain if you delegate, not enough information to get started, need more time to start. Story operates in the past to address the reasons why. So now when you are restoring your integrity you are in the present, where there is nothing. Just being aware that the story is in the past and now there is nothing. By creating a clear, still space, you can look and see what is there, look at the stress in the story that you made of the past. You can look at what is in front of you, without the filters of fear or regret, of resentment, blame, or shame, or guilt from the past, or fear, anxiety or worry about the future. This will complete the first step towards restoring integrity.
2. Acknowledge your broken promise/word.
Next, you have to acknowledge that you have broken the promise which you made. In this case the promise of completing the first phase of a project and that impacts the work of others. You have to accept the fact, responsibility for your actions and apologize.
3. Clean up the consequences of the break.
This is the most important step. You have to clean up the consequences by acknowledging the impact of breaking your word. In this case your impact on the ability of others to make decisions and act on work connected with the project.
4. Make a new promise.
Make a new promise and ensure that you keep the promise and restore your integrity by ensuring that you are prepared for the next meeting and subsequent meetings in the future.
5. Ensuring that you keep the promise next time.
To enable that, you need to put a structure in place by analyzing what went wrong. In this case, allocating time that you dedicate to doing what you can, getting assistance where needed and thinking of the consequences or impact of breaking my promise. Drop the excuses and instead think of the benefits which will give you power to focus and finish as well as access to workability.
Remember,
"Integrity means workability!"
Integrity in the workplace requires individuals at all levels to establish and maintain a culture of honesty, transparency, equity, respect, trust, accountability and adjusting based on the situation and impact on the people it serves internally and externally. Integrity is the foundation of a successful organization because it preserves the reputation and respectability of the leaders and the company.
Cheryl Gray Hines, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Cheryl Gray Hines is an accomplished entrepreneur, executive coach, and mentor with a mission to support women to live authentically and be their best. Her deep expertise in leadership, organizational development, and business strategy has equipped her to coach executives and leaders through the most challenging transitions. As founder of C. Gray & Associates, she teaches Fortune 100 corporations, federal agencies, and high-net-worth entrepreneurs that leadership integrity is the foundation of stellar business performance.
