Integrity and LeadershipIt is a
pleasure to share some of my reflections and work with a group that over the
years has provided so much nourishment to me. I hope that what I share helps
us individually and collectively “live up to our promise,” my shorthand
definition of “integrity,” our topic for this morning.
Specifically, our topic this morning is Integrity and Leadership,
which I must confess sounds a little redundant. If we are a true leader
don’t we need to have integrity? And if we are a person of real integrity
won’t others be compelled to follow our lead? As Warren Bennis put it:
As I see it now, leadership is character, and the process of
becoming a
leader is much the same as becoming an integrated human being.
- Warren Bennis
I still remember those long cold walks in my college days across the bridge
spanning the University of Minnesota’s East and West bank campuses. As you
may know, the East Bank is where the College of Liberal Arts is housed, and
at that time was also a base for environmental activism and considerable
protests against the Vietnam War and the “military industrial complex.” I
would walk from my liberal arts classes, friends and passionate activism on
the East Bank to my business classes on the West Bank – which you might say
were the training grounds for “the military industrial complex,” and where
one would hardly know what all the fuss was about across the river. I
remember that as the start of a “professional schizophrenia,” or
“homelessness” of sorts, that I have experienced most of my professional
life. Over the course of my ten years “on the inside” of organizations and
my twenty years as a consultant to organizations, it seems for the most part
like “a river still runs through it.” There is a divide, important that we
heal for integrity’s sake, between business as mostly practiced – where
things are “just business” and all revolves around short-term financial
results – and “where we live” / what really counts, or what we should care
about.
About six years ago I found myself on a bridge spanning the Mississippi
River again, the “Stone Arch Bridge,” this time contemplating my “life
purpose” – an overnight assignment in the executive development program I
was participating in. What I landed on was “to serve as a catalyst for
integrity.” I wasn’t sure what that all meant at the time, but I have
focused the last five years of my practice developing that theme and
aligning my work more with that purpose.
I am sharing this story partly to illustrate that our “stories” are part of
who we are, and provide narrative clues about our “promise.” We all have “a
story.” As Robert Fullford put it in The Triumph of Narrative: “To
discover we have no story is to acknowledge that our existence is
meaningless, which we may find unbearable.” I believe not only that we all
have a story, but also that each of us is born into this world as a
“promise,” and that our “story” provides some clues about what that promise
is. (James Hillman, in his book The Soul’s Code, provides multiple
examples of how peoples’ early-life stories provided clues about their
character and calling.) Our promise, just like a brand, is a promise that
gets fulfilled or not, depending on the strength of our integrity.
So my first question for you is this: What is your “story,” and what
clues (perhaps “defining moments”) does it provide about your “promise?”
What purpose have you been born for that you are uniquely endowed to
deliver?
Our “story,” or our “promise,” is fundamental to what I consider the
foundation for integrity: Identity, so that is the base of my
organizational and leadership integrity model (see accompanying diagram.)
Strong leaders, and leading organizations, need to know who they are
and what they value.
A while back, Jim Collins did some research on companies that he called a
book by the same name: Built To Last. He identified a dozen or so
companies – like Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett Packard, Motorola, Marriott,
3M and Sony – each at least fifty years old, where your return on investment
in their stock on average would have yielded you 12Xs the Dow’s average
return since the Dow started. A characteristic that all of these companies
shared in common was a clear core ideology, consisting mainly of
their purpose and core values, that they consistently practiced – even when
staying true to those core values meant a short-term competitive
disadvantage. A classic example was Johnson and Johnson pulling all of their
Tylenol off every store shelf in every store back in 1986 when several who
had taken Tylenol died of poisoning. They didn’t just remove their product
from the markets where poisoning had occurred, but every single container
being sold anywhere, at a cost of many millions of dollars. Soon we learned
that the poison had been injected in a few bottles by a deranged individual
who was unaffiliated with Tylenol, but Tylenol went on to spearhead the
tamper-proof caps that we have today. Tylenol’s actions were driven by their
number one value: to protect the lives and promote the health of their
customers.
Contrast that to the likes of Enron, WorldCom and Arthur Andersen, which all
also had stated missions and core values, no doubt framed and reproduced on
laminated cards. The critical difference, of course, is that those companies
and the executives who led them didn’t live the companies’ stated values.
Warning signs of potential trouble for client organizations that I have
learned to watch for are “identity crises” – where their core purpose and
core values are non-existent or unclear. Was Enron an energy company or a
trading company? Was Arthur Andersen an independent audit firm or an audit
firm that profited from endorsement or promotion of securities on the side?
Are large, not-for-profit health care institutions really in the business of
preserving and increasing community health, or has their primary focus
become “the bottom line?”
My second question for you: What is your “core ideology?” What values
or principles do you stand for, and can you think of examples of where you
were true to your values even when it hurt? (And remember, “if we do not
stand for something, we are likely to fall for anything.”)
There is much more to Identity, but let’s move for now to the second
dimension of this integrity model: Authenticity.
Why do we follow leaders? To a large degree we follow leaders because we
trust them; they are credible. They are credible because they tell the
truth, even, or perhaps especially, when the truth is hard. They are
believable, too, because they “walk their talk.” What they say is what they
do – behavior is consistent with their stated values. We would not say of
such a leader, or of an organization that walked its talk in this manner:
“Your actions speak so loudly that we cannot hear what you are saying!”
In his book Integrity, Stephen Carter outlines his “test” for when
not following the rules or violating policy demonstrate integrity:
• We act consistently
with our beliefs and about what we have discerned is the right
thing
to do.
• We tell others what we
have done, and why.
• We accept
responsibility for our actions and the consequences of our behavior.
a pretty good test, I think.
As we become clear about who we are, we find our voice. Authenticity is
about using our voice and “connecting our voice with touch” –
acting consistently with who we are and what we believe. Acting
is the operative term here. We must not just speak our truth, but act it
out.
Authenticity is about reality. I think leaders see things more clearly, and
earlier than others. They see things for what they are, perhaps because
their vision is clearer and because their sight isn’t clouded by
self-serving agendas or interpretation filters.
Here is another question for you: When can you remember someone
exercising leadership by seeing, or perhaps naming, the truth or what was
really going on before others did? What was the impact of that?
“Truth” is tricky. Have you ever wondered how someone who was so convinced
he or she knew “the truth” could have such a different point of view than
yours? And how many wars – geopolitical, religious or organizational – have
been fought over different parties’ take on “the truth?”
I think that “truth is a team sport.” I often make the distinction for my
clients between discussion, which is a lot like debate, and dialog.
The Greek derivation of dialog means something like “meaning flowing
through the group.” Groups or communities engaged in real dialog are open to
(no, expecting that) “the truth” will be different than what they think it
is. They will ask questions and share ideas to build on each other’s
different perspectives, examine their assumptions and withhold early
conclusions or decisions. In the process they create a truer view of reality
and are better able to decide the best course of action.
Leaders are catalysts for dialog, and that dialog process leads not only to
greater truth, but to alignment. Alignment, the third
dimension of my model for integrity, is partially this “harmonizing”
process. It also has to do with leaders and their organizations being in
touch – connected, or “in tune” – with their customers, constituencies and
communities.
Last month’s presenter, Tim Geoffrion, and I have a book in common on our
“favorite books list:” The Congruent Life, by C. Michael Thompson.
Alignment is also about congruity. A “congruent life” is one that hangs
together, or “makes sense,” like a structure that models architectural
integrity. Warren Bennis conjured a wonderful analogy for leaders who had
congruent lives. He calls them “tapestries of intention,” where “life
threads” are woven together in a way that makes sense – where everywhere you
look there is congruity – between private and public life, or between values
and behavior. Organizations like the ones that Jim Collins wrote about in
Built to Last also demonstrate congruity – congruity, or alignment
between their mission / vision / values and who they hire, who they fire,
how they pay, how they communicate and what they communicate about, etc. . .
Non-alignment, or lack of congruency, drains energy – personal and
organizational energy. We feel “off,” or things don’t seem to fit – as the
Jedi knights in “Star Wars” put it: we feel a “disturbance in the force.”
One of the ways it drains energy in organizations is that we spend needless
energy trying to figure out what is really most important or expected of us.
Think of the mixed signals, or how demotivating it can be, for example, when
we hear that “people are our most important asset” but we see people around
us promoted all the time who seem to have made a career out of stepping on
people.
Here is our third discussion question: How congruent, or aligned, does
your life feel now? How congruent, or aligned is where you work, or
organizations where you have worked? What leadership could you demonstrate
to close any gaps or to “heal” any disconnects?
In a sense that last question was a sort of “integrity audit” – taking some
time to ask ourselves whether what we believe, how we act, and how we
allocate our resources are aligned. I think responsible leaders take this
kind of time regularly to check whether their “deeds match their creeds.” I
still remember a very thoughtful leader of a large physician practice that
was a client telling me how he tries to spend time at the end of each day
examining what promises he had made and if he made progress fulfilling them
that day. I have tried to incorporate that practice into my own “examen.”
FYI, for a more systematic way to do these kinds of checks, you will find
information on my website about an Organizational Integrity Survey.
It can be used as a self-check, but serves primarily as a “360°” assessment
of an individual leader’s, a team’s or an organization’s “alignment.” I used
results from that instrument last Fall as the foundation for a large law
practice retreat, and that served as the catalyst for some very authentic
conversation about how the firm and partners could be in even greater
alignment with their core values.
This leads to the last dimension of integrity and of inTEgro’s model that I
wanted to share: Accountability. Leaders and organizations that
demonstrate integrity live up to their promise and keep their promises.
Because keeping promises, even small ones, is “sacred” to them, even though
they will challenge themselves and a group by setting stretch goals they are
careful to not over-commit or make promises they can’t keep.
Part of why leaders are able to live up to their promise and to keep their
promises is because they pay attention to the things that matter. If
customer satisfaction and service is the number one priority, then that is
what gets measured every which way from Sunday. Those measures get
communicated broadly, with everyone understanding that those measures are
critical, and that if things don’t measure up gaps need to be closed.
Likewise with employee morale (or “engagement,” or whatever the popular term
is these days regarding the “people factor,”) learning, “corporate
citizenship” and other key “promises” organizations or leaders consider
important to who they are.
Many leaders and their organizations have gotten fooled in to thinking that
only one measure really matters. Guess what that is? Right – financial
results, and worse – short-term financial results. And for the heads
of the Enrons, Adelphis and WorldComs it seems that what mattered most was
personal short-term financial results.
The pressures to deliver short-term financial results, coupled with our
sense that it takes more than just that to be great (as validated by Jim
Collins in Built To Last,) led to the popularity of a trend called
“the Balanced Scorecard” a few years ago. The “Balanced Scorecard” approach
advocates the discipline of balanced measures from four perspectives: the
Customer, Internal Business Processes, Learning and Financial perspectives.
The “Triple Bottom Line” philosophy takes a similar approach, but from a
much larger, more all-stakeholder inclusive perspective. It provides a
framework for measuring and reporting corporate performance against
economic, social and environmental parameters.
In a sense I think that a mark of a leader’s “maturity” is how inclusive or
balanced his or her “scorecard” is. I think of “maturity” here in the vein
of Lawrence Kohlberg’s Theory of Human Development, which postulated six
stages of human development, from Stage 1 – concerned only with the
gratification of one’s personal needs, through Stage 4 – internalization of
broader society’s values and up to Stage 6 – exceedingly rare, where one
“lives with felt participation in a power that unifies and transforms the
world.” (Fowler, J. W., Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human
Development and the Quest for Meaning; San Francisco: Harper Collins,
1981, pp200-201.)
If we are to “live up to our promise,” it is important that we pay attention
to the things that matter for the multiple stakeholders of our work and
lives – however broadly we have defined “stakeholders,” but assuming that
it’s a broader group than just ourselves. As Martin Buber put it:
“One need ask only “What for? What am I to unify my being for?” The
reply
is: Not for my own sake.”
So my last questions are these: Who are the main “stakeholders” in
your life? If leadership means “paying attention to the things that matter,”
what matters most in your life / work, and what kind of a “balanced
scorecard” should you keep?
Much more has been written about what “leadership” is, but my view is that
integrity lies at the core. In the end, perhaps the major value any of us
has to contribute is our own unique point of view. Leadership starts with
discerning what that is, and “using our voice” to contribute that point of
view.
We live and work in a time where the mandate for performance and growth has
never been greater. At the same time, a growing proportion of the working
population is seeking opportunities for greater meaning and fulfillment. I
believe that integrity will be the bridge that connects authentic
self-expression and fulfillment with creation of real value.
In closing, I leave you with these quotes:
If you call forth what is in you, it will save you. If you do not
call forth what
is in you, it will destroy you.
- Gospel of Saint Thomas
To
be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is
the only end in life.
- Robert Louis Stevenson
Leadership and
Organizational Integrity Model
Identity
• Self knowledge
• Core ideology
Authenticity
• Truth-seeking and truth-telling
• Values in action
Alignment
• Learner and integrator
• "All of a piece"
Accountability
• Fulfill promises
• Stewardship
|
