Honesty and integrity are certainly core attributes of leadership regardless of where ranked. No reasonable person would disagree of its importance to developing trust in a leader. Being honest and acting with integrity is simply speaking and doing what is morally and ethically right based upon right reasoning. It is about being, knowing, as well as, about doing. Being a moral person and demonstrating moral behaviors is about keeping oneself in alignment with their own core values and virtues and those of their organization.
Leadership integrity is of utmost importance because it lays the foundation for the organizational culture. Leader honesty and integrity gives everyone boundaries for executing the organizational mission. Organizations with leaders who model honesty and integrity and demand it from everyone else are basically providing a template for conducting business. An organization or a leader of a team within an organization with a highly developed culture of integrity is one that is more effective and efficient. It is important to remember that an organization’s leadership culture is nothing more than the sum total of the qualities of individual leaders within the organization.
A leader of integrity and honesty within a morally cultured organization can say to the team; “This is our vision. Up this highway is where we want to go; your job is to help get us there anyway you chose as long as you stay on the inside of the ditches. You know what is between the ditches and you know what is beyond the ditches. Go and act accordingly.” The ditches, of course, represent moral boundary lines. Between the ditches reflects the beliefs, values and moral compass of the organization.
When your organization clearly and concisely points out where true moral north is and has honest leadership to model it, the leader is able to get out of the way and let the team achieve the goals and objectives more effectively and efficiently. Without a leader of integrity who sets the high ethical standard for his team, or without clear, concise, well understood organizational values a leader would have to always present to ensure compliant behaviors.
Can you imagine as the leader, walking along this highway and every few steps having to stop and bark out at someone, “Do this!”- “Don’t do that!” - “Get back over here!” Not to mention worrying about what “they” are doing when he is not present. Does this reflect what you, as the leader of your team, are doing now? I hope not but if you are I can tell you where your destination is; Burnout City!
Without the moral culture in place you the leader would have to use your less effective positional authority, i.e., the old carrot and stick approach, to get things done. This we can agree is a poor and inefficient way of leading. As a leader do you have the time to walk guard duty with a big stick? Do you?
What we all want from our team is willful and voluntary compliance and not coerced compliance. We want to command and not demand. We want discretionary effort that goes beyond “what is required by policy.” Coerced compliance is good for as long as the boss is looking whereas the willful and voluntary compliance is effective without leadership presence. With honesty and integrity a leader communicates and models moral and tactical expectations. He communicates with others by being transparent and allowing them to see him as an model of how to do things right while also doing the right thing. Colonel Sweeney in the aforementioned book states that:
“Honest communications also helps alleviate concerns regarding leaders’ possessing hidden agendas or motives. Leaders with honest/integrity provide employees with a sense of predictability of how the leaders will act in the future, especially in tough or morally challenging situations. This sense of confidence that leaders will be honest and behave morally regardless of the situation leads to the development of trust.”
And with this earned trust they will follow your leadership in the same way you have modeled it.
Consider your own leadership within your individual team and your organization’s leadership for a moment. Ask yourself these questions:
• Does the team know where the ditches are? Am I a ditch jumper? Do I look the other way when someone jumps the ditch?
• Have you provided them with a compass that clearly shows a morally north direction?
• Are you and the other leaders modeling values-based leadership? Do you do exactly what you say you are going to do, when and how you say you are going to do it?
• Are you walking the talk, or talking one way and walking another while expecting everyone else to walk your talk?
• Do you carry and conduct yourself at all times as a principled leader?
• Do you seek out proactive opportunities everyday to develop trust by modeling, teaching and promoting ethical behavior? Or do you just sit back and wait for a moral crisis to happen and then reactively threaten everyone with the stick to enforce compliance?
If you as a unit leader or if the leaders throughout your organization do not walk between the ditches, you and they should not expect the team or the organization as whole to do so! It won’t happen, guaranteed. You cannot march outside the ditch while telling your team, “Don’t come over here.” Where you are, they will come. If you read my earlier post of Major Bach’s speech to U.S. Army officer graduates you will recall that he said,
"Your word will be their law. Your most casual remark will be remembered. Your mannerism will be aped. Your clothing, your carriage, your vocabulary, your manner of command will be imitated….To exert moral force you must live clean, you must have sufficient brain power to see the right and the will to do right. Be an example to your men. An officer can be a power for good or a power for evil. Don’t preach to them—that will be worse than useless. Live the kind of life you would have them lead, and you will be surprised to see the number that will imitate you. A loud-mouthed, profane captain who is careless of his personal appearance will have a loud-mouthed, profane, dirty company. Remember what I tell you. Your company will be the reflection of yourself. If you have a rotten company it will be because you are a rotten captain."
It is a shame that people don’t understand this. The first place an organization usually looks when it has a moral or ethical crisis is down the chain of command. The proper place to look, first and foremost, is at the leadership corp. Then if necessary look down the chain of command.
I will end with this: Give some thought as to what you and your organization are doing to teach and promote honesty and integrity as values to all members of the unit or organization. Principles, values and leadership attributes must be kept in the forefront all the time. Every day should be seen as an opportunity to teach, model, and promote honesty, integrity, and the other leadership attributes of a principled organization. Only when people trust you will they permit you to lead them. Develop your trustworthiness with honesty and integrity; stay within the ditches and make sure those under your command know where the ditches are! Every day!
And, oh, throw that damn carrot and stick in the ditch. It only works for tyrants and then only as long as they are looking, and they can’t always be around watching; can you?
Esse Quam Videri
Carpe Diem
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