A Word To Live By

Over the past months, the public has been
treated to an ever-lengthening parade of corporate villains, cashing in stock even as their companies
were tanking.

Now, as this group of poster children for corporate greed fifth-amendments its way through the halls of Congress, who is left holding the bag? Workers, investors, and you.

Not surprisingly, all these stories of corporate greed by hundreds of executives who cook the books got me thinking of an exceptional individual by the name of General Dean whose character and moral fiber is as different from the greedy group as one could get. When he was a prisoner of the Communist Chinese in Korea and had been led to believe that he would soon be shot, he wrote a letter to his wife with instructions for their son. He wrote: “Tell Bill the word is integrity.”

This is the best advice an executive can live by or a parent can give to his/her child. With that single word, and realizing all that it means, a young man or woman can look forward to a tremendously rewarding life. It will mean living by the Golden Rule, which is an insurance policy guaranteeing abundance in every department of life.

Integrity is the quality we look for most in others. It’s what a woman wants in her husband, and he in her. It’s what honorable bosses want of their employees, and what employees want from their employers. If you’re having your car fixed, it’s what you want most from the people working on your car, whether you’re there to watch them or not. Integrity is the world’s most valuable quality in a person, product, or service.

The reason it’s so valuable is twofold: it guarantees the cause, and it controls the effect. If people use the word integrity as a guide for all their dealings with others, they can then rest easily in the sure knowledge that they will find good fortune coming back to them in countless ways. One of the greatest rewards that come from being a person of integrity is the feeling of personal worth and the confidence and assurance it brings.

The man or woman of integrity doesn’t have a haunted house full of fears and worries to contend with. Since this person treats everyone with whom they meet and everything they do with integrity, it will be reflected throughout their world.

There are probably millions of people who wouldn’t steal someone else’s property but who think it’s all right to give less than their best to their work. They don’t think of this as stealing, but it is. What would you call it, if such a person were working to build your home? Frequently our attitude toward something changes with the situation.

A lousy waitress, out to dinner with her boyfriend, will be the first to complain about poor service. A sloppy builder will suspect a sloppy attitude toward something being built for him and yell his head off if he finds it. We look for our own shortcomings in others. The person of integrity expects integrity in others as a matter of course. Moreover, as a rule, this is what is realized.

If you’re in a leadership position, whether it’s in a business or as the head of a family, honesty and integrity are as important as having air, food, and water. 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 above board and honest with them, do you really think you have got away with it? Not too likely – but if you’ve been led to believe that you have got away with it, it’s most likely because people are afraid of you. That’s a problem in its own right.

There’s another side to 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.

Many people keep pictures of their children on their desks. Is it supposed to be a reminder of what they look like? Is it showing them off to whoever comes into the office? There’s an even more important reason why those pictures are there…or why they should be there. They’re there to remind us of what’s at stake when we make the decisions that determine character -- and we all make many of those decisions every day.

Honesty and integrity are two qualities of strong character that are fairly easy to define. Do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going to do it – that’s integrity, a clear correspondence between words and deeds. Tell the truth – that’s honesty. Say what you mean, mean what you say. Despite the fact that these are some of the clearest, most easily recognized elements of strong character, in the real world they’re also some of the most difficult to find.

Please don’t think of this article as a sermon; it’s meant to offer practical advice. You not only can take integrity to heart, you can take it to the bank. Why? Because over the long haul, people who lack integrity in any department of their lives – at work, at home, in all of their social contacts – are people who have failed to mature. They display greed and lack wisdom and will eventually suffer for it, as well as the people they meet. The pity of it is that the more a person suffers from their own lack of knowledge, the less integrity an individual has, the more they will suffer. Seldom does this type of individual ever wake up to the fact that they’re simply sawing off the limb they are sitting on – and sooner or later, they’ve got to take the fall.

General Dean, thinking he was to be shot, undoubtedly gave a lot of thought to the advice he wrote for his son. If he had thought for 10 years, he couldn’t have come up with a better word than Integrity.

Joe Hodowanes, a career strategy adviser in Tampa, Florida, offers a free resume and career analysis. Fax your resume to (813) 936-0201 or email it to jmwanes@jmwanes.com For questions, call Joe at (813) 936-0091 or visit www.jmwanes.com on the Web. All Job Search Advisor articles on this website are the property of www.jmwanes.com (J.M. Wanes & Associates). You may download
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© 2005 J.M. Wanes & Associates.