Integrity Is The Basis Of True Leadership

Certain traits needed for leadership are difficult to train someone to be. While a quality leadership training professional can identify, qualify, train, motivate and develop a leader, and can teach him many of the needed techniques, qualities, concepts, methods, and nuances, one cannot teach integrity. A trainer may emphasize its need, as well as what, it means to possess integrity, but in most cases, someone either has integrity or does not. I have never met, in more than three decades of working closely with well over a thousand individuals in leadership positions, anyone lacking integrity who actually became a great leader.

1. Great leaders must always place his constituent's interest ahead of his own. He acts not only at certain times, and under certain circumstances, with integrity, but possesses absolute integrity. One can not turn integrity on and off. If someone in leadership says different things to different people, in different settings, he is not a genuine leader. If someone in leadership takes more time and effort blaming others and covering his behind, in order to absolve himself of personal responsibility, he is not really a leader. If someone has to think about whether he should tell the truth or shade the truth, except under the most dire circumstances, he is not behaving like a real leader.

2. I offer hear people snicker at one of my seminars when I discuss being a leader and possessing absolute integrity. They often refer to political leaders who exhibit far less, and make the case that these individuals are in fact leaders. While these politicos are often elected to serve as leaders, they often merely hold positions of leadership. True leaders don't think about politics or popularity, but speak out for doing what is necessary and the right thing to do. If someone in leadership acts more like Pinocchio than like Solomon, acts more like a used car salesman than a man of morals and principles, he simply is not a true leader. Unfortunately, because organizations rarely have a process in place to locate and develop true leaders, they often get stacked merely with often very nice people who ascend to positions of leadership, but rarely lead.

Look at someone in leadership and observe his behavior. Does he say the same thing, even if he doesn't think you are listening? Does he combine the best of intentions with the most honorable of actions? Does he walk the walk, or is he simply all talk?