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Having honesty and integrity in the workplace is one of the most important qualities of great leadership in business and I am going to tell you why…
Integrity In Business And How It Translates To Success
Whenever I hold a strategic planning session, the first that all the executives agree on is integrity. Leaders know that honesty and integrity are the foundations of leadership. Leaders stand up for what they believe in.
For example, Jon Huntsman, Sr. is a multibillionaire who started a chemical company from scratch and grew it into a $12 billion enterprise. His book, Winners Never Cheat, is filled with stories taken from his own experience in which he steadfastly refused to compromise his principles. Huntsman says that integrity is the reason that he has been as successful as he is.
“There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business or life,” he writes. “There are, basically, three kinds of people, the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.”
Great Leaders Never Compromise Their Honesty And Integrity By Cheating
There are many examples of temporary winners who won by cheating. For a number of years, was cited as one of America’s most innovating and daring companies.
The CEO of the company knew the most important people in the country, including the President of the . Except that Enron’s success was built on lies, and the “winners” who headed the company are case studies in lack of integrity.
Integrity Means Doing The Right Thing Because It’s The Right Thing To Do
Leaders with integrity may not be the most famous or flashy of leaders, and they don’t care. Integrity means doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. And that’s what makes success.
Importance Of Integrity In Giving And Keeping Promises
Leaders keep their promises. They give promises carefully, even reluctantly, but once they have given that promise, they follow through on that promise without fail. And they always tell the .
Jack Welch calls it “candor.” He believes that if you are afraid of candor, then you don’t have the guts to be an effective leader. You are going to surround yourself with yes people who will say what you want to hear instead of saying the truth.
Leaders With Integrity Aren’t Afraid Of The Truth
Leaders with integrity is not afraid to face the truth. This is called the reality principle, or “seeing the world as it really is, not as you wish it to be.”
It is perhaps the most important principle of leadership and dependent on integrity because it demands truthfulness and honesty. Many companies and organizations fail because they don’t follow the reality principle.
Integrity means telling the truth even if the truth is ugly. Better to be honest than to delude others, because then you are probably deluding yourself, too.
Leaders need to be courageous, but they also need to be open to the idea that they could be wrong. There are many leaders who eventually fail because they refuse to question their own assumptions or conclusions.
“Errant assumptions lie at the root of every .” – Alec Mackenzie
There’s a difference between being confident and blind. Let’s face it, in today’s world of rapid change, there is a possibility that you are partially wrong or even completely wrong.
Why Don't Game Companies Address Cheating Money
Maybe you are not wrong, but just opening yourself to to that possibility is going to make you a more effective leader because it will open your mind to new ideas or new thinking.
The True Mark of Leadership
There should be no exceptions to honesty and integrity. Integrity is a state of mind and is not situational. If you compromise your integrity in small situations with little consequence, then it becomes very easy to compromise on the small situations.
Leaders with integrity always err on the side of fairness, especially when other people are unfair. As a matter of fact, the true mark of leadership is how fair you can be when other people are treating you unfairly.
Click the link to get my free report The Power of Habit.
It appeared to be a remarkable breakthrough: A company called UCSA Dealers Group was offering a product called the Hydro Assist Fuel Cell, which promised to boost a car’s mileage by at least 50 percent, turning any vehicle into a hybrid. The company made millions selling the kits, at about $1,000 a piece, to unsuspecting motorists.
In fact, they were all being cheated, according to the Federal Trade Commission, which last month reached a settlement with the company to stop what it calls the “phony” claims of UCSA.
Businesses cheat their customers in big and small ways, and their actions almost never result in an FTC enforcement action. Instead, their dishonesty translates to disappointed customers who only received half a product, a product that didn’t work as expected, or didn’t work at all, as the Hydro Assist kits are alleged to have failed to function.
I’ve been intrigued with how companies cheat – and how customers let them – since my book on Scams was published last month. Corporate cheaters don’t defraud customers so much as they cut corners, shortchanging them in an effort to create what they euphemistically call “shareholder value.”
I’m only beginning to research this fascinating topic, but it’s already clear that cheaters have a few things in common:
They use words like “new” and “improved” to cover their tracks.
Frequent product “improvements” can be a sign that the company is swapping out components or ingredients with others that are less expensive, which is one of the most common kind of cheats. For example, pet food companies often “upgrade” their products by changing the type of grain used, switching from an expensive one to a cheaper variety. Alas, the only thing being upgraded is the price, but your dog will never complain.
They’re constantly explaining themselves.
Ethically-challenged businesses are always on the defensive, explaining their hostile customer policies and practices to an increasingly skeptical public. One of my favorite examples is from the airline industry, which several years ago started charging economy-class passengers for the first checked bag (only a few domestic carriers resisted the trend). The airline industry used its rhetorical skills to paint its move as giving customers “what they want” and insisting the changes represented a significant improvement. In fact, the changes were strictly for their own bottom line. If a company is doing a lot of explaining, chances are, it’s doing a lot of cheating, too.
They leave a trail of very unhappy customers.
Cheatin’ companies have to contend with cheated customers, and they spend a fortune on reputation management and search engine optimization to quell the torrent of anger welling up from the Internet, but it’s often impossible to cover up. Do a keyword search for the company and include the term “scam” and you’ll find all of the complaints about shoddy products and substandard service. And yes, those are the ones you want to avoid.
They’re at the bottom of every customer-service list.
Most consumer reporters pay attention to the winners of lists like those compiled by the American Customer Satisfaction Index, and with good reason. Everyone likes a winner, but there are bottom-feeding businesses – and industries – that deserve equal attention. You can probably guess who they are. If you’re worried about being cheated, look for the companies with low scores, especially those with historically low scores, and steer clear of them.
They suffer from high turnover and low employee morale.
It’s hard to know if the company you’re doing business with has unhappy workers who have been sending their resumes out since the first day they were hired, but you don’t have to be a human resources pro or a psychologist to see the signs. Employees who are asked to cheat their customers are inevitably unhappy, and it shows (they’re rude, unhelpful and they make products that suck). If you feel taken for granted or victimized by these workers, things may be much worse – you’ve probably also been cheated.
Sadly, cheating companies can continue operating and they can even turn an occasional profit.
Why Don't Game Companies Address Cheating Numbers
Why? Because they have help from customers like you. More on that next week.
Christopher Elliott is a consumer advocate who blogs about getting better customer service at On Your Side. Connect with him on Twitter and Facebook or send him your questions at by email.
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