Your integrity is your integrity. Your integrity is not dependent on what others think your integrity is. Recently, I corrected a clients thinking around the definition of character and reputation and how that relates to their integrity. I’ll briefly summarize.
Most humans are laser focused on their reputation. They think long and hard about how others perceive them and invest countless hours in trying to look good. This is a misplaced focus that ties back to our mental health 101. Your reputation is not your integrity. Your reputation is how others see you. You cannot control how others see you. Others see you the way they want to and with all the baggage that comes with having seen “your type,” previously. Focus on your reputation and you’ll eventually go nuts. There will always be those that see you as less than they ought.
Most humans are focused on other humans character. They disect others mistakes big and small. They see other humans integrity gaps and are quick to tell others about them. Think how many times we’ve heard the name Bobby Petrino in the last month.
The character that you need to give your attention to is your own. You alone own your integrity. Your character is who you are when no one sees, you see. Your character comes with it’s own impurities, it’s own imperfections, and it’s own gaps to fill. Filling your own integrity gaps is what gives you integrity. You and I will always have repairing to do on our own road to becoming whole, to becoming ONE, if you will.
In this work I help clients each and every week close down their own integrity gaps. The higher they are up in their system the more these gaps are exposed. Nobody sees the gaps when you’re buried at the bottom of the ladder. When you’re on top, however, everybody has a vantage point. The leaders integrity gaps grow in the sight of those below as time passes and the leader refuses to humbly come down from their perch and repair. Most leaders avoid confronting their integrity gaps head on and just hope that folks below will STOP staring and making it worse. This is nuts. Again, think about how long we’ve been talking about Tiger. Humans love to assasinate anothers character, especially the one on top.
Leaders, close your own integrity gaps. Admit your failures. Tell the truth to your team. As Os Guinness challenges us, “keep the right secrets.” When you make a mistake, especiall a moral one, broadcast it and admit your failure. Repair with those that you’ve damaged along the way. Take responsibility and learn. And, when you do something virtuous, keep it to yourself, keep it a secret. This way you hold onto it. This is how your character grows, not your reputation. Build your character. Remember, it’s the only character you can…
God, help me keep the right secrets.
God, help me…
BUILT TO LEAD 
Chester,
Great recent posts. On this one, I can testify that much growth I’ve had as a leader has come from the slowly learned skill and eventual willingness to confront my own gaps in integrity and competence. It was difficult at first for me to admit I actually was disrespecting, denying, and in some sad cases, destroying others on my way through life and up the ladder. I couldn’t see that my own denial of the worth of others who opposed me only made their opposition more dogged. It took BTL to help me see that always needing to be “right” was a mask over a deep fear of failure; the paradox of course was that that fear was the cause of my failure to genuinely enlist others’ support by supporting them first.
I am now convinced that the skill and will to examine my own hypocrisy, and work out another course each time, is my single greatest leadership trait. For me, it has been the embodiment of humility and courage, both of which have emerged from the CORE work I did with you, John, and Pete.
Peace, and growth, have been the result. Thank you.
Thanks Sully for another great “and,” and for your continued belief in BTL and the power of building within. Give and take care, my friend. Give and take care…