And David shepherded them with integrity of heart;
with skillful hands he led them.
with skillful hands he led them.
(Psalms 78:72)
Integrity and credibility are the left and right hands of any effective leader. The degree of your effectiveness as a leader is directly related to the degree to which you demonstrate integrity and credibility in your personal life. Without these character traits you cannot be a long-term effective leader. Lose one of them and it’s almost like losing your hand.
Integrity has to do with holding firmly to one’s principles. Uprightness, honesty, truthfulness, wholeness, incorruptibility… these are words associated with integrity. It sounds like the description of a super-hero, doesn’t it? Your integrity determines how you will behave under any circumstances. Your followers will know what to expect from you when you have integrity.
Credibility is an extension of one’s trustworthiness. If the leader is found to be untrustworthy in one area of his or her life, then followers can justifiably question the leader’s trustworthiness in all areas of his or her life. Kouzes and Posner found that people want leaders who are credible. “Credibility is the foundation on which leaders and constituents build the grand dreams of the future.”[1] If the people you lead don’t believe what you tell them, then they won’t trust you to lead them to the future you see.
Someone said, character is how you act when you think no one is watching. Years ago I came to realize how important it was for me to maintain integrity, not just so I could have a leadership position, but because I wanted to be a man of integrity. I did not want to just practice honesty because it’s the best policy; I wanted to be seen as someone who is honest.
Some of the deepest hurts I have experienced have been when someone questioned my integrity as a leader—especially when I knew I had tried to act with integrity. There have been times when I was privy to information that could not be shared openly, and that caused certain painful decisions to be necessary. In such times, whenever someone would question my integrity, it could have been tempting to blurt out in self-defense why the decision had to be made. Instead, I have found relief in self-examination. Did I do what was right because it was right? Was my integrity strong enough to take unjustified criticism? If I were found to be wrong, would I be willing to admit it and ask forgiveness of the appropriate persons? Could I stand on the decision even if the whole truth never became public? I have not missed much sleep over decisions that passed the test.
One way to help you maintain your integrity is to have at least one accountability partner. Leaders who have had the most devastating moral failures first started falling when they began to think they could handle everything by themselves. I have talked to numerous leaders who insist they cannot have a close friend, because they have been betrayed by friends before. Such thinking exposes a huge, gaping blind side vulnerable to attack! It gets lonely up on a pedestal. Pretty soon, you start to lose your balance and eventually you fall off. If you think you don’t need an accountability partner, you’re probably right—you probably need more than one!
Hint to the Leader AND Follower
Find a truth-teller and meet with this person or an accountability group regularly. Give them permission to ask you the hard questions. Offer to reciprocate and be a truth-teller for them as well. Be a friend to find a friend.[2]
© Dr. Larry N. Gay
January 2010
[1] James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, Credibility: How Leaders Gain and Lose it, Why People Demand It, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1993), 22.
[2] If you have never done this before, write the author for suggestions on how to start an accountability group (mylead360@gmail.com)
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