The Integrity Habit
Integrity is one of the most necessary virtues that a powerful leader can possess. It has been said that integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Choosing the easy thing is a major habit for most people. It’s easy to say angry things when we feel annoyed or disappointed. It’s easy to avoid a person that we are having a disagreement with. It’s easy to let people have what they want. It’s easy to keep our heads down and just do the work that we’re assigned. All of these things are easy. None of them are leadership.
So what gives? When the right thing and the easy thing are not the same thing, it means that the right thing involves some sort of temporary inconvenience. Great leaders do it anyway. Great managers are honest with their teams even if it’s hard. They push themselves and their teams to work and deliver the highest quality possible. They take time to think about responding rather than reacting. All of this creates a sense of integrity that all the team members feel and subconsciously rise to. The manager sets the tone of a team, and when the tone is integrity everyone is better for it.
How can we exercise integrity? It starts with recognizing the times that we consistently go for the easy thing. For me, it’s easy to get mad at the guy that cut me off in traffic. It’s also really easy to not follow through with commitments that I make to myself. Now that I’ve recognized these patterns in myself I can identify them as growth opportunities. The next time someone cuts me off, I’ll have already equipped the idea that this is an opportunity for me to practice integrity. That gives my brain a second to move away from the “easy” thing and choose something else. The next time I make a commitment to myself I will be able to view it as a growth opportunity and choose something that is a bit less easy. I’m no longer in default mode because I have brought my own attention to my habit. There are endless opportunities out there that I can experiment with. The more often I do this, the more solidly I am able to develop an “Integrity Habit”.
Can you think of any examples of times that you are in the habit of choosing the easy thing over the right thing? Let’s talk through them in the comments.