Integrity of Character

My wife gave me a book entitled The Daily Drucker last year for father's day and it's one of a few books I see myself reading through retirement. As the title suggests, it contains '366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done' authored by Peter Drucker. The first day deals with Integrity in Leadership and begins with:

The proof of the sincerity and seriousness of a management is uncompromising emphasis on integrity of character. This, above all, has to be symbolized in management's "people" decisions. For it is character through which leadership is exercised; it is character that sets the example and is imitated. Character is not something one can fool people about.

I believe many of us understand what it means to have integrity of character, but the challenge for all of us is how we consistently demonstrate integrity. I've mentioned before how lack of integrity has cost me my job as a teenager, and we now know after the Enron verdict what happens to top-level executives if they fail to demonstrate integrity even if they haven't broken any rules. I've always had a view that only 20% of business decisions are black and white, the rest is gray. For example, what would you do if you catch one of your top-performers cheating on his expense report or saying a sexist remark? Let's make it even more challenging and say that this top-performer has been delivering 110% of his targets for the last 4 quarters?

Most of us will probably ask, how much did the person cheat the company or what was the sexist remark. It's not black and white, but these are the "people" decisions that Peter Drucker referred to which symbolized integrity of character in an organization. In fact, I was faced with a similar decision just this week and I chose the path of termination over an issue of a couple of hundred dollars. I still hold some respect for the individual especially how he dealt with the separation, but I felt that it was simply the right thing to do.

I should highlight a more subtle message in Drucker's message which has to do with what happens to other people when a leader demonstrates integrity of character. He says, " it is character through which leadership is exercised; it is character that sets the example and is imitated."

I was having a discussion with a colleague who described the dilemma of his best-friend who was an officer in the military and a man of integrity. He said that he wants to be a role-model for the younger officers, but he realizes that those in more prominent leadership positions all the way to the generals, have compromised their integrity to move up the ranks. To be a more visible role-model, he finds that he would need to make a few 'practical' choices.

I've had my share of 'career-limiting' decisions, but I've also discovered that as I make the tough decisions such as firing a top-performer for cheating, I found more and more people deferring to my judgement. I didn't have to be a VP to influence people; as Drucker puts it, I just had to demonstrate character. Furthermore, my overwhelming goal as of 13 years ago when I got married and 10 years ago when our son was born, was to be the best role-model for my wife and son. I don't need to be a president or a general to achieve this.