What Is Leadership Integrity?
Are There Any Really Honest Leaders Today?
Our reaction to lapses in leadership integrity depends on our expectations of them. We need to be clear what integrity means and what we can expect of leaders.
Disgusted with lapses in leadership integrity? Are you finding it hard to trust many of today's high profile leaders? The scandals involving Enron and Bill Clinton are just the tip of the iceberg. To help us decide how leaders should behave and how to judge them, we need a clear understanding of what we should expect of them.
Why Integrity Matters
We demand integrity in senior business and political leaders because we grant them so much power over us. But we want to trust everyone in our lives: family members, friends, colleagues and professional people. For example, we need to trust waiters and hairdressers to do a good job for us but they have little to gain by deceiving us. So, when they disappoint us, it's not as momentous as a moral failing in a high profile leader. We feel let down by integrity lapses in leaders because we expect so much of them: we want them to improve the fundamental quality of our lives.
What Is Integrity?
There is a connection between trust and integrity, but trust is a broader concept. People need to be competent to earn our trust, not just honest. To be a credible candidate for any job, a person needs the skills and personal qualities to be effective in the role. Integrity is also broader than honesty. In addition to being honest, leaders with integrity must behave ethically. A criminal could be honest while breaking the law. Leaders with integrity must have an unwavering commitment to culturally accepted values and be willing to defend them. This requires them to do the right thing even if it is not in their personal interest. Leaders with integrity are responsible and consistent.
Why Do Leaders Lack Integrity?
Virtually no one is completely honest. Who has not, for example, failed to stop at traffic lights, cheated on exams, padded expenses or exaggerated achievements to look good in a job interview? Many of us have what we might call "convenient values." We live up to them only when they don't prevent us from doing what we want. So, why is anyone dishonest? Reasons are complex, but they include the feelings of being entitled to something and being able to get away with it. People in high places feel that their power makes them untouchable. Also, because there is so much more to gain by bending the rules in high places, the temptation must be enormous. Because high profile leaders are so driven to stay in power, only the rarest of leaders can put principles ahead of personal interest when they are threatened with losing their exalted status.
How We React to Integrity Lapses
Our reaction to moral failures in leadership is complex. We are angry and disappointed, but, because we also envy people in high places, we are secretly pleased to see that they are only human after all. Those of us with a guilty conscience are particularly prone to feeling a mixture of indignation and delight. Those who show the most anger may subconsciously be trying to rid themselves of guilt for an indiscretion of their own by dumping on the failed leader.
Our reaction is also related to the strength of our expectations. When we expect little of people, their failures don't surprise or matter much to us. When we feel hugely let down at the news of a flawed leader, therefore, we should ask ourselves why we expected so much of this person in the first place. In any case, our reaction to moral lapses in leaders is without doubt partly determined by our own attitudes, values and current mental state.
We can improve the integrity in high places through the education system and by implementing more transparent monitoring processes, but our culture must also reward it as much as it does the pursuit of selfish interests. Finally, we need to depend less on leaders to meet so many of our needs and, because they are only human, expect less of them.
