Someone tells you “I’ll meet you at 17h” and they show up 15 minutes later without telling you they were going to be late beforehand. Would you continue to rely on their word in the future?
Probably not so much. And eventually, if they continue to be out of integrity with their word, the relationship would start to break apart because you’d see that their promises have no validity.
Having integrity with our word simply makes things work effectively.
It doesn’t have to be a moral thing or a virtue or something filled with judgments, guilt, shame and blame. Integrity is simply something that is whole, complete and in perfect condition to work.
And if I have integrity with my word, I see my word and my actions as one undivided unit – as a power to create anything into being. And when I can’t keep my promises, I can still honour my word by telling myself or someone else about it and recreating a new promise.
Justifications, explanations, guilt or shame don’t need to be involved.
Keeping our word has been shown to increase performance and morale at work and in life. Not being aware of this power of creating through language leaves a lot of potential on the table.
In this episode, we’ll explore this topic of integrity in a deeper way and look at the importance of it for leadership.
Werner Erhard Research Paper on Integrity – https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1542759
Much love, Felipe
Music by JujuGroove
