Leaders Are People Of Integrity
What makes followers willing to completely trust a leader? More often than not true trust is based on the integrity of the leader. Leaders demonstrate integrity through their strength of character. The effective leader must display a character worth following.
How do you measure someone’s integrity? The only way we as humans can get a fix on this is by looking at their actions. By observing a person’s actions it is easier to tell what is important to them.
Integrity requires that you make a conscious decision to do what is right in all situations. What you believe and think affects your actions. But your actions reveal your heart. Proverbs 27:19 states, “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man.”
One of the best ways to understand what integrity is all about is through the equation: Actions = Heart
People follow leaders with unquestionable integrity. However, in any situation, when you violate your integrity, it will cost you something. As a leader, when you violate your integrity, it will cost you everything. As a Japanese proverb warns, “The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour.”
The Josephson Institute of Ethics conducted a national survey in 2004 of almost 25,000 high school students on The Ethics of American Youth. When asked if they stolen something from a store in the past year, 87% of students said they had stolen once and 68% said they had more than once. Integrity is an important thing for students to understand and learn to live out in their lives and leadership. Good leaders are people of integrity. Integrity is living and leading in a way that your actions line up with your heart, that everything you say and do comes out of what you believe to be true.
Use this assessment to help students assess their current level of integrity and commit to specific changes that need to happen in their lives for them to be people of integrity.
About the Author
Doug Franklin
Doug Franklin is the president of LeaderTreks, an innovative leadership development organization focusing on students and youth workers. Doug and his wife, Angie, live in West Chicago, Illinois. They don’t have any kids, but they have 2 dogs that think they are children. Diesel and Penelope are Weimaraners who never leave their side. Doug grew up in… Read More
