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Honesty, Integrity and Communication

The Foundation of Trust.

By Jim Clemmer

"To be honest is to be real, genuine, authentic, and bona fide. To be dishonest is to be partly feigned, forged, fake, or fictitious. Honesty expresses both self-respect and respect for others. Dishonesty fully respects neither oneself nor others. Honesty imbues lives with openness, reliability, and candor; it expresses a disposition to live in the light. Dishonesty seeks shade, cover, or concealment. It is a disposition to live partly in the dark." — William J. Bennett, The Book of Virtues

Seven-year-old first baseman, Tanner Munsey, fielded a ground ball and tried to tag a runner going from first to second base. The umpire, Laura Benson, called the runner out, but young Tanner immediately ran to her side and said, "Ma'am, I didn't tag the runner." Umpire Benson reversed herself, sent the runner to second base, and Tanner's coach gave him the game ball for his honesty. Two weeks later, Laura Benson was again the umpire and Tanner was playing shortstop when a similar play occurred. This time Benson ruled that Tanner had missed the tag on a runner going to third base, and she called the runner safe. Tanner looked at Benson and, without saying a word, tossed the ball to the catcher and returned to his position. Benson sensed something was wrong. "Did you tag the runner?" she asked Tanner. "Yes," he replied. Benson then called the runner out. The opposing coaches protested until she explained what had happened two weeks earlier. "If a kid is that honest," she said, "I have to give it to him."

Honesty and integrity are key ingredients in developing trust. Trust is a key element in establishing credibility. Our credibility is at the center of our ability to influence others and provide strong leadership. In our leadership development work we often ask participants to list the qualities of the most effective leaders they have experienced in their family, school, community, social, or organizational lives. Words like sincere, truthful, trustworthy, reliable, principled, and genuine are usually on the list. These characteristics are the hallmarks of strong leaders.

There's lots of evidence to support author Lance Secretan's belief that "we are suffering from truth decay." In a financial management column on taking a loan to invest more money in mutual funds, a former politician advised, "if your real estate falls in value to the point where the home-equity loan is greater than the worth of your house, you can always take a walk. Then it's the bank's problem." How's that for honesty and integrity? Does he sound like someone you could trust and believe? Little wonder his party was tossed out of office at the next election amid scandals and crooked deals (they showed that "political principles" really was an oxymoron). Every day we hear about, or personally experience, broken promises, cheating, "shaving the truth," cutting corners, or failing to follow through. That's why Mark Twain declared that "truth is more of a stranger than fiction." He felt that many people regard truth as their most valuable possession and this explained why they were most economical in its use. He advised us to "always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest." Winston Churchill adds, "people occasionally stumble over the truth, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened."

Honesty and integrity is a given in most conversations about leadership values. But some people seem to feel it's something you can slip on and off like clothing. They will speak of personal, professional, or business behaviors as if different suits of honesty are put on according to the situation. This shows "doing honesty" rather than being honest. It's no more than putting on an honest act. People quickly see through it and reduce us to our lowest level of honesty and integrity — our dirtiest clothes. Even more importantly — which is the real me? How can changeable honesty ring true to me?

Our true character is often revealed by fear and greed. In times of fear we often face great difficulty and disaster. Or we might have huge opportunities for financial, career, power, or other big gains. How we deal with both extremes when the stakes are high reveals our true selves. The choices we make during those intense moments of truth exposes the depth of our character. Do we "do our honesty and integrity thing" when its convenient or just when we think others are watching? Or are we an honest being who's eventually found out?

Parents and even managers will sometimes say, "don't let me catch you doing that again." This often leads to lively games of "catch me if you can." But honesty and integrity are developed from the inside out. Abraham Lincoln explained it well in reflecting on his approach, "I do the best I know how, the very best I can; and I mean to keep on doing it to the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me will not amount to anything. If the end brings me out all wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference." Ringing true to me means going beyond just what I say or do. It involves listening to what my inner voice tells me about how I feel about what I've said or done.

One way to explore our inner level of true honesty and integrity is look at how much we trust others. Since we see the world as we are, any feelings that people are basically dishonest and can't be trusted may be revealing more about me than them. One of the hazards of lying is not just that people wouldn't believe us, it's also that we can't believe anyone else.

"Communications help to keep people feeling included in and connected to the organization...give people information, and do it again and again." — William Bridges, Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

You need to establish the few core messages you want to communicate throughout your organization. Use any and every communication channel you can to review, remind, and reinforce them. These include:

Newsletters
Videos
Voice and e-mail updates and dialogues
Recognition and celebration events
Annual shareholder reports
Annual improvement reports
Visits to, from, and among customers and partners
Special improvement days and fairs that allow teams to display their activities and results
Orientation and training sessions
Teleconferences
Intranet sites
Toll-free hot lines and telephone information centers

Get out and talk to people. Multiple communication channels can and should be widely used to reinforce and support your core messages. But the best way to communicate is in person. The most effective communication approaches are like political campaigns. Leaders are out actively "pressing the flesh" and standing up to present their change and improvement themes and core messages. During times of major change or refocus, we've seen senior managers at some large organizations spend well over one hundred days per year delivering these vital communication messages. That's leadership.
Develop your "stump speech" or "talking points" among your management team before any of you heads out to give your version to the rest of the organization. This generally includes messages around your Change Drivers, Focus and Context (vision, values, and purpose), key goals and priorities, change/improvement plans, and such.
Get people together. Get teams together weekly, monthly, and certainly no less than quarterly. That's especially important for management, operational, or improvement teams that aren't in the same building. At my previous consulting company, The Achieve Group, we found frequent face-to-face communications were the most important when we could least afford the time or the money to hold them. We continually find that getting the key players together can turn around most misunderstandings, mistrust, and misdirection. BUT, and here's the "big if" – only if the meetings are well run.
Develop highly visible scoreboards, bulletin boards, or voice mail, electronic or printed announcements of progress toward team and organization goals and priorities.
Share all core strategic measurements (including "confidential" financial, and operating data) with everyone in your organization. Treat people like full-fledged business partners and they'll act that way. But don't snow them under with a blizzard of meaningless reports and numbers. Train everyone how to read these data. Show them how to relate the measurements to their daily operations and improvement activities.
Team education, learning, and communication can be kept simple. In my early management years I got a lot of mileage from having my team sit around a conference table reading, discussing, and debating selected book passages or articles. This dialogue established a common values and knowledge base that enhanced mutual understanding, teamwork, communications, and context for further training and work together.
Establish an internal "best practices and good tries" communication system, clearinghouse, or network. A free flow of information and active communications is the lifeblood of a learning organization. Use videos, visits, fairs, Intranet sites, voice and e-mail, meetings, reports, hot lines, teleconferences, information technologies, and the like.
Get feedback from your customers and partners on the characteristics of your education and communication strategies, systems, and practices. How many communication channels are you using? Are they clogged or working well? What others could you be using?
When you're sick of repeating the same core messages over and over again is about the time that people in your organization are just starting to hear you. First they didn't understand. Then they didn't believe. If you stop repeating yourself now, they'll conclude that you weren't serious after all.
Just as a marketing professional would never rely on just one marketing channel, don't rely too heavily on the management hierarchy to deliver your core messages. It's full of filters and personal agendas that twist and distort your messages. Yet you can't go around your managers. They need to be central in communicating, reinforcing, and repeating your core themes. So start with them and give them that responsibility. But don't assume it will be delivered as you wanted. That's why personal meetings and multiple communication channels are so important.
Keep moving your best people to the teams, positions, and parts of the organization that will spread their experience and leadership as broadly as possible. It's also a great way to continue their development.
Reward and thank people who bring you bad news before it's festered into a catastrophe.

Trust and communication levels go together. Find out how high your organization or team trust levels are. If they're low find out what's causing the problem. This may be painful. The source of misunderstandings and mistrust is often in the leaders' behavior.

Comments to: editor@leadingtoday.org

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About the author:

Jim Clemmer is a bestselling author and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. During the last 25 years he has delivered over two thousand customized keynote presentations, workshops, and retreats. Jim's five international bestselling books include The VIP Strategy, Firing on All Cylinders, Pathways to Performance, Growing the Distance, and The Leader's Digest. His web site is www.clemmer.net.