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Organizational Integrity

Organizational Integrity: Finding a Confidential Listener

by Ron Potter January 14, 2019

We continue our Monday series where I’m providing some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

To have a great organization, integrity must be widespread. It won’t do to be a saintly leader of highest integrity if the rest of the team consists of liars, backbiters, and thieves. Integrity must exist from top to bottom. There are some key qualities that need to be modeled by leadership in order for an organization to embrace integrity.

Last week we unpacked with Trusting Others. This week we’ll explore Finding a confidential listener.

Finding a Confidential Listener

What if you as a leader are working to build a high-trust organizational culture but still feel uncomfortable totally sharing your heart with others on your team or in the company?

Find someone you can trust on the outside. You need someone who will mainly listen as you brainstorm ideas, let off steam, and regain perspective. By saying this I am not advocating that you stop being vulnerable or keeping gates open in your team or organization. But it is important for your health and well-being that you have someone, somewhere who can accept your total candor and maintain confidentiality. In some situations a consultant or a leadership coach performs this role.

Every leader needs a trusted confidant—a listener who will listen as the leader brainstorms ideas, lets off steam, and regains perspective.

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Organizational Integrity: Trusting Others

by Ron Potter January 7, 2019

We continue our Monday series where I’m providing some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

Last week we unpacked with Learning to Change. This week we’ll explore Trusting Others.

Trusting Others

When leaders work to create high-trust cultures within their organizations and to ensure a sense of security, people feel that they can trust one another.

Fostering employee loyalty is a tall order for a CEO. One old-fashioned gesture of trust is giving employees keys to the store. At Edson International in New Bedford, Mass., president Will Keene has given 7 of the 25 workers keys to the family-owned machine shop, which makes steering systems for yachts.

“These people have been with the company at least five years,” says Keene. “They’ve made it known they plan to stay with our company for the long haul. They aren’t out to rip us off.” Newer employees get the message that long-term commitment is rewarded.

And the keys are used. Employees can work on their own projects in the shop on weekends, as long as someone else is present in case of injury. For workers who can’t afford their own shop, it means a lot.

When people do not trust one another, it is difficult for the organization to succeed and for the people within the organization to feel completely fulfilled. People who feel trusted and who find their leaders trustworthy are more satisfied, and their work environment is less stressful. There exists a feeling of openness and confidence and a greater ability for people to believe they can take risks.

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Organizational Integrity: Learning to Change

by Ron Potter December 31, 2018

For the next few Monday posts, I want to provide some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

Last week we started with Prioritizing People-Development. This week we explore Prioritizing People-Development.

Prioritizing People-Development

Another way a leader builds team integrity is through a willingness to make changes. How does a leader do that? How does a leader react when challenged or confronted by peers or subordinates?

Tom Peters is no stranger to change. He insists that embracing change is the single most competitive weapon in business. He suggests the following major points to help leaders effect change:

“Trust/respect/don’t underestimate potential.
Insist upon (and promote) lifelong learning.
Share information.
Get customers involved.
Emphasize ‘small wins.’
Tolerate failure to the point of cheerleading.
Reject ‘turf’ distinctions.”

Embracing change is the single most competitive weapon in business. Are you willing to change? How do you react when you are challenged or confronted?

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Organizational Integrity: Prioritizing People-Development

by Ron Potter December 10, 2018

For the next few Monday posts, I want to provide some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

Last week we started with self-disclosure. This week we explore Prioritizing People-Development.

Prioritizing People-Development

In 1997 Dennis Brozak, the president of Design Basics, a company with revenues of $4 million, handed over day-to-day operations to Linda Reimer, a highly qualified fifty-three-year-old whom he had found three years earlier at, of all places, a copy machine. Brozak saw that Reimer had management potential, but the intensive systematic training he gave her was the key to her rapid advancement in the company.

Back in 1991, Reimer was a longtime preschool director who wanted a part-time summer job. She took a low-level job photocopying blue prints for Design Basics, a company based in Omaha, Neb., that sells blueprints for homes via catalog. She did that job so well that Brozak hired her full-time in1994.

Over the next two years, Brozak gave Reimer various assignments that tested the potential executive’s leadership capabilities. First, he made her a human resources director and asked her to switch the department’s focus from advocating employees’ rights to developing their professional growth. She succeeded. Brozak began challenging her more and more. “I wanted to find out a lot about her,” he says. “Can she manage and motivate people? Can she delegate accurately and appropriately? And she had to be able to fire people when necessary. She has a big heart,
but she passed that test, too.”

Then, to see if she understood the market and the industry,
Brozak put Reimer in charge of one product, a catalog. The catalog’s home designs sold well. Brozak then evaluated her financial acumen
by making her an operations director, and he watched how well she used the company’s money. Again, he says, she did well. So Brozak
gave her control over all the company’s publishing. Once more, she produced a hit.

Finally, Brozak tested Reimer, by then a vice president, with new product development. He figured that assignment would show whether she was a big-picture thinker. Reimer identified a new niche that has become a major profit center for the company. “She changed the direction of our sales,” Brozaksays. By 1996, after 13 years at the company’s helm, Brozak wanted more free time. He began passing day-to-day operations to Reimer, giving her new responsibilities gradually to make sure she was ready to be promoted. In April 1997, Reimer officially became president.

Mike Hoffman, “The Leader Within,” Inc.,September 1998

If leaders want to develop others, they need to embrace these assumptions:

“Everyone wants to feel worthwhile.

Everyone needs and responds to encouragement.

People buy into the leader before they buy into the plan.

Most people don’t know how to be successful.

People are naturally motivated.

Most people will move once they receive permission and equipping.”

John C. Maxwell, The Maxwell Leadership Bible: Developing Leaders from the Word of God (Nashville: Nelson, 2002), 1437.

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Organizational Integrity: Self-Disclosure

by Ron Potter December 3, 2018

The makeup of organizational integrity

For the next few Monday posts, I want to provide some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

Last week we started with Vulnerability. This week we explore self-disclosure.

Self-disclosure

Leaders need to be the first to share what they stand for, what they value, what they want, what they hope for, and what they are willing to do in order to get where they want to go.

Self-disclosing leaders also need to be willing to risk trusting and being open with others if they want people’s trust and openness in return. The only way to receive others’ trust is to first trust others yourself.

Self-disclosure is risky for a leader. However, most people will appreciate the openness and will buy into a leader’s plans, vision, dreams, and actions more easily than if a leader is walled off.

Leaders need to be willing to risk trusting and being open with others if they want people’s trust and openness in return.

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Organizational Integrity: Vulnerability

by Ron Potter November 26, 2018

The makeup of organizational integrity

For the next few Monday posts, I want to provide some snapshots into what makes up organizational integrity.

This week we’ll start with Vulnerability.

Vulnerability

A leader who is approachable, available, and open to other ideas, thoughts, and even criticism has learned to be a humble person and further develops his or her integrity.

Executives often overlook the power of vulnerability. They confuse vulnerability with being weak. Too often, and for whatever reason (fear, circumstances, office politics, and so on), leaders build walls around themselves. They add one brick at a time until one day they become walled off from their people and their peers. The walls give them protection, but at the same time, the walls hide them from the harsh realities that confront every leader and keep them from communicating effectively. They are insulated and protected, but they are also cut off from others. Behind the walls, they can control and be hidden from failure. Behind the walls, they do not need to trust others or be vulnerable.

Gates, instead of walls, give others access to leaders, which enables leaders to demonstrate that they are trustworthy, open, and humble. Gates also allow leaders to share their visions and values with others. Open gates allow leaders to be vulnerable, to let go, and to trust others, which in turn builds others’ trust in their leaders.

Abraham Lincoln made himself accessible to people as often as he could. He listened to them, cried with them, and found out about the war campaign from them. His habit of wandering around and listening to others offers an important management lesson. Donald Phillips writes,

If subordinates, or people in general, know that they genuinely have easy access to their leader, they’ll tend to view the leader in a more positive, trustworthy light. “Hey,” the followers think, “this guy
really wants to hear from me—to know what I think and what’s really going on. He must be committed to making things work!” And so Lincoln was.

Once a leader takes this step of vulnerability, others will give back, and an effective team can be built on interpersonal integrity.

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Integrity-Based Leadership

by Ron Potter November 19, 2018

To have a great organization, integrity must be widespread.

So what does this look like?

As leader, you are the key. Integrity and trust are inseparable; one cannot exist without the other. According to Charles O’Reilly and Karlene Roberts,

Leaders who build trusting relationships within their team are willing to consider alternative viewpoints and to make use of other people’s expertise and abilities. They feel comfortable with the group and are willing to let others exercise influence over group decisions. In contrast, managers in a distrustful environment often take a self-protective posture. They’re directive and hold tight the reins of power. Those who work for such managers are likely to pass the distrust on by withholding and distorting information.

How does integrity-based leadership work?

In a research study, several groups of business executives were asked to be involved in a role-playing exercise. The groups were given identical factual information about a difficult policy decision, and then they were asked to solve a problem related to that decision. Half of the groups were briefed to expect trusting behavior from the members of their group; the other half were told to expect untrusting behavior (“You cannot openly express feelings or differences with members of your group”).

After thirty minutes of discussion, each group member as well as those who had observed the role playing completed a questionnaire. The responses were in harmony with each other: The discussions among members in the high-trust group were significantly more positive than the discussions among members of the low-trust group. In fact, people in the low-trust group who tried to be open and honest were virtually ignored. Hostility was caused by a mere suggestion, and it quickly spread throughout the group. The people in the low-trust groups realized that the lack of trust kept them from high achievement. They did not feel free to be vulnerable due to the actions and rejection of other group members.

Here are some findings on the high-trust group:

Members were more open about their feelings.
Members experienced greater clarity of thinking.
Members searched for more alternative courses of action.
Members reported greater levels of mutual influence on outcomes.

The high-trust group opened the gate of personal vulnerability, and the result was a better team and a model of integrity-based leadership.

When people do not trust one another, it is difficult for the organization to succeed and for the people within the organization to feel completely fulfilled. People who feel trusted and who trust their leaders are more satisfied, and their work environment is less stressful. There exists a feeling of openness and confidence and a greater ability for people to believe they can take risks.

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Organizational Integrity

by Ron Potter May 16, 2016

How can you build a team integrity? By modeling some key qualities.

Vulnerability

A leader who is approachable, available, and open to other ideas, thoughts, and even criticism has learned to be a humble person and further develops his or her integrity.
Executives often overlook the power of vulnerability. They confuse vulnerability with being weak. Too often, and for whatever reason (fear, circumstances, office politics, and so on), leaders build walls around themselves. They add one brick at a time until one day they become walled off from their people and their peers. The walls give them protection, but at the same time, the walls hide them from the harsh realities that confront every leader and keep them from communicating effectively. They are insulated and protected, but they are also cut off from others. Behind the walls, they can control and be hidden from failure. Behind the walls, they do not need to trust others or be vulnerable.
Gates, instead of walls, give others access to leaders, which enables leaders to demonstrate that they are trustworthy, open, and humble. Gates also allow leaders to share their visions and values with others. Open gates allow leaders to be vulnerable, to let go, and to trust others, which in turn builds others’ trust in their leaders.
Once a leader takes this step of vulnerability, others will give back, and an effective team can be built on interpersonal integrity.

Self-Disclosure

Leaders need to be the first to share what they stand for, what they value, what they want, what they hope for, and what they are willing to do in order to get where they want to go.
Self-disclosing leaders also need to be willing to risk trusting and being open with others if they want people’s trust and openness in return. The only way to receive others’ trust is to first trust others yourself.
Self-disclosure is risky for a leader. However, most people will appreciate the openness and will buy into a leader’s plans, vision, dreams, and actions more easily than if a leader is walled off.

Prioritizing People-Development

Daniel Pink in his book “Drive” helps us understand that the three main driving forces of motivation are Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. People have a strong need to direct their own lives, a great desire to get better and better at something and a yearning to accomplish things in service of something larger then themselves. Giving people a purpose and then helping them grow and develop so that they become capable of doing great things on their own and with others adds to the integrity, wholeness of a team.

Learning to Change

Another way a leader builds team integrity is through a willingness to make changes. How does a leader do that? How does a leader react when challenged or confronted by peers or subordinates?
Tom Peters is no stranger to change. He insists that embracing change is the single most competitive weapon in business. He suggests the following major points to help leaders effect change:

Trust/respect/don’t underestimate potential.
Insist upon (and promote) lifelong learning.
Share information.
Get customers involved.
Emphasize ‘small wins.’
Tolerate failure to the point of cheerleading.
Reject ‘turf’ distinctions.”

Trusting Others

When leaders work to create high-trust cultures within their organizations and to ensure a sense of security, people feel that they can trust one another.

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