With the college admissions scandal in the headlines, the issue of honesty and integrity in business couldn’t be more relevant.

How you conduct yourself in your personal life translates into what happens in running your business.

So let’s look at how integrity and honesty are essential leadership qualities and how you can best display them.

Importance of integrity

A survey a few years ago found that integrity was cited by employees as the most important attribute in a leader. Employees get inspired by leaders they view as being honest. Conversely, they get turned off, and often leave companies, where they see leaders lacking integrity.

Integrity also translates into rewards with customers. People will do business with you only if they trust you. Customers must be confident that you aren’t trying to pull a fast one and are telling them the truth.

Maintaining integrity

It’s easy to be honest when things are going well. But when you get into inconvenient situations, maintaining integrity becomes hard. And some people have grown accustomed to “fudging” (e.g., exaggerating billable hours or expenses reported on an expense account); they don’t even recognize this as dishonest.

To maintain your own integrity and ensure that integrity pervades your workplace, consider doing the following:

• Commit to integrity. You can demonstrate this through a mission, vision, or value statement affirming the company’s dedication to ethical behavior. For example, American Express’ list of core values says: “We uphold the highest standards of integrity in all of our actions.” Make employees and customers aware of the company’s position.
• Lead by example. Owners must show their integrity so that employees will follow suit. Words to axe from your vocabulary are cheating, lying, and admittedly compromising your principles. Words to keep in the forefront are truth, sincerity, transparency, and accountability.
• Manage ethical problems wisely. Expect that you’ll be faced with ethical problems you’ll be forced to deal with. You want to handle them with integrity. A good resource for this is an article from the Free Management Library.

Final thought

As Mary Kay said: “Integrity is the ingredient that will enable you to forge rapidly ahead on the highway that leads to success. It advertises you as being an individual who will always come through. Whatever you say you will do, do it even if you have to move heaven and earth.”

This is the fourth blog in a 12-part series on Developing Leadership Qualities. Last month’s blog concerned listening and communicating. Next month’s blog on developing leadership qualities addresses decision-making.