~Ethics and Integrity in LEADERSHIP

****************************************
LEADERSHIP and INTEGRITY

‎"...faithful leaders will seek to keep their word. Every time they break their word, something tends to die in their organizations, in the wider culture, in their followers, and in themselves. Faithful leaders will not make light use of their own shifting goals in excusing themselves from fulfilling their responsibilities. They will seek to honor their promises as much as possible despite altered circumstances. Even when they have legitimate reasons to break their promises, they will look for some way to partially honor their pledges." 

- from the book 'FAITH in LEADERSHIP' by Robert Banks/Kimberly Powell

Promises

"Over a period of time, the leaders of organizations will tend to make a range of promises to those who work with and for them. These promises may be large or small, explicit or implicit, personal or collective, strong or weak. Like many politicians' promises, these may be met with skepticism; as many cultural critics have lamented, there seems to be a growing disparity, in private as well as public life, between the promises that leaders and institutions make and the promises that they keep. This disparity is due in part to the changing definition of what a promise is: nowadays, most people seem to regard a promise as the expressions of a hope rather than as the creation of an obligation. The disparity is also due to the move away from a principle-based ethic and toward a situational, fulfillment-oriented one whereby it is enough, in order to break a promise, to say that external circumstances or personal aspirations have changed."

-from the book 'FAITH in LEADERSHIP' by Robert Banks/Kimberly Powell

INTEGRITY!

In the Bible, words translated as integrity do not appear with great frequency. When they do they are very instructive.

The heaviest concentration of such occurrences appears in the so-called wisdom literature of the Old Testament - for example, "The INTEGRITY of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them" (Proverbs 11:3). Here, the implication is that INTEGRITY contributes to one's success. Even if INTEGRITY brings no financial reward, scripture insists, "Better the poor walking in INTEGRITY than one perverse of speech who is a fool" (Proverbs 19:1). Presumably, then, INTEGRITY has something to do with plain speaking.

In the Psalms, INTEGRITY is often used as a parallel word for righteousness or uprightness (for instance, see Psa. 7:8, 25:21). Psalm 26 uses the word twice: "Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my INTEGRITY" (Psalms 26:1), and then, after pointing to a contrast with "those in whose hands are evil devices, and whose right hands are full of bribes," makes the plea "But as for me, I walk in my INTEGRITY; redeem me, and be gracious to me" (Psalms 26:1). According to Kidner (1973, p. 118), the basic meaning of the word INTEGRITY is "wholeness, usually in the sense of whole-heartedness or sincerity, rather than faultlessness."

-from the book 'FAITH in LEADERSHIP' by Robert Banks/Kimberly Powell

~What are the implications for LEADERSHIP?

There is no doubt that the Old Testament depicts God as looking, often in vain, for the highest standards of INTEGRITY in Israel's leaders. In particular, they are expected to seek after the welfare of their people rather than after their own needs. Great leaders in the Old Testament, such as Nehemiah and Daniel, display their INTEGRITY by refusing to lower their standards or betray their convictions in the face of pressure and opposition.

-from the book 'FAITH in LEADERSHIP' by Robert Banks/Kimberly Powell