Yesterday I was surfing around in web 2.0 when I came across a neat survey on Plaxo.com. Colleague

Ron Acker had asked the question, what is the most important quality for a leader? This got me thinking as the responses poured in. A landslide win for “integrity”. I sent Ron a private note suggesting that it would be interesting to see what all those voters meant when they chose integrity. Ron started another poll and got a diverse response. Check it out here! As a leadership development guy I started to reflect on integrity and recalled something I had investigated several years ago that I wanted to share. Can you teach integrity? I have a theory… You cannot teach integrity, you can only help another person to discover the level of integrity they already have. Several years ago while reading some psychology psycho babble I came across something that actually made sense. There was a claim that said that by the age of three most of our character has been defined. What happens at later ages is a process of refinement rather than establishment. I thought about this and decided that it was likely true. Having had experiences with people of different environmental circumstance, my observations supported the claim. So while considering the leadership development process and the identification of leadership candidates I recalled this claim. It made sense to me again. In my experience I have found that you cannot teach character or integrity. You either have it or you do not. As hopeless and final as this position seems there is a light at the end of the tunnel. “Feedback, The Breakfast of Champions” Ken Blanchard I believe in the absence of candid wise feedback each of us will occasionally and inadvertently violate our own standard of integrity, or at least others will perceive us to have done so. Nothing malicious or devious here more ignorance. If we can get trusted feedback we can begin to see how others perceive our actions. Doing this coupled with a values evaluation provides the opportunity to modify our behaviors to ensure they are in line with our integrity. End result: a more consistent and measurable level of personal integrity. “Ready Set Grow” Bryan Flanagan So we can have different inherent levels of integrity. We can measure integrity in different ways. The interpersonal conflict arising from such differences does not find its root here. Rather it is the misunderstanding of behavior and the accompanying values judgments that get us in trouble. As a leader we are responsible to suspend judgment and help our team grow. This may mean providing feedback on behaviors that undermine the effectiveness of a follower. Learning how to do so with skill and grace is a master’s level course in the journey to being an effective leader. Want to learn more? Ronn.hurst@gmail.com