Your points about leadership integrity are right on. Followers can sniff out a hypocritical fraud with no trouble. A leader not walking the walking is the worst kind of organizational poison. There are many cliches and quotes to describe it but here are two of my favorites, “Good leaders will take all the blame and pass along all the credit” and “trustworthiness begets trust”.

I really appreciate your contribution to the discussion.

Jeff

In my coaching work I find that the thing which will derail a leader most quickly and permanently is a lack of integrity. It often shows up in ways more subtle than outright lying or cheating. the most common way that leaders compromise their credibility is to fail to walk their talk. Decisions and actions speak louder than words- especially when they are out of sync with the values espoused by the leader. Staff and colleagues cannot always articulate it, they just know that the boss is not trustworthy when the high ideals they talk about do not show up in the decisions that they make.

In fact, the main 360 assessment tool I use- one that focuses solely on leadership competencies, supports that point of view. Normalized data across over 50,000 senior executives shows that the most unforgiving and critical capability is integrity.

Examples? My favorite is the organizational values statement that puts people at the top of the list and then spends nothing on succession planning, development, retention, training, benefits or anything else that might make the statement true.

http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2010/03/new-patent-ruling-paves-way-for-lawsuits.html

There is just no replacement for integrity.

Jeff