In a recent interview I was told, "Integrity is the easy part". My response was a short uncomfortable laugh while I shot this woman a glance that said, "Are you freaking kidding me?" I work hard every day to maintain my integrity and I find it a difficult but rewarding task. "Is this woman a superwoman who doesn't have trouble with integrity," I wondered to myself. Then, of course, I learned this came from the woman who said she would call the next day to let me know whether I got the job or not and never called - or hasn't called to this date, a good week and a half after she said she'd call.
Then there is this story: a good friend of mine went to a store that personalizes gifts through engraving or embroidery. My friend purchased journals and took them to the store. She asked that the store engrave the name of person to whom she is giving the journal on a small plaque in the lower right hand corner of the front cover. She had four of these journals. On a fifth journal she asked for something slightly different. When she came back to the store a week later to pick up her journals, she found that the first four journals had been done in the style she had requested only for the last journal. The sales representative did not apologize for the mistake but eventually explained to my friend how the problem could be fixed. My friend was unhappy but was willing to wait another week to get something closer to what she asked for. A week later, she goes back to the store to find that the journals look identical to how they did the first time. The store did nothing to correct the mistakes. This time when my friend asked them to correct the mistakes or give her a discount, the store refused. Not only did they refuse to correct the mistake, they told my friend that it was her fault that the mistakes occurred. When my friend seemed unhappy with this, the store offered to correct the mistakes for an addition charge per item. Of course, it would take yet another couple days to get the product. My friend doesn't have the time to wait. She's already given them 2 weeks. Why did they offer to make the changes the first time the problem was pointed out if they weren't going to make the changes? When they decided not to make the changes, why didn't the store call my friend and tell her? The moral of this story - DO NOT shop at the store "Hands off it's Mine" in the Claremont Village, they have no integrity.
Integrity sounds easy. It's simple - just do what you say you will do, be on time or call if you're going to be late, it's mostly common courtesy type things. However, with as often as many of us are unable to keep our word (and I'm sure I've been known to break my word) ... maybe integrity is harder than it seems ... or maybe too many of us, like the employer, take integrity for granted.
I'm sure most of us intend to do what we say we will do. Sometimes it's just hard to do what we said we would do. Calling someone to tell them the job was given to someone else or that the changes one promised to make are not going to be made is not a fun task.
When I think of integrity, I often think of Phoebe from the TV show Friends. (Of course, a lot of things remind me of Friends, but that's another point altogether.) Early in the show, Phoebe is asked if she would like to do some work with the guys. Her response, "Oh, I wish I could but I don't want to". While I laugh because this is rude, every time I have the same thought: "What refreshing honesty!" Maybe there's a lesson we can all learn from Phoebe. The lesson is this: while we may sometimes feel or even be rude in order to keep our integrity everyone benefits more from the integrity rather than the lie that occurs, even unintentionally, from losing it.
In my few years of working, I learned that integrity is not what it seems to be. Namely, there is some difference between integrity and competence. It strikes me that the scenario you narrated here is less about integrity per se than it is about competence.
ReplyDeleteCompetence is about delivering on promises, and integrity is about how those promises are delivered. You can be competent and yet have questionable integrity.
In my work, I learned that integrity must sometimes be sacrificed for competence. If a client needs my report to be favorable to their goals, sometimes maintaining integrity in my work would preclude that. Yet, it is possible to sacrifice integrity by tweaking the rules and competently submitting a favorable report in the end. I've been surprised more than once at learning the "tricks of the trade."
That your printer could not balance these concepts tells me they are incompetent, that integrity is still beyond their consideration.
Think about it. If some integrity-bound banking executive at a Wall Street firm decided to not supercharge its balance sheets like everyone else did, his firm would be punished by the market and labeled incompetent pretty quick.
In the market place, integrity works against competence in more ways than many would admit.
If Wall Street had really prioritized integrity over competence, then the economy might have entered a recession much sooner. The fact we did not, of course, is exactly what led to the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of today.
This tells me that perhaps the world needs to understand better the difference between competence and integrity, and the consequences therein.
Miles,
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree with you in spirit, I define competence differently than you do. I define competence or incompetence as about having the ability or not having the ability to do something. Integrity is about action and honor - the delivery of promises - the state of being undivided or the words equaling the actions and vice versa.
I say this because I believe part of integrity is honesty. One needs to be able to be honest about one's capabilities in order to maintain integrity.
I also say this because one can be competent, choose not to do the action he/she is capable of doing and maintain integrity. "I can do that but I don't want to" a slight variation on what Phoebe says above is both a statement of competence and a statement of integrity. There are cases where one can question the morality of inaction when action is possible - MLK Jr spoke of that often. However the integrity of the statement stays intact for the person even in the face of such morals, even as I can wish said person would change their morals.
When it comes to the printer - they're not incompetent because they actually have the ability to do what they said they would do. My friend was not asking for anything that was outside the realm of possibility for this business. They lost their integrity when they said they would do something and not only did they not do the work but they didn't call to say they could not or would not do the work. Had they called to say "We apologize but we will not do to this for you" they could have maintained a small amount of their integrity.
You make some great points about integrity in business. I think this gets us to something you mentioned in my journaling blog: there is an internal complex of selves and an external complex of selves. Therefore, I would say there is internal integrity and external integrity. External is about action lining up with words - doing what one said he/she would do. Internal integrity comes when what one is doing conflicts with other values or when one finds he/she is actually incapable of performing the act(s) she/he said he/she would.
Of course there are businesses, such as Wall Street, who seem to find a way to succeed without integrity at all. And some may question whether it is even competent at this point. Sadly, one can be competent and have no integrity.
No matter what the definition of these two words, I definitely agree with you that the world needs to understand the consequences of a misalignment of competence and integrity.
Thanks for the feedback! It strikes me that our definitions differ because you view competence and integrity as a personal mirror of sorts. It's psychologically valid and I take no argument to your model.
ReplyDeleteBut I look at this from a client-consultant viewpoint. In the work world, you give no one the benefit of the doubt. From the client side, bestowing the label of 'competent' on the assumption that a consultant has the ability to do something is a waste of time.
If I understand your viewpoint correctly, then all companies are potentially competent even if they don't deliver on their promises.
You wrote:
"When it comes to the printer - they're not incompetent because they actually have the ability to do what they said they would do."
You have a point there, but really.. who cares if they have the ability or not? They didn't get it done! I'm not their father confessor, and they'll get no absolution from me. Frankly I couldn't care less if someone is truly competent or not if they don't deliver.
The way I see it, in the case of your friend's printer, assessing their integrity isn't even on the radar yet.
Wall Street, on the other hand, was just a bit too competent. Witness the outrageous amount of wealth that got recently vaporized.. bankers created all that wealth! Now that's competence: they did their jobs and they delivered.
That it was all phantom wealth is a different story. Spinning gold from straw is a matter of integrity, not competence. After all our bankers are best in the world at spinning that loom.
However, as I argued on my post about AIG, to expect integrity from Wall Street is a fool's hope, especially the way that you define integrity here. As I wrote then:
"Wall Street plays the market, an institution that knows no moral bounds. Business ethics ring hollow because a free market economy is held to work on efficiency and not morality. More often than not, voluntary "moral" actions contradict market rules and drive the moralizing entrepreneur out of the game."
In the end, Megan, I can't agree more with you: the world needs to better understand the consequences of this arrangement.