Integrity: Your absolute bottom-line

by Dr. Denis Waitley

"Life is like a field of newly fallen snow; where I choose to walk every step will show."

My grandmother and grandfather had a simple motto hanging on the living room wall of their small frame house, where many of my positive seeds of development and growth were planted for the future. They didn't have to talk about it, they simply demonstrated the motto by the way they lived: "Life is like a field of newly fallen snow; where I choose to walk every step will show."

My grandmother and grandfather believed that you were either honest or you weren't, that there was no in between, that there was no such thing as being partially honest.

Integrity is in short supply today and it's getting scarcer. Without this quality, leadership is a facade, a garment that one wears depending on the fashion. This rare quality of integrity is having a standard of personal morality and ethics that does not sell out to expediency and that is not relative to the situation. Integrity is an inner standard for judging your performance. The mark of a true leader is uncompromising honesty.

People who see little or no value in themselves will not operate according to such an internal compass. In fact a standard like this may be distasteful to them. Instead of being concerned with self-respect, they will try to gain recognition from others through manipulation, half-truth, and show.

In the final corrupt years of the Roman Empire, status was counted by the number of impressive carved statues of the gods you displayed in your courtyard or foyer. As with every business, there were good and bad sculptors and merchants in the statue industry.
As the empire became more apathetic, greedy, and narcissistic, many turned to expediency to see how much they could get away with and beat the customers and the system.

Sculptors became so adept at hiding cracks and chips in the marble by remodelling the statues with wax, that most people could not tell the difference in quality with the naked eye. It was quite common to have your statue literally begin to weep or melt under the scrutiny of sunlight and heat in your courtyard before your eyes.

In order to get an authentic statue of fine quality, carved by a reputable artist, you would go to the artisan marketplace in the Quad in Rome and look for the signs at the booths marked "sine cera" -- without wax. In the "sine cera" booths you would find the real thing.

In everything we do in life, we are looking for those products, services and individuals that represent the real thing. More than any other virtue we look for in people, we value sincerity. It is something we should expect from our leaders. It is something we must demand of ourselves.