Integrity: Creating a Life of Wholeness

Years ago, I walked into the lobby of the largest investment bank in the world. I was there that day to have an appointment with the CEO. We were talking about a coaching matter that he wanted some support around. As I sat in the lobby, I watch a large screen TV as it scrolled the core values of the organization. The first core value was integrity, which wasn't at all uncommon. I'd sat in many such lobbies and seen many such scrolling virtues come across big screen tv' Integrity is always in the list. So when I sat down with the CEO, my first question in just getting to know him was I saw that integrity is one of your core values. What does integrity mean to you here in this organization? Without blinking an eye, he looked at me and said, real simple. Integrity is doing the right thing. It was surprising to me in the years gone by since that first conversation that this particular huge investment bank has been involved in one lawsuit after another where doing the right thing has come into question. Now, I'm not here to suggest, nor are we at the conscious leadership group, that integrity isn't doing the right thing. We just think it's not a sufficient definition. So to us, what is integrity? We want to go back to the lexicon. If you look at the word integrity, it comes from the exact same root as integer, and integer is a whole number. Integrity is first and foremost wholeness. When I'm in integrity, I am whole. Now, that means many things. But the most important thing it means to us right now is that I'm energetically whole. You see, energy is the great commodity of leadership. Far more important than time or money is your energy. How it's being run in your system, how it's being managed, how it's being used in the world. Energy is like a circuit. It wants to run in a complete whole circuit, but it can be interrupted. And when it's interrupted, it dissipates. Leaders lose energetic empowerment. It's a little bit like holiday lights that they used to have when I was a kid. You'd have this whole string of magnificent holiday lights and when one light went out, the entire strand went dim. Energy is not exactly that way because it's not binary. It's not either. Or. But imagine if every time you unscrewed a bulb, the energy dimmed a little. That's the way it is. So what is integrity? It's wholeness. It's energetic wholeness. It's aliveness. It's being absolutely available with your full life force to all that your leadership, opportunity and challenge has in front of you. So then the question becomes, how do I stay energetically whole? Or put another way, what interrupts energetic wholeness? What are the light bulbs that if we don't pay attention to them, if they get unscrewed, we're going to lose our energy. At the conscious leadership group, we talk about four pillars of integrity. And those four pillars are like the four main light bulbs. The first pillar of integrity is responsibility. As long as I'm living in a state of responsibility, and what that means is taking responsibility for what is occurring in my life, you see, we believe that responsibility is not something that can be assigned, it can only be taken. So many organizations spend so much of their time trying to assign responsibility to people. Those are unconscious organizations. In conscious organizations, people step forward and they take or claim or own responsibility. What this means in its most radical sense is that whatever is occurring in my life, I am responsible for it in the most powerful way. I'm actually creating it. So the first key to being a person of integrity, to having full integral alignment of my system, is I take radical responsibility. The second is that I live in a state of emotional connectedness. What this means to us is we feel our feelings all the way through to completion. If you want to interrupt your life flow of energy, just repress your feelings. It's a little bit like being thrown in the deep end of a swimming pool. You could tread water for a few minutes, you'd have the energy to do that. But if I throw you a beach ball and I say hold that beach ball underwater while treading water, it's going to get a little more difficult. Now if I throw you another beach ball, a second and a third and a fourth, at some point you become totally exhausted, your energy is completely dissipated. Feelings are exactly the same way feelings arise in a leader. They're like a beach ball. If you try to hold them under the water, repress them or suppress them, if you don't let them come naturally to the surface and be dealt with, then they're going to SAP your energy. So the second pillar is feel your feelings. The third is responsible language. This is do you know how to speak candidly and listen deeply? If you want to short circuit your energy, just stop telling the truth. When we stop telling the truth, automatically our energy gets blocked and dissipated. But it doesn't have to be just a bold faced lie. All you have to do is stop revealing your truth. Just stop saying what you feel, what you think, what you want. Every time we do that, our energy gets constricted or blocked. Second, not only do I know how to speak authentically and candidly, but I listen deeply. If you want to block the emotional flow of your energy, just stop listening. Stop listening to yourself, to the language of your heart, to your body, to your mind, but stop listening to others. And when you stop listening to people, you block the flow of energy inside of you and inside of them. So the first three pillars are I take responsibility, I speak authentically, I listen deeply, and I feel my feelings. And the fourth pillar is I keep my agreements. Now, what this means is I get really good at making agreements. I make clean agreements. Who's going to do what by when I make agreements that I really, really want make, I don't make them from, should, or have to. I make them because I want to. I keep 90% of my agreements, 10% I renegotiate. If I'm not going to keep an agreement, I tell you ahead of time, and if I ever break an agreement, I clean it up. We work with all kinds of leaders and organizations who are out of integrity. They have broken energetic flow because they are not impeccable with their agreements. What they say they don't do, what they say they won't do, they do. That's agreement lapse that leads to a broken integrity. So what is integrity? It's wholeness, energetic wholeness built on those four pillars. When those are intact in place and being constantly renewed. Leaders have a limitless supply of energy, the great commodity of conscious leadership.