We had some new members today that I contacted via Meetin.org.  We had a great conversation about integrity, values, honesty and a whole array of other related and unrelated stuff.  We started off with a healthy debate about what constitutes integrity.  We all agreed that we tend to confuse INTEGRITY with HONEST.  Although honesty is a major component of Integrity, and one of the core values everyone should measure themselves against, one should not make the mistake of confusing one with the other.

The lively chat also turned to a number of “taboo” topics like religion and, politics :)  Towards the end the talk even turned into a personal therapy session for me where I started disclosing my long-term dilemmas with values including: using company cell phone for personal use (I never checked with the company but I strongly believe that this should be OK because I cannot lug around two different phones just so that I can keep my personal stuff different; all the other members agreed 100%) and my desire to switch to a more fuel-efficient, greener car in order to more closely align with my value of environmental-friendliness.  You see I want to switch to a hybrid car, but I am closely attached to my SUV and I would incur a pretty big financial penalty if I decide to sell that car now.  Nobody had a silver-bullet solution and this value of mine is still a work in progress.  One day in the near future I will proudly proclaim that I went “green”.  But until then, I have to live with the dilemma.

We talked about meeting at a downtown location and changing the format a little and for now I want to continue the focus on leadership…

Next time (October 16th) we will discussing chapter 4 of Developing the Leader Within You and the topic is “Creating Positive Change”.  Please stop by and I promise you will go back to your workplace as a much better leader!