business INTELLIGENCE+

Many business owners have opened up to me about their sensitive problems in running their company after my excruciating psychoanalytic session with them – a necessary get-together to help me better understand the person coordinating the company’s efforts. The problems range from having poor employees to bad client experiences and so forth. As I begin probing for the source of the problem I often notice that even somewhat financially successful entrepreneurs haven’t yet figured out what their values are and do not fully, if at all, understand the concept or advantages of having integrity.

The problem in essence is this; everything you project as a manager of your company affects every facet of your company, guiding both internal and external functions. If you sustain a set of strong core values, without compromising them (this is integrity), you won’t have a hard time making decisions with regards to running your company in a consistent manner.

The important rule here is “without compromising”. Any given moment you compromise on your values, you work against yourself and lose integrity.

“But isn’t it better to adapt to situations and make do with whatever middle-ground you can find when faced with an issue/problem?” The answer is: when you compromise your values, they lose their value. Period.

Say your client wants you to perform a task that you know won’t result in the best work by your company; saying ‘yes’ to that task will bring you profit, but now you’ve given a poor display of your company’s work and the client has a control over you – he knows you can be persuaded to compromise and will without exception ask you the same favor in the future. Congratulations, a bad client relationship has just been sealed.

Another example; depending on your mood you say this today to your employee’s request/question and the other tomorrow. The result is your employees start wondering if you really know how to run your company at all (also they will feel insecure about everything).

I bet you yourself, assuming you have ever worked under someone else’s lead, have had a situation where the manager is not there and you have to figure out the classical question: “what would my boss do?”. Well, the fact is that in 99 situations out of a 100, you will have no clue. This is due to your manager lacking integrity, thus his actions are inconsistent and you have no idea what he wants and when.

From the manager’s point of view, the situation seems different. He’s thinking: “If only I could multiply myself I would not have to worry about poor employees”. This perception avoids the reality that the manager himself is the problem. He lacks integrity and a strong value-base – thus projecting it to his employees, which in turn reflect it back as similar or derived behavior.

Managers often make the mistake of solving daily problems by trying to meticulously control every action their employees take. The problem is that the management is remedying the symptoms, not the disease itself, which is the lack of integrity.

The ultimate outcome of low integrity is hypocrisy, a vice that has in my opinion lost its gravity. Pretending to have values or virtues without actually having them is not regarded a corrupt feat among peers anymore; rather it’s nurtured through bad practices and collective deterioration of moral and ethical education. “Do what you gotta do!” is the phrase that echoes in business interactions at the present.

“It is under all circumstances an advantage to be in full possession of one's personality, otherwise the repressed elements will only crop up as a hindrance elsewhere, not just at some unimportant point, but at the very spot where we are most sensitive.” – Carl Jung

That points to an important aspect with regards to values – you must first recognize them. It takes a lot of contemplation, however it is rewarded with a crystal clear view of yourself and how you lead your life.

When you have established your core values, turn to them in every fold of your life, and do not compromise them. In terms of management, this will lead to strong leadership, consistent behavior and quick decision-making. If you read back, the advantage of having well-established core values in the before mentioned scenarios should also be quite obvious to you by now.

But be aware, being uncompromising is highly difficult; this I have discussed in a separate article here.