Demonstrate Integrity Through Your Actions

Walk Your Talk So People Trust You

Want to build a reputation for integrity? It's all about aligning your actions with your values, no matter where you are or what you are doing. Understanding how to display integrity in your everyday actions at home and work is critical.

Integrity is the quality of having strong ethical principles that are consistently followed, even when no one is watching. Central to integrity are honesty, trustworthiness, and consistency in actions and words.

Integrity means being self-aware, accountable, responsible, truthful, and demonstrating internally consistent actions. People who have integrity display these characteristics.

• Act from a strong moral compass: Integrity starts with clear ethical principles guiding your decisions. What truly matters to you? Honesty? Fairness? Reliability? Define your core values and let them be your guiding principles.

• Walk the walk: Integrity is about aligning your beliefs with your behavior in good times and bad. Honesty and commitment are cornerstones of integrity. This means being truthful even when faced with difficult situations at work. It also means keeping your promises, no matter the inconvenience. Similarly, integrity shines through your actions at home when you follow through on your commitments to family and friends.

  Consistency is key: People trust those who are predictable in their behavior. They value their feeling of safety when they know exactly what to expect. Don't be the person who says one thing and does another. Upholding your values consistently builds trust and respect from family, friends, and coworkers. In contrast, failing to follow through on commitments can damage how others perceive your reliability and erode faith and trust.

By following these principles, you can build integrity in all aspects of your life and become known for your honesty, reliability, and strong moral character.

Examples of Integrity in Action

People who demonstrate integrity draw others to them because they are trustworthy and dependable. They are principled employees, and you can count on them to behave honorably.

Investor extraordinaire Warren Buffet once said, “You’re looking for three things, generally, in a person: intelligence, energy, and integrity. And if they don’t have the last one, don’t even bother with the first two.”

Here are examples of integrity in action so you can recognize this vital character trait in employees and coworkers. People can reflect different facets of integrity in the workplace.

Honesty

A software developer attempts to optimize a specific process but encounters problems because of his code. He could push forward with his suboptimal code to save his work and his face with coworkers.

But instead, he demonstrated integrity and chose to go to his team. He described the dead ends he had run into and explained that he thought pushing forward could create future problems for the product. His dead ends might prevent the development of advanced features for the software.

The team discussed the problem and worked through a solution. John scrapped all his code and started from scratch with the team’s input. Thanks to his honesty, his new solution allowed the team to expand the product’s capabilities quickly in the future.

Accountability

An employee produced a report once a week that was used on Friday by two other departments to plan their workflow for the next week. Knowing she planned to take a vacation soon, she ensured the report would be produced as needed in her absence. 

The employee taught another person how to create the report. Additionally, she wrote out the appropriate procedures so that the coworker had a guide in her absence. Marsha supervised the trainee for two weeks so that her replacement had a chance to do the actual task.

Finally, she touched base with the other two departments to let them know that a new person would create their report while she was gone in case the coworker needed help.

Responsibility

A team missed a deadline for an essential deliverable from their team. The leader took personal responsibility for the missed deadline rather than throwing the team members under the bus. They then addressed the problems as a team and implemented safeguards to keep them from underperforming again.

Team members recognized their contribution to the failure, but because their leader took responsibility as a team leader, the team learned from their mistakes.

Dependability

A parent was responsible for picking the children up from school after work three days a week. Rather than expecting teammates to accommodate the schedule automatically, the employee took responsibility for informing each teammate about this commitment.

The employee went out of the way to make scheduling meetings and deadlines easy for the team. The employee communicated effectively with the team members and avoided hard feelings and distrust by their openness and honesty.

Why Integrity Is Critical at Home and in the Workplace

People can demonstrate their integrity—or lack thereof—daily through actions with each other, their families, and customers or clients. If you haven't hired the right people, a lack of integrity will be evident in their behavior.

A workforce comprised of people with integrity is one where you can trust people to perform to the best of their ability. They don't compromise on their ideals, cut corners, cheat, or lie. They behave according to an internally consistent code of values and a solid, agreed-upon moral compass.

Integrity can strengthen relationships with vendors and customers because they can trust you'll keep your promises and act honorably if something goes wrong.

Plan to discuss integrity's meaning in your workplace and home regularly. Looking at dilemmas faced by individuals dedicated to acting with integrity gives your employees a chance to learn your expectations. It also helps develop a culture of integrity in the workplace.