How Important Are Honesty and Integrity in Business?

How Important Are Honesty and Integrity in Business?

Which attributes matter most in the business world? That is a difficult question to answer because there are so many important attributes that people, especially business leaders, need to have. However, one of the most important factors in any relationship, in business or life, is honesty, which breeds trust. For example, it is very difficult to have a successful business if your customers don’t trust you or don’t think you’re honest. You might find some success by being dishonest, but in the long run, if people don’t trust you, they typically won’t stand by you.

Integrity In Business And How It Translates To Success

Whenever I maintain a strategic planning session, then the first importance that each one of the executives concurs on is the importance of honesty and integrity. Leaders stand up for what they think in.

As an instance, Jon Huntsman, Sr. is a multibillionaire who launched a chemical business from scratch and grew it into a $12 billion venture. His book, Winners Never Heard, is full of stories taken from his knowledge where he firmly refused to compromise his principles. Huntsman claims that ethics is the reason he was as powerful as he is.

Great Leaders Never Compromise Their Honesty And Integrity By Cheating

“There aren’t any ethical shortcuts in the sport of business or lifetime,” that he writes. “There are, essentially, three types of individuals, the ineffective, the temporarily effective, and people who become and stay successful. The distinction is personality.”

There are various cases of temporary winners obtained by cheating. For quite a few years, Enron was mentioned among America’s most populous and adventuresome businesses.

The CEO of this firm knew the most significant individuals in the nation, such as the President of the USA. Except Enron’s success was built on lies, and the”winners” who led the business are case studies in the absence of ethics.

Honesty Is All-Important

I recently met with Wally Hawley, one of the co-founders of InterWest Partners (1979), one of the larger venture capital partnerships in the United States. I took the opportunity to discuss with Wally a few importance of honesty in business, I asked him how important he thought honesty is in business when dealing with others? “Well if you don’t have it basically I don’t think you have anything,” he said. “It’s a matter of trust.

If you’re working business honesty with someone and as long as you have the trust and they have the trust in you it’s all-important.” Wally also explained that if you begin to lose that trust factor it could be devastating to your relationships and your business. “Over my career, I obviously have gotten involved in situations where I’ve seen leaders that start to do things that I’m not very happy with and at that point I’m out of there.” Wally said “there’s no reason to tolerate anything other than someone who you feel you can trust what they say, their word, what they’re going to do. So it’s all important now.”

A Man (or Woman) of Integrity

Wally and I also discussed the importance of integrity in business and the role that it plays in business. I asked Wally what comes to his mind when he hears the word integrity? “Well integrity and honesty are sorts of the same thing, but if a person is described as why integrity is important in business it means you can trust what he says and what he does.” Wally went into more detail and explained that when you find someone that people describe as “a man of integrity” that carries a lot of weight.

That’s because it means other people know they can use anything he says in a good way. Wally explained how integrity is also about helping others. He said people with integrity are “really trying to help you and part of that integrity is caring about others.”

People Follow Leaders With honesty & Integrity

If you want to be a good leader in business as well as in life then you have to be able to be trusted. That means you must be honest and have integrity. Without those attributes, it will be difficult for others to respect you. If people can’t trust you then it’s very unlikely they are going to follow you. On the other hand, if you are honest and have integrity people will naturally want to follow you because they know they can trust you.

The True Mark of Leadership

There shouldn’t be any exceptions for honesty and ethics. Integrity is a condition of mind and isn’t situational. Should you compromise your ethics in tiny scenarios with minimal effect, then it gets quite simple to compromise the little scenes.

Leaders with honesty and integrity is important always erring on the side of equity, mainly if other men and women are unfair. The real mark of leadership is how honest you can be if other men and women are mistreating you.

 

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Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

Alan L. Olsen, CPA, Wikipedia Bio

 

 

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