Fundamental of the Week#1: ACT WITH INTEGRITY

Demonstrate doing the right thing in all your actions and all your decisions, especially when no one is looking. Always tell the truth.  Acknowledge and own your mistakes, clean them up and make appropriate corrections.Earlier this year the Momentum Team got together and we defined our fundamental behaviors for building a high performing culture.  For the past two decades we have been helping companies to consciously build their cultures by identifying behavioral practices expected from leadership. Through our association with HPC, we’ve learned that after defining these behaviors, you must also find a way to ritualize them in order to design a culture that lasts.  One of our rituals is to share our fundamentals each week. This is round two of our 26 behavioral practices we call “The Momentum Way.”This week’s fundamental includes both an action (act) and a quality (integrity.) When we wed the two together, we begin the process of living our lives from a place of integrity. The word integrity originates from the Latin word integer, intact, whole, complete and from French intégrité , English integrate (combine one thing with another so that they become a whole, to unite.)  When our words (this includes our thoughts) and our actions become one, we have a chance of creating an authentic self, a wholeness of being.In defining what we mean by act with integrity, this week I invite you down the rabbit hole with me.  Please take a moment to read and watch So-Young Kang, as she addresses the definition and meaning of integrity in her article and video,  "Global Leadership: True Meaning of Integrity."   So-Young’s focus on what it takes to be a leader with integrity includes the choice to be our authentic selves at work, at home and with our friends: to be whole, to not be divided.A couple of years ago, Craig and I had the true privilege of attending “Being a Leader and the Effective Exercise of Leadership Course. I highly recommend this course and I encourage you to read this phenomenal article, "Integrity: Without It Nothing Works,"  written by Dr. Michael Jensen, and his co-authors, Werner Erhard and Steve Zaffron, redefining integrity, as we know it.  It gets to the core of what is meant by the “law of integrity” and holding the principle that it truly is “a mountain with no top.”So this week focus your attention on “doing the right thing,” whatever that means to you, you’ll know.  And when you mess up, acknowledge it and get back in the game.All my best,Marlene