In today's episode, we're continuing our Leading with Character & Competence series with a discussion about integrity. Integrity is the first cornerstone of character and is about being honest, trustworthy, and reliable. It's about doing the right thing even when it's difficult. Integrity is key to building trust and credibility, which are essential for effective leadership. 

(0:01:27) Integrity is the first cornerstone of character. Tim and Junior use some famous quotes and concepts to define integrity. It's basic honesty. It's consistency and uprightness. It's squaring up to who you are and what you believe. It's adhering to strong moral values even or especially in the face of challenges.

(0:08:43) Are you for sale? Tim tells a story that he mentions in his book, The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, and explains that without integrity, business ethics go out the window.

(0:17:44) Ethical dilemmas and moral muscle memory. How do you build a moral muscle memory even if bribery or temptation come into play? Tim and Junior share childhood and personal examples of integrity (or the lack thereof) in their own lives. 

(0:28:05) The pressure of the disproportionate misfortune. How does Jean Valjean from Les Miserables play into the concept of integrity? Junior shares his philosophy on why some situations make it more difficult to make ethical decisions than others.

(0:34:27) What could integrity cost you? Often this conversation about integrity happens at a pretty surface level, and you think about it just out of principle. But what happens when you really weigh the cost of it all?

(0:44:05) Recommendation: Take responsibility. You're responsible for your values, your attitudes, your beliefs, your desires, your actions, your influence, and the consequences of all of those things. You can't detach those. You have to take responsibility for all of those things. But how do you do it?

(0:51:19) The steel plant and the walkabout. Tim shares a story from his days as plant manager at Geneva Steel where he learned that people are governed from the inside out, through their own restraints, through their own accountability.

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Leading with Character and Competence