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Integrity – The Key to Your Success

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Integrity – The key to your success

 

What’s the key ingredient to success?

Is it talent, opportunity or even public recognition?

Chances are that it’s none of the above. The key ingredient is something that you can have – integrity.

 

Dr. Henry Cloud, clinical psychologist, leadership coach, corporate consultant and author, says that integrity will ultimately determine, “if your brains, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed… (or) ‘Make it’.”

Integrity = the life long process of integrating & applying wholeness to the parts of us that aren’t yet healthily operational or mature.

 

According to Dr. Cloud, not paying attention to Integrity can be the key reason you have:

 

    1. Hit a performance ceiling that is much lower than your aptitude
    2. Hit an obstacle or situation that derails you
    3. Reached great success, only to self-destruct and lose it all

 

Integrity determines how you operate as a person and your ability to meet the demands of the reality of a given context. This is the case whether that reality be professional responsibility/task, relational difficulty or spiritual crisis.

When you work on the aspects of behaviour or mindsets that cripple or stop you, you move towards becoming more integrated as a whole person, because your mindsets and behaviours are growing into maturity as result of this intentional process.

 

So how do you develop your integrity, the bedrock for your success? Dr Cloud identifies six steps:

 

  1. Build Trust: Make trust occur long term in a relationship
  2. Activate honesty: Face reality and face your blind spots
  3. Start Producing Results Somewhere in Your life: Have an area in your life where you are producing results, i.e. physical exercise, career, relational commitment and where people can depend on you
  4. Don’t run from facing problems: When things go bad, build character that does not run from negative reality, but embraces negative realities, conflicts and problems
  5. Orientate yourself towards growth: You are not stagnant; you are trying to get better
  6. Be rooted in transcendent values: You are not about you. You bend the knee to things that are larger, that transcend you, e.g. faith, God, mission of an organization, family, things that are bigger than your own interests.

 

Source: “Integrity: The courage to meet the demands of reality – How Six Essential Qualities Determine Your Success in Business” (2006) Dr. Henry Cloud. Harper Collins: New York.