Post 14- Chris Widener, The Art of Influence: Golden Rule #1

In post 13, I copied an email that I sent to the schools that I coach summarizing Chris Widener's advice for leaders from his book, The Art of Influence.  This is the second email in the series about his first Golden Rule of Leadership, Live a Life of Undivided Integrity.

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             "In the first email of the year, I mentioned how important it will be in the future for coordinators to have strong leadership skills.  These skills are important in the classroom, on the site team, on the school’s leadership team, and in trying to spread AVID strategies and culture school-wide.  In that first communication about leadership, I quoted Chris Widener’s book “The Art of Influence” and his four golden rules of leadership.  They are 1) Live a life of undivided integrity  2) Always demonstrate a positive attitude  3) Consider other people’s interests as more important than yours  and 4) Don’t settle for anything less than excellence.

                Over the next several months, I’ll go a little deeper into each of Widener’s individual golden rules of leadership.  In this edition, I’ll cover the first rule, “Live a life of undivided integrity.” 

                It goes without saying that people will not follow someone who they do not trust.  Have you ever had a leader you couldn’t trust?  You cannot believe anything they say, you question the motives of everything they do, and constantly second guess their requests.  This is no way to lead a movement.

                Instead, a person who lives a life of integrity . . . who does what they say, who shows up on time, who plays by the rules, who tells the truth, and who doesn’t make excuses . . . will never have their motivation second-guessed.  This sets up an atmosphere in which it is much easier to follow such a leader.

                Even the smallest crack in the integrity of the leader can cause their integrity to crumble.  One instance of stretching the truth (“Your email must have ended up in my spam filter”), refusing to apologize when a mistake has been made, or forgetting who the school is supposed to serve and many years of honesty can be flushed down the drain.  When Widener says “undivided integrity,” he is saying that it doesn’t even matter if the lapse in judgment is personal or professional, the damage is the same.   If your colleagues were to find out that you buy pirated movies, the damage would be the same as if they found out that you don’t enforce the tardy lockout rule or mismanage school money.

                So, as you build your leadership stature at your school, keep in mind that although nobody is perfect, apologize when you’ve made a mistake and practice integrity in all aspects of your life.  Upon accepting my first leadership position, my predecessor gave me some advice, “Before you do anything, think about how it would look on the front page of the newspaper.”  He was basically telling me to live a life of undivided integrity.”

Please describe in the comments section a leader you've worked with/for who lived a lived a life of undivided integrity.