Category Archives: The Leadership Azimuth

“All models are wrong but some are useful.”  (Economist George E.P. Box)

In an effort to comprehend character in leadership, we tend to blur values, virtues and principles.  Values define how a person intends to live.  For example, Army values include loyalty, duty, respect and selfless service.  Navy values include courage and commitment.  Virtues are values in practice. They are literally “visible values.”  Where values define “how,” principles define “who” the leader seeks to be.  In the model I have been using for the past few years, I believe that the four cardinal principles of leadership are: honor, humility, integrity and faith.  Integrity is the foundation.

Most leadership discussions start with integrity. The new Army leadership manual FM 6-22 (August 2012) defines integrity as “a key mark of a leader’s character,” and further as “doing what is right, legally and morally.”  Previous editions used phrases like, “consistently act according to principle” and “morally complete and true to yourself.”  In his book, The Stuff of Heroes, General William Cohen surveyed 200 combat military leaders, including 62 admirals and generals regarding the lessons they had learned from leadership in battle. Ninety-five percent of their responses fell into one of 8 principles.  The first of the principles was “maintain absolute integrity.”

The military is not the only organization interested in integrity.  It was the Merriam-Webster Word of the Year in 2005; the most looked-up word on the on-line dictionary that year. Today, the first definition of integrity in the dictionary is “adherence to a code.”  However, as Stratford Sherman observed in his 2003 paper “Rethinking Integrity,” the definition has changed over time.

In the 1989 Oxford English Dictionary, the first definition of integrity was “the condition of having no part or element taken away or wanting; undivided or unbroken state; material wholeness, completeness, entirety.” (Integrity derives from the Latin “integer” or “entire.”)  This older definition stresses completeness or consistency. The concept of consistency and incorruptibility remained first among the definitions for integrity through the 1990’s.  This definition of has moved to number three or four in the last decade, and has been replaced by the notion of integrity as adherence to an external moral or even artistic code. Continue reading →

“But if it be a sin to covet honor,
I am the most offending soul alive.”
William Shakespeare, Henry V, Act 4, Scene III

Honor is a puzzling word.  It is perplexing in part because it can be used as both a noun and a verb.  It can have a range of different meanings.  For example in the courtroom scene from the 1992 movie “A Few Good Men,” the judge directs Marine Colonel Nathan Jessup to call him “Your Honor” because he has earned the distinction.  The lawyer LT Daniel Caffey tells Private Harold Dawson in the same courtroom a short while later, “You don’t need a patch on your shoulder to have honor.”  Honor is first used as a noun to describe the title of a person held formally in esteem by virtue of his position and rank. It is also used to describe the accumulation of sufficient virtue so that a person engenders esteem.  It is no wonder that the word often gets relegated to general nonspecific usage; vague references that find their way onto monuments or into political speeches.

Honor is the act of being held in esteem by others, the process of becoming worthy to be held in esteem, and the resulting esteem itself. Continue reading →