Top Executive Coaching with Tony Mayo

Integrity: The Most Overlooked Business Advantage

Podcast #13: Teleseminar on the power and practicality of integrity, doing what you say when and how you said you would do it.

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For other posts on integrity see:

• MCI-WorldCom: Integrity Ebbs by Inches
• Truth or Consequences
• What is Trust?

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Study indicates that employees who are trusted by managers do better work and are more loyal to their employer.

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A Closer Look at Trust Between Managers and Subordinates: Understanding the Effects of Both Trusting and Being Trusted on Subordinate Outcomes

The authors propose that trust in the subordinate has unique consequences beyond trust in the manager. Furthermore, they propose joint effects of trust such that subordinate behavior and intentions are most favorable when there is high mutual trust. Findings reveal unique Read the rest of this entry »

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At Accelerent, I was lucky to meet the commander of the USS Cole and hear his story of the day his destroyer was nearly sunk by al-Qaeda. Kirk Lippold made clear that his ship was saved mostly because of how he led and trained his crew in the years prior to the attack, rather than by any dramatic decisions or heroics on October 12, 2000.

His “Five Pillars of Leadership” are:

• Integrity

• Vision

• Personal Responsibility and Accountability

• Trust and Invest

• Professional Competence

He gave a thrilling and informative presentation. I particularly thanked him for illustrating the masterful use of chain of command, maximizing his impact as a leader by improving his officers rather than continually reaching down to personally resolve specific issues.

The Navy, unfortunately, tends to be rather unforgiving of officers whose ships are damaged so Kirk Lippold never made Captain. The military’s loss is our gain as he tours the country sharing his leadership lessons.

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I was very pleased to be invited to a meeting with former MCI Worldcom internal auditor, Cynthia Cooper, sponsored by Accelerent. She is the employee who discovered and “blew the whistle” on the $11 billion financial fraud that, along with Enron, changed corporate governance in America. Unfortunately, similar frauds continue to be perpetrated. Her story, also told in Extraordinary Circumstances, illustrates an important principle of business integrity.

Business crimes are seldom committed by evil people searching for opportunities to lie, cheat, or steal. Most misdeeds, from pilfering pens and personal copies to billion dollar stock frauds, are carried-out by regular people who have rationalized small steps over the line. At MCI Worldcom, accountants reclassified some reserves into revenue because the CFO said Read the rest of this entry »

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Lying is the toughest part of being a salesman. No, not me lying, but people like you assuming that I–the salesperson–am lying. Expecting the worst of salespeople seems to bring out the worst in prospects.

Years ago, I heard that one of my clients had been put in charge of a major new project. Expecting more business, I went to his office and said, “Congratulations on getting Project X.”

He looked me in the eye–looked me in the eye!–and said, “That’s not my project.”

“Who’s got it?” I asked.

“It hasn’t been approved,” he said.

I was in a meeting a few days later where he reported on Read the rest of this entry »

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Integrity is usually a major conversation when I coach groups of executives. It almost always comes up in the context of arriving to the meeting on time or returning promptly from breaks¹. This leads to a discussion of consequences, by which people mean punishments for not being on time: fines, humiliation, etc. This opens a powerful examination of monitoring, enforcement, and integrity throughout the organization.

Consequences come in two flavors. Imposed consequences are punishments contrived by an authority exerting its power to compel behavior. Natural consequences are what reality delivers in response to actions. If I Read the rest of this entry »

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