Spokes of a bicycle wheel

If you have ever ridden a bicycle, you would understand that to ride it everything about the bicycle would need to have what is known as integrity. In other words, no part of the bicycle, especially the wheels, should have any missing spokes or the brake pads worn or have any missing parts.  It is whole. Otherwise, the riding experience would be horrible.

If integrity is what makes a bicycle work, where does it play in leadership or at your profession? Well, in everything. If you're hearing integrity for the first time, it's obvious that you might not be working with integrity in what you do.  You might be getting your job done but what does the resulting efforts produce? Do you experience questions about your work or acknowledgement of good work done? Just like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, if integrity is missing in your work, you'll likely have to either rework it, get a failing grade or a poor performance review.

So what is integrity?  To be clear, it's doing what you say you will do and doing what people expect you to do even the unsaid. It's also doing what you know to do. Let's take the example of being a leader of an organization and one of your primary jobs is to build relationships with people and represent your organization at functions.  If what you say is that you'll be at functions building relationships with other organization, then with integrity, you will be there at those functions building relationships. On the other hand, no one is saying you need to be there, but people are expecting you to be there, right? Then with integrity, you will be there.

When things don't work
When things don't work, you can look at integrity as a foundation. Look to see if there was an action you could have taken - a so-called missing.  Could you have had a conversation with a key player in your project? Did a goverment filing get filed? Did your homework get done? Did you forget to ask someone to help you?

In summary, if you look, you can always find a missing.   When you do find that missing, put it in. What you'll find many times is that that piece could make all the difference in what you're up to.


Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidewalk_flying/3533042414/

Situational Leadership

Let's change it up a bit.  Let's talk about something different for a moment.  Ever notice that when things go right or wrong, what's there? Actually the question is who is there? I'll pause for a moment for you to think it through a bit.

           Pausing.

           Waiting.

           Have you got the answer? 

Since you had me wait, I'm going to take a moment and share this story.  The answer to the question is farther below.

Now regardless of your race or gender, what distinguishes us is our experiences and how we handle them.

As an example, many of you know that I have a dog named Ulysses. What you don't know is that she's been in California visiting my parents.  During my visit last weekend, I was driving my friend's car on the way to Fort Funston, a dog park in San Francisco. My friend was in the passenger seat staring out the window. I would describe the trip as uneventful until this incident: While I was in the intersection the light turns yellow. All of a sudden my friend yells hysterically telling me to stop the car. "Stop the car! There's a camera. You might get a ticket!" For a moment, I stopped, but considering I was in the middle of the street I went through.

"What was my friend thinking?" I thought to myself. "It's quite dangerous to distract me while I'm driving. Why would my friend yell like that?"

Well why I chose to tell you this story is because 1.) I'm sure everyone has had a friend yell at them while they are driving, right? And 2.) this is a universal concept to depict leadership in a situation. I think that two things could have happened. Either I stop in the middle of the street honoring my friend's wishes to stop the car or go through the light. In this situation, I chose to go through the light. The lesson to be learned in regards to leadership is that when you're leading you're the driver. You are responsible for yourself and for others in the car to get to your destination safely 100% of the time. A corollary is to also be responsible for sharing the road and have other drivers get to their destination safely.

Now for the answer to the question of who's there when things go right or who's there when things go wrong?  It's obvious. The answer is YOU.  You're there.  And what's even more obvious is that you can be a leader in that situation. 

Regards,
Gil Gido
NAAAP Seattle
President