Building a Culture of Integrity

With all that is going on in the world, trust and integrity are major currencies in engaging your employee and customer. It is not always easy to discuss aspects of values, behaviours and the type of culture you want. The importance of why we should make the effort is demonstrated beautifully by David Macleod.

The way we very successfully took a business through establishing their core values can be summarised below. This was done with the whole team, so everyone had a say in what those values and behaviours were.

Imagine integrity as the trunk of a tree and that represents the integrity of your business.

The strength of that tree and its ability to withstand the storms of change will be determined by the quality and depth of its roots. These roots are the core values of the company. These should be agreed and understood by everyone in the business from day one of employment. They need to be deep rooted, protected and spoken about regularly. The communication of these values is like the sap rising, which feeds the tree.

The leaves of the tree represent the behaviours that are sustained by the roots, but also generate food for growth. They need to be demonstrated, lived and nurtured daily. The right behaviours need to be recognised and praised. The wrong behaviours need to be performance managed and quickly pruned with courage and neat precision.

The fruit of the tree is increased profitability from a trusting employee/customer base, an engaged team and a strong brand reputation.

It is the role of the leaders to communicate, nurture and ensure the successful growth of this tree of integrity. Most importantly, leaders need to live the values. If you can’t live them, don’t say them.

If you would like to find out more about communicating vision, values and behaviours, book on our Speaking as a Leader course on June 11th & 12th 2013.