100 Business Days Out: Day 27 - Integrity

Integrity is sitting with someone who knows themselves and can identify what great skills they have and their weak skills that they have not mastered and then apply this knowledge to their job and come out the backend of the analysis, stating, “I love my job!”. Today, I had the chance to meet with one of those rare people. She openly spoke of what she was good at and did so, with the most humility, and in the same breath revealed her vulnerabilities to me, a stranger. She did so with all confidence, because she knew that her strengths far outweigh her areas of weakness. That is the integrity that so many lack in their work. That is in many ways why for nearly 25 years I have struggled with the HR profession and what we bring to the party as it relates to work and the pride we must have in what we do for the money earned. The night Senator Obama won North Carolina, he spoke of an America where workers would once again be proud of their work. He is right. If we could return to a place and time where we were proud of what we produced and we knew what we were good at and we didn’t pretend to try and be someone we are not, we might once again talk about an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay and just get on with it. We have so complicated the workplace that I question if we can ever return to the time when we worked together as teams, we cared for the company we worked for, and we had a loyalty to those who helped us get to where we are. If we are ever to return, it demands us to have the integrity of the woman I met today. That is what we are missing. I was excited to think that I might be able to interact with someone like this going forward. That one hour, out of the 24 I had on this earth today, was redeeming, hopeful, and worth whatever there was to face in the other 23.