In this post-truth, Orwellian society that we now find ourselves in, but as quintessential leaders we must strive not to be part of, deception and dishonesty have become the norm and have become acceptable.
“What is truth?,” sarcastically asked the man who washed his hands publicly of the blood of Jesus Christ before sentencing Him to death by crucifixion at the insistence of the Jews in Judea. (more…)
The Long Shadow: The Legacies of the Great War in the Twentieth Century by David Reynolds
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Although the author’s style is dense – by that I mean lots of information packed into a tight, but multilevel structure that requires a certain kind of deep, concentrated reading/comprehension ability that I believe has tragically been completely lost except to all but a few of us in this technology-driven (entangled) age when our attention/comprehension spans have been diminished to mere skimming, at best, and no-context, 5-second, twisted, spun, and completely made-up out of thin air sound bites, at worst – this is an incredible and comprehensive look at the global legacy of World War I on the 20th century and, in fact, here today in the 21st century. (more…)
Alexander Pope is often misquoted as having written “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
What Pope actually wrote in his famous “An Essay on Criticism,” was: “A little learning is a dangerous thing/Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:/There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,/And drinking largely sobers us again.“
It seems that Alexander Pope presaged what we now find in a world immersed in technology, where the educated and uneducated, the thinkers and the non-thinkers, the gullible and the prudent, the knowledgeable and the ignorant now equally have access to the same Big Data knowledgebase that lies just a few keystrokes away.
It is in the glut of this unfettered – and it seems, for most of humanity, unfiltered – access where quintessential leaders differ from everybody else.
Before we talk about what makes quintessential leaders rare and the unique in this area of modern life, we first have to understand the big picture of technology.
We also need to be aware of how, in many ways, if we are not constantly critically thinking, objectively analyzing, and consciously rejecting the insistent siren song that beguilingly calls us to rely on technology for everything neurological instead of building and growing our minds by actually using them, we become unquintessential leaders.
A brief overview of how technology will , if we allow it to rule us and we bring nothing to the table in terms of control, reason, logic, and thinking, make us unquintessential leaders is paramount to understanding the inherent dangers it presents to us as leaders.
All the search engines – Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are the big three (today at least) – are data-driven. From an internet perspective, websites – and their information – get “ranked” by keywords and hits (how many people visit, how often, etc.).
Therefore, page one of our search results is determined simply by data, not by quality of information nor by expertise. That is why most websites encourage you to share and share often their websites on social media. The more hits they get, the higher they go in the “organic” (non-paid) rankings.
The other way that websites get first-page ranking is that they pay a lot of money for keywords (there is usually someone working fulltime in the background at nothing but this who does the monitoring and upping the ante, pricewise, for specific keywords to stay at the top of page one).
This is known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. It is a budget hog for the organizations using it, but it gets results, so most organizations are willing to spend thousands of dollars a month to be in everyone’s faces when they do a search on one of their keywords.
The other side of the search engine equation is us – you and me. Analyses are continually run on our data – what we search for, what we click on, where we go on a regular basis in cyberspace (you and I may delete the browser caches on our devices, but the search engines never delete them) – and programmed algorithms pick up our searching habits and preferences and sheer down the available choices to what most likely fits what our aggregate data profiles tell them we want to see.
In other words, the internet is no longer a vast landscape of available information that we could cull through and get a broad perspective on about a topic. It is a miniworld of information that mirrors our past and, therefore, preferred choices. Our worlds, then, get smaller and smaller and smaller.
Having that broad overview of technology – their part and our part in mind – we now have to look at the relationship between who we are as humans and how the internet caters to that.
We humans have a lot more in common than we would like to believe. In fact, much of the hate, the condemnation, and the vitriol in our world comes from our rejection of our commonalities and our all-consuming pride in how we think we are so special and and so much better than everyone else.
Here’s a reality check for each of us. We’re not special and we’re not better than anyone else.
We all have the same limitations in the parts of us that matter and that determine how we see others and ourselves and how we treat others as we make our way through our lives.
Three of the things that all of us humans have in common – and which limit us to one degree or another – are biases, bigotry, and ignorance.
The internet can feed these three things to excess if we are not aware of them and we are not consciously working to replace them with impartiality, fairness, and the kind of deep learning that Pope was referring to in his essay.
For the uneducated, the deeply and willingly ignorant, and the non-thinkers, the internet is a treasure trove of disinformation. Any bias, any bigoted thinking, and any ignorance can be found on the internet and it can be used to perpetuate bias, bigotry, and ignorance.
And it is. This quintessential leader shakes my head probably more than I do just about anything else at this point in my life at most of the stuff I hear, the stuff I see, and the stuff I read (I don’t read a lot of it because it’s so asinine, especially when I see the source, that I’m simply not going to waste my precious brain cells and time on a bunch of garbage that I know is not accurate and not true).
So what do quintessential leaders – those few of us who it seems have not completely lost our minds nor our ability to critically think, to analyze, and to prove or disprove objectively all information – do to ensure that everything we think, we say, and we do is both accurate and true?
hearThis last point bears a little further explanation. Much of what is said and written on the internet is simply to generate content (again, this a requirement of Big Data and organic search engine ranking) and has little to no substantive value.
In other words, voluminous content is just another way to manipulate a website to page one. The quality and the expertise of the content is irrelevant and the abundance of junk content on the internet proves that point.
The problem is when we the people fall hook, line, and sinker for the junk content. Often this kind of content has either something salacious or outrageous as its main point. We humans tend to gravitate to both and we love to share it with the rest of humanity.
It seems that the more preposterous, the more erroneous, the more sensational, and the more inaccurate information is, the more it gets consumed by the human race.
Veracity and accuracy, on the other hand, which are proven, well thought out, and fully explained don’t really titillate our biases, our bigotry, and our ignorance, and besides that, in our “I-just-skim-stuff-because-I-am-way-too-busy-to-actually-read-and-understand-anything” world, it demands too much time, effort, and self-reflection (we can’t stand the horror of possibly being wrong or needing to change ourselves) to come face-to-face with truth and accuracy.
For those of us who are striving to become quintessential leaders, we must look into our own lives to see which side of this equation we fall on.
Do we always ensure accuracy and veracity in every part of our lives, including the words we speak, write, and share with others?
Do we let our biases, our bigotry, and our ignorance rule the words we speak, write, and share with others, and in the process we propagate disinformation, misinformation, and lies?
Or do we – and this is a real trust-buster – sometimes ensure veracity and accuracy in what we do, including the words we speak, write, and share with others, and other times give in to our biases, our bigotry, and our ignorance and that is reflected in every part of our lives, including the words we speak, write, and share with others?
How are we doing?
In the first post of this series, the excerpt from chapter 1 included a list of all the components we must develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy.
In the subsequent chapter excerpts detailing the components we need to have and develop to build trust and be trustworthy, chapter 2 discusses honesty, chapter 3 discusses integrity, andchapter 4 discusses fairness, chapter 5 discussesrighting wrongs, chapter 6 discusses accountability, and chapter 7 discusses consistency, chapter 8 discusses sincerity, and chapter 9 discusses setting boundaries.
This post, which includes an excerpt from chapter 10, discusses the component of setting a higher standard that builds trust and makes us trustworthy.
Setting a higher standard should be the first thing people in leadership positions do. Before anything else.
While setting a higher standard goes hand-in-hand with setting boundaries, setting a higher standard establishes evidentiary boundaries of character, which affects every area of our conduct.
These are standards that we adhere to no matter where we are, what we are doing, or who we are with. And they are standards that we expect the members on our teams to adhere to as well.
Let’s look how a lack of setting a higher standard looks in real life. This should have everyone reading this nodding their heads because there is not one of us who hasn’t seen it.
How many times have we seen someone who seems to have a higher standard of conduct when we’re with them and then they deny that by their conduct (words and actions) when they’re not with us?
On social media, perhaps. With other people, perhaps. In different venues than the one(s) we associate them with.
Now let me ask the harder question. What was our reaction to their lack of a higher standard?
If we shrugged it off, thinking it was no big deal, or if we were invited and joined into to whatever the conduct was, then we have not set a higher standard for ourselves either.
Only you can answer for yourself and only I can answer for myself, but if we have not set a higher standard, then we are not quintessential leaders and we are destroying trust and not being trustworthy.
Building trust and being trustworthy is an integrated trait of quintessential leaders.
It is also an integrated trait that all of us – because each and every one of us leads at least one team, small or large, of people in our lives – need to develop and have as part of the core of who we are and what we are. In essence, this trait is at the center of exemplary character and conduct, and none of us should settle for anything less than this in ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, most of us settle for less. A lot less. In ourselves. In others.
The majority of people in leadership positions today are not trust builders and they are not trustworthy. Many of us, frankly, are also not trust builders and trustworthy.
We live in a world that with no moral code as its foundation that expects trust to be non-existent or broken. Look around. It’s everywhere, including, in many cases, very close to you.
And society has become so accustomed to this that it glorifies it instead of condemning it.
Politicians who lie routinely, who line their pockets with money and perks while making decisions that hurt and destroy the people they are supposed to represent, who cheat on their wives because they can.
Arts and sports celebrities who have no regard for faithfulness to their spouses, who live hedonistic lifestyles that destroy their families, the people around them, and, eventually their lives.
Religious leaders who cheat on their wives, who cheat on their taxes, and who scam their congregations both in how they deceitfully handle the word of God and in coercive and corrupt financial matters, acquiring wealth and power in the process.
Business leaders who destroy millions of lives by deceit, fraud, and illegal actions that result in their employees and customers losing everything while they escape any kind of punitive action and instead reap obscene profits and end their tenures – only to go to another financially lucrative position – with golden parachutes that are equally obscene.
And we, as individual leaders for our teams, who cheat on our taxes, who are routinely dishonest with the children (our own and others) and other people entrusted to us, who routinely steal things from our workplaces (you most likely didn’t pay for that pen you’re using at work, so it doesn’t belong to you), who routinely break traffic laws, who will walk out of stores with something we were not charged for and never think twice about it, who will take extra money that we’re not owed in financial transactions without blinking an eye, who cheat on our spouses, who marry until “divorce do us part,” and who, as a course of habit, break confidences of family and friends, gossip about family and friends behind their backs, and destroy reputations in the process.
Maybe we haven’t thought about building trust and being trustworthy at this kind of nitty gritty level.
But until we do – and we develop and have this trait as the core of who and what we are – we will not build trust and we will not be trustworthy. And we will not be quintessential leaders.
Trust and trustworthiness is probably the single most important trait we can possess. And it is also the most fragile.
It can take a long time to build and be, but it can be broken irreparably in a single second.
Therefore, this is a lifetime work on and in ourselves that we must commit to making an integral part of our character by continually developing it, maintaining it, and growing it.
This goal should be our goal.
But it requires courage. It requires diligence. It requires vigilance. It requires continual self-examination. It requires continual change. It requires the ability to, much of the time, stand alone to maintain.
It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for the vacillators. It is not for the crowd-pleasers. It is not for the pretenders. It is not for the wannabes. It is not for the weak.
But if you’re reading this, I know that you’re not any of those kinds of people. Those kinds of people won’t even read this because it requires time, effort, change, and commitment, and too many of us are, sadly, either just too lazy or we just don’t care.
Building Trust and Being Trustworthy takes an in-depth look at the “this is what it looks like in practice” aspect of each of the components we need to develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy. The second chapter discusses the component of honesty in building trust and being trustworthy.
Excerpt from”Chapter 10: The Setting A Higher Standard Component of Trust and Trustworthiness”
“I’ve thought deeply about this component for quite some time as I’ve, over the course of the last few years, observed in almost every area of life – families, politics, education, religion, military, business, society, and in many individual lives, not only the absence of a higher standard of performance and conduct, but increasingly, no-standard of performance and conduct.
It seems that the “anything goes” philosophy has become the norm in the world.
It has, because of the most recent US presidential election, a very thought-provoking article entitled “General Failure,” in the November 2012 issue of The Atlantic – which was written well before the revelation of General David Patraeus’s adultery with his biographer and the possible adultery of General John R. Allen with Jill Kelly – and finally the resignation of General Patraeus from being CIA director, come back full-force into my line of vision.
This kind of behavior (all the parties know each other and are closely linked to each other) among the powerful in Washington, DC, based on what I’ve read and heard about it, is not only commonplace, but is seen as acceptable.
The initial reactions from people in leadership positions – Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), for example, who implied that General Patraeus should not have resigned because he committed adultery – made it evident that not only are people in leadership positions not setting a higher standard for performance and conduct, but there is, in fact, no standard.
It seems to me that before we talk about setting higher standards in terms of performance and conduct, we need to talk about adultery and why it falls into the higher standard category on a personal and leadership level.
Marriage vows are taken based on the trust of two people in each other. By their very nature, they create a trust relationship.
By entering a marriage covenant, both parties are setting, demanding, and promising to adhere to a higher standard of conduct. When either party to those vows, which are made traditionally before God and people, breaks them, that person breaks the trust relationship.
Frankly, if a spouse shows untrustworthiness and destroys the trust in his or her closest personal relationship in life, then he or she is untrustworthy and destroys trust in every part of his or her life.”
In the first post of this series, the excerpt from chapter 1 included a list of all the components we must develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy.
In the subsequent chapter excerpts detailing the components we need to have and develop to build trust and be trustworthy, chapter 2 discusses honesty, chapter 3 discusses integrity, and chapter 4 discusses fairness, chapter 5 discusses righting wrongs, chapter 6 discusses accountability, and chapter 7 discusses consistency.
This post, which includes an excerpt from chapter 8, discusses the component of sincerity that builds trust and makes us trustworthy.
We can make a good show of appearing to do all the right things and saying all the right words, but if we’re just faking everything then all our efforts amount to nothing.
“Why?,” you ask. “Wouldn’t that be enough?”
The answer is “no.” Because if we don’t believe what we are doing and what we are saying, then no one else is going to believe it – or us – either.
People can spot insincerity a mile away. It oozes out of us in tangible – facial expressions, eyes, gestures – and intangible – tone of voice, attitude, quality of effort – ways.
We can’t hide either sincerity or insincerity, no matter how hard we might try.
Unfortunately, the component of sincerity is almost non-existent among the people who are in leadership positions today. There is so much fake everything all around us and in us that when we do see sincerity, it almost renders us unconscious.
Building trust and being trustworthy is an integrated trait of quintessential leaders.
It is also an integrated trait that all of us – because each and every one of us leads at least one team, small or large, of people in our lives – need to develop and have as part of the core of who we are and what we are. In essence, this trait is at the center of exemplary character and conduct, and none of us should settle for anything less than this in ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, most of us settle for less. A lot less. In ourselves. In others.
The majority of people in leadership positions today are not trust builders and they are not trustworthy. Many of us, frankly, are also not trust builders and trustworthy.
We live in a world that with no moral code as its foundation that expects trust to be non-existent or broken. Look around. It’s everywhere, including, in many cases, very close to you.
And society has become so accustomed to this that it glorifies it instead of condemning it.
Politicians who lie routinely, who line their pockets with money and perks while making decisions that hurt and destroy the people they are supposed to represent, who cheat on their wives because they can.
Arts and sports celebrities who have no regard for faithfulness to their spouses, who live hedonistic lifestyles that destroy their families, the people around them, and, eventually their lives.
Religious leaders who cheat on their wives, who cheat on their taxes, and who scam their congregations both in how they deceitfully handle the word of God and in coercive and corrupt financial matters, acquiring wealth and power in the process.
Business leaders who destroy millions of lives by deceit, fraud, and illegal actions that result in their employees and customers losing everything while they escape any kind of punitive action and instead reap obscene profits and end their tenures – only to go to another financially lucrative position – with golden parachutes that are equally obscene.
And we, as individual leaders for our teams, who cheat on our taxes, who are routinely dishonest with the children (our own and others) and other people entrusted to us, who routinely steal things from our workplaces (you most likely didn’t pay for that pen you’re using at work, so it doesn’t belong to you), who routinely break traffic laws, who will walk out of stores with something we were not charged for and never think twice about it, who will take extra money that we’re not owed in financial transactions without blinking an eye, who cheat on our spouses, who marry until “divorce do us part,” and who, as a course of habit, break confidences of family and friends, gossip about family and friends behind their backs, and destroy reputations in the process.
Maybe we haven’t thought about building trust and being trustworthy at this kind of nitty gritty level.
But until we do – and we develop and have this trait as the core of who and what we are – we will not build trust and we will not be trustworthy. And we will not be quintessential leaders.
Trust and trustworthiness is probably the single most important trait we can possess. And it is also the most fragile.
It can take a long time to build and be, but it can be broken irreparably in a single second.
Therefore, this is a lifetime work on and in ourselves that we must commit to making an integral part of our character by continually developing it, maintaining it, and growing it.
This goal should be our goal.
But it requires courage. It requires diligence. It requires vigilance. It requires continual self-examination. It requires continual change. It requires the ability to, much of the time, stand alone to maintain.
It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for the vacillators. It is not for the crowd-pleasers. It is not for the pretenders. It is not for the wannabes. It is not for the weak.
But if you’re reading this, I know that you’re not any of those kinds of people. Those kinds of people won’t even read this because it requires time, effort, change, and commitment, and too many of us are, sadly, either just too lazy or we just don’t care.
Building Trust and Being Trustworthy takes an in-depth look at the “this is what it looks like in practice” aspect of each of the components we need to develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy. The second chapter discusses the component of honesty in building trust and being trustworthy.
Excerpt from”Chapter 8: The Sincerity Component of Trust and Trustworthiness”
“A lack of sincerity has been painfully and increasingly evident in business, political, educational, civil, and religious leadership for quite some time, and it’s becoming the norm instead of the exception.
While sincerity is very closely aligned with honesty, change link here to chapter 3 excerpt link: integrity, and authenticity, it is still a distinct component from these other quintessential leadership traits.
Sincerity, put simply, is the opposite of hypocrisy. But we need to define both of those words to see why.
Hypocrisy, in its simplest definition, is a person pretending to be, do, or believe something he or she isn’t, doesn’t do, or doesn’t believe. The Greek root of this word means “play-acting.” In other words, a hypocrite is faking it or perpetuating fraud.
Sincerity, on the other hand, defines a person who actually is, does, and believes everything he or she appears to be, does, and says he or she believes. In other words, a sincere person is “for real,” genuine, and free of pretense and deceit.
Sincerity, then, is a quintessential leader trait and another key component of building trust and being trustworthy.
What sets the component of sincerity apart from honesty, integrity, and authenticity, although, again it is closely related to all of these, is that it indicates a person’s motives or motivations.
This is another aspect of character – a heart issue. The other side of the coin, hypocrisy, also speaks to motives, motivations, and character.
Nowhere recently have we seen hypocrisy abound and sincerity questioned than in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which left a wide and extensive swath of devastation when it merged with two other storms to form a super-storm over the northeast United States on October 29-30, 2012.“
In the first post of this series, the excerpt from chapter 1 included a list of all the components we must develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy.
In the subsequent chapter excerpts detailing the components we need to have and develop to build trust and be trustworthy, chapter 2 discusses honesty, chapter 3 discusses integrity, and chapter 4 discusses fairness, chapter 5 discusses righting wrongs, and chapter 6 discusses accountability.
This post, which includes an excerpt from chapter 7, discusses the component of consistency that builds trust and makes us trustworthy.
Being consistent in our lives as humans is often very difficult. The reasons for this difficulty are quite simple:
Inconsistency is extremely damaging in every way.
It creates instability, unreliability, fear, reluctance, malaise, disenfranchisement, alienation, and excessively-high stress levels.
Inconsistency completely inhibits the ability to plan, to project, and to grow. It also prevents teams from developing and reaching their potential and will eventually lead to high attrition rates.
And, yet, consistency is impossible to find in many people who are leadership positions today. Randomness and chaos seem to rule every corner of the world and that is a big contributor to the prevalent lack of trust in and untrustworthiness of the majority of people who are in leadership positions now.
Building trust and being trustworthy is an integrated trait of quintessential leaders.
It is also an integrated trait that all of us – because each and every one of us leads at least one team, small or large, of people in our lives – need to develop and have as part of the core of who we are and what we are. In essence, this trait is at the center of exemplary character and conduct, and none of us should settle for anything less than this in ourselves and others.
Unfortunately, most of us settle for less. A lot less. In ourselves. In others.
The majority of people in leadership positions today are not trust builders and they are not trustworthy. Many of us, frankly, are also not trust builders and trustworthy.
We live in a world that with no moral code as its foundation that expects trust to be non-existent or broken. Look around. It’s everywhere, including, in many cases, very close to you.
And society has become so accustomed to this that it glorifies it instead of condemning it.
Politicians who lie routinely, who line their pockets with money and perks while making decisions that hurt and destroy the people they are supposed to represent, who cheat on their wives because they can.
Arts and sports celebrities who have no regard for faithfulness to their spouses, who live hedonistic lifestyles that destroy their families, the people around them, and, eventually their lives.
Religious leaders who cheat on their wives, who cheat on their taxes, and who scam their congregations both in how they deceitfully handle the word of God and in coercive and corrupt financial matters, acquiring wealth and power in the process.
Business leaders who destroy millions of lives by deceit, fraud, and illegal actions that result in their employees and customers losing everything while they escape any kind of punitive action and instead reap obscene profits and end their tenures – only to go to another financially lucrative position – with golden parachutes that are equally obscene.
And we, as individual leaders for our teams, who cheat on our taxes, who are routinely dishonest with the children (our own and others) and other people entrusted to us, who routinely steal things from our workplaces (you most likely didn’t pay for that pen you’re using at work, so it doesn’t belong to you), who routinely break traffic laws, who will walk out of stores with something we were not charged for and never think twice about it, who will take extra money that we’re not owed in financial transactions without blinking an eye, who cheat on our spouses, who marry until “divorce do us part,” and who, as a course of habit, break confidences of family and friends, gossip about family and friends behind their backs, and destroy reputations in the process.
Maybe we haven’t thought about building trust and being trustworthy at this kind of nitty gritty level.
But until we do – and we develop and have this trait as the core of who and what we are – we will not build trust and we will not be trustworthy. And we will not be quintessential leaders.
Trust and trustworthiness is probably the single most important trait we can possess. And it is also the most fragile.
It can take a long time to build and be, but it can be broken irreparably in a single second.
Therefore, this is a lifetime work on and in ourselves that we must commit to making an integral part of our character by continually developing it, maintaining it, and growing it.
This goal should be our goal.
But it requires courage. It requires diligence. It requires vigilance. It requires continual self-examination. It requires continual change. It requires the ability to, much of the time, stand alone to maintain.
It is not for the faint-hearted. It is not for the vacillators. It is not for the crowd-pleasers. It is not for the pretenders. It is not for the wannabes. It is not for the weak.
But if you’re reading this, I know that you’re not any of those kinds of people. Those kinds of people won’t even read this because it requires time, effort, change, and commitment, and too many of us are, sadly, either just too lazy or we just don’t care.
Building Trust and Being Trustworthy takes an in-depth look at the “this is what it looks like in practice” aspect of each of the components we need to develop and have to build trust and be trustworthy. The second chapter discusses the component of honesty in building trust and being trustworthy.
Excerpt from”Chapter 7: The Consistency Component of Trust and Trustworthiness”
“What this means in practical terms is that a quintessential leader is who he or she says he or she is and that he or she is what he or she says they believe – all the time, without exception. When we as quintessential leaders practice consistency, our teams always know what to expect and that helps to create an organized, sensible and predictable environment in which team members can operate, grow, and thrive.
When those who claim to be leaders don’t practice consistency, they become very much like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The environment for their teams is chaotic, confusing and unpredictable and is characterized by constant fear and failure to thrive.
Consistency, like all the other components of trust and trustworthiness, is a rare commodity in any part of life today. It goes hand-in-hand with fairness and character. In society, in parenting, in politics, in religion, and in business, consistency has been replaced by expediency. The lack of consistency that overshadows humanity now is also a reflection of the “it’s all about me” mindset that seems to be the driving force in most people today.
Convictions, commitments, principles are built on foundations of sand that shift continuously (and are, therefore, broken almost as soon as they are made) depending on the situation at the moment. Most people and most people in leadership positions are more concerned about how things will effect them personally and how things look than they are about consistency, fairness, and character.
That is a sad commentary on what we as a society have become. However, quintessential leaders don’t follow the crowd and allow society to mold and shape them (“everybody else is doing it, so it must be okay”), but instead stay on the path of building trust and being trustworthy and they exhibit consistency no matter what the situation both as leaders and examples to others.
I was recently at a conference where I saw a lot of glaring examples of inconsistency among people in leadership positions.
But one stood out more than most of the others.
A presenter had three presentations during the conference.
In his first presentation, he made some erroneous and unsupported statements that left many of us scratching our heads.
In his second presentation, he was on target with everything and was able to fully provide support for the whole presentation.
In his third presentation, he went back to the erroneous and unsupported statements of the first presentation and actually expanded on them.
The problem? The speaker’s second presentation completely contradicted what he said in his first and third presentations.”
The Quintessential Leader 