In life, “Truth matters”, to quote one of my favorite leaders ever, a former General Counsel with whom I worked. If you are like most people and want to sleep well at night, stay off the slippery slope. When an alarm bell rings in your mind, listen to it! It probably sounded off for a reason. Pausing to consider why the alarm went off ensures you will take time to reconsider the situation from an ethical point of view.

Definitions of fraud, describing various kinds of theft, understanding what constitutes a conflict of interest all serve to help you consciously consider ethical choices. But having this knowledge isn’t enough. You also need to have an instinct for what is right and what is wrong. If you ever have that niggling sense that something isn’t right, stop and ask someone you trust and admire to help you think through the situation.

The risky thing is to take action without really thinking about the variety of choices you are faced with on a daily basis. Sometimes, you may not even realize that your choice has an ethical side to it. You may simply see it as what is easiest for you, or what causes you the least conflict, or helps a situation keep moving forward. However, putting on ethical lenses could prevent a mis-step that you would later regret. The examples in previous articles may serve to illustrate just how easy it is to start down the wrong road without even knowing it.

While you may not be at risk of committing even a slight ethical transgression, it is amply clear from the debacle on Wall Street in the fall of 2008 that your simple ethical decisions can affect more people than you’d ever imagine. For example, you can blame the predatory lenders, or you can blame the dangerously innocent borrower, or both. Which ever way you look at it . . that the Wall Street mess was deliberately engineered by a variety of business, or that the whole mess is an example of what can go wrong unintentionally, the fact of the matter is that we all suffered. If people in any part of the equation had slowed down to consider whether what they did was right, not just was it possible, we might not find ourselves in the financial crises we are in today.

I recently finished reading Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower by Cynthia Cooper, formerly of WorldCom. This woman, whom I was privileged to hear speak recently, is the heroine who blew the whistle on the WorldCom fraud. She recounts that her strength to blow the whistle on the huge Wall Street darling company came from lessons from her child hood. Specifically, she relates that her parents told her, “Don’t ever let yourself be bullied”, and “Think of the consequences of your actions.”

Three really simple rules can help you negotiate the sometimes treacherous times life thows at us. Follow them, and you should be in good shape:
1. Rule Number One: Don’t lie.
2. Rule Number Two: Don’t cheat.
3. Rule Number Three: Don’t steal.

I wish us all the strength to do in all circumstances what we know to be right.

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

You have probably heard of examples of behavior at work that seem unbelievable. Imagine a case where an employee in a landscaping business is found to have been ordering extra plants and other supplies from a vendor to use at their home and their families’ homes. You think to yourself, and maybe have conversations with co-workers, “WHAT was she thinking?” It is an interesting question. Based on thought leaders, my own experience, and research results I offer the following to try to explain the seemingly inexplicable.

1. “I deserve some slack”. This form of entitlement thinking is the “Hey, I’ve worked here for 13 years;I deserve some special consideration, after the way they have treated me!”

In this “stinking thinking” pattern, a person believes that he or she is due something extra. Maybe the person has felt underappreciated over time, or believes their compensation level is inadequate. Whatever the case, they convince themselves that it is okay for them to take something that is not theirs in order to make up for a slight they believe they have suffered.

2. “It isn’t really much.” A daisy here, a trowel there . . what is the difference? It does make a difference if the, “Oops, I accidentally took this trowel home” becomes, “Hey, I think I’ll re-landscape my yard.”

Whether it seems like it at the time or not, taking something that is not yours is theft. The concept of theft extends to theft of time. Time spent at work on personal tasks such as personal phone calls, e-mail and errands beyond the inconsequential is a form of theft. Would you want your child’s teacher to spend classroom time on personal chores?

3. “I’ll pay it back later.” This stinking thinking can have to do with cash, such as the petty cash drawer or accounting entries, or time.

Imagine that someone arrives at work and discovers that they don’t have any cash in their wallet because they forgot to go to the bank last night what with going to the grocery store, picking up the kids, and polishing off some homework for night school. The employee figures that they will just take a few bucks from the petty cash drawer to cover lunch from the lunch cart, and put back what they borrow tomorrow. Well, tomorrow never comes and the cash is never replaced. The intent is good, but the follow-up never happens.

4. “I’ll never get caught!” The examples above are those of people who unintentionally take the first step on the slippery slope. This example is different. It is for the person who knows at the time that what they are about to do is wrong. They just figure that they are so smart that the world won’t catch on to them. Well, sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong.

Believing you will never get caught is the first step in a web of deceit, and there isn’t an easy way back. If you or someone you know has such an idea, squelch it from the beginning. The idea can’t be good for you.

While you may not see yourself falling into any of these stinking thinking scenarios, is it exactly how the wrong things start. If you hear any of these phrases at your work place, stop the thinking it its tracks and get back on the ethical plane.

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

Too many offers of guaranteed income or of projected income can be found online these days. When someone is scouring the internet for job announcements or possibly with the intent of starting a business, the number of business opportunities that pop up is growing quite large. These offers are sometimes not in compliance with business opportunity law specifications. How does one know if that advertisement offering easy income or a product that sells itself is in compliance with the local business opportunity law? A look into state law will provide the answers.

Not A Federal Issue

Business opportunity laws are not made at the national level, currently some states have a business law, and some states do not. Of the states that do have such a statute, the different forms that the law takes are variations on a theme. In general, a business opportunity law that exist is set up to protect people who buy into money making opportunities whether these opportunities turn out to be real money makers or if they are simply scams.

All business opportunities fall under the statute of a law if there is such a law in the state where one resides. It does not matter if you are a legitimate business or are scamming people into selling a product for you. All business opportunities fall under the realm of the law, so anyone thinking of responding to a business opportunity should check the state laws before agreeing to anything.

What the Law Says

Although the particularities of a states business opportunity law vary, the essential piece of the law is that it requires those making an offer of a business opportunity to release a disclosure statement to prospective business partners. In some states, this disclosure statement has to be reviewed by an official before it is allowed to be used as a disclosure statement for a business opportunity. In other states, the contents of the disclosure are discretionary, the business opportunity law simply states that the partner offering a business opportunity must have a disclosure statement to offer prospective partners.

In the disclosure statement, essential information should be found. For example, the number of business partners that the offering individual has held during the last three years, and a history of the offering persons arbitration, litigation and financial history. All of these are considered information that the prospective business partner has the right to have. Of course, anything disclosed in the disclosure statement must be true, so creating a disclosure statement that is full of lies does not make a business compliant with business opportunity law.

The law is designed to give those buying into a business a critical view of what it is that they are buying into. One should have the chance of making an informed decision about such a business opportunity, instead of being victim to a bunch of slogans like guaranteed to sell itself and the like. Business opportunity law requires the offering party to offer real numbers instead of slogans. Take a look at the disclosure statement and only then decide if the business opportunity is legitimate.

Obinna Heche. Los Angeles - California

Delivering the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home successfully..
http://www.homeincomeportal.com/obhmy365

In 2002 the Sarbanes Oxley Act was passed into federal law after the American nation was shocked by scandals that rocked large businesses from Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia to name a few. These scandals all related to businesses and firms using insider trading to get ahead resulting in the loss of share value to many individual investors and drastically reducing the American’s faith in trading and investing in the stock market in general, but most noticeably in the securities market as they were all centered on businesses there. If you remember the Enron scandal in 2002 you will remember the amount of press coverage it received and how many top businessmen ended up in jail.

The Sarbanes Oxley Act, also known as the “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002″ was passed to place more restrictions and institute forced reform on Us companies that were involved in Us bonds that were publicly owned. Sarbanes Oxley Act mainly details how businesses including accounting firms and other bond management firms that act with public shares, will be criminally prosecuted if hedge funding or insider trading is exposed within their organization and places stronger regulations on the way they are able to carry out their business tactics when trading.
However, some people do not agree with the many different sections of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, as some of it they say places too much regulation on firms and trading business in the US and therefore lessens America’s stance in the international marketing claiming that the Sarbanes Oxley act went overboard in defining what is permissible and what is not when conducting trade. These opponents claim that the government infringed too much on business rights while trying to protect individual rights and the Sarbanes Oxley act actually hurts the securities market efforts to gain a strong standing in America today as it limits too many activities that are needed to be successful in the international trade market.

Recent stats show that Sarbanes Oxley actually caused many firms to withdraw from public stock trading, which hurts the value of the share market, because they decided that it would be too costly to their businesses to even attempt to comply with the new regulations and standards that Sarbanes Oxley act imposed on them. In this way the Sarbanes Oxley act actually hurt the American public even more as the more businesses step out of trading, the lower the overall stock market.

To learn how Sarbanes Oxley effects you, visit www.globalsaraanesoxley.com where you’ll find everything you need to know about the Sarbanes Oxley Act and much more.

You can find various business ethics quizzes around thPick the one answer you think is wrong. This one is different. Each question has only one WRONG answer, doesn’t analyze your answers and tell you where you went wrong. Rather, it is simply intended to raise your ethical consciousness, maybe even stimulate a little discussion between you and your peers or family.

In this quiz, try to pick the answer that is wrong. I hope the “wrong” answers are obvious if you care about business ethics.

Enjoy!

1. My reputation
a. Is only as good as my word
b. Precedes me
c. Once lost is hard to regain
d. Is the legacy I’ll leave behind
e. Doesn’t matter to me.

2. Following my employer’s Code of Ethics
a. Could be important to my success
b. Requires interpretation to get it right
c. Will make me a better leader
d. Is a waste of time
e. Requires a certain level of consciousness and some attention to detail

3. Pointing out ethical transgressions at work
a. Can be awkward
b. Helps raise awareness for us all
c. Is a career ending move
d. Can backfire
e. Could be educational all the way around

4. Keeping the workplace ethical
a. Makes it a better place to work
b. Is hopeless
c. Requires clarity around ethical standards
d. Means top management has to do it
e. Leads to a more profitable company

5. My employer’s ethical reputation
a. Is in the dumps and dropping
b. Reflects on me
c. Is partially set by how I behave
d. Makes a difference in the bottom line
e. To some extent determines whether people will buy our products

6. Accepting gifts from vendors
a. May be fine within limits
b. Should under no conditions affect my willingness to buy from them
c. Has stricter rules in the US than is some other countries
d. Is a great idea to get as much as you can!
e. Should probably be disclosed to the ethics office, particularly if it is valued at over a certain amount

7. I care about business ethics because
a. America’s reputation has suffered recently
b. Good business ethics can restore better profits
c. I don’t want to work somewhere slimy
d. Good business ethics creates a more just workplace
e. They substitute for my complete lack of business ethics.

The wrong answers would likely come from someone who is apathetic and/or cynical. Sometimes, we do feel either of those feelings. However, life is short and the well-lived life is a life of integrity. Living a life of integrity means caring about business ethics.

If you enjoyed taking this quiz, share it with your friends. If you work in an office that cares about ethics, share it at the next staff meeting. Leave it in the lunch room. Pick the one question that you like most and talk about it over beers this weekend. On your commute home, think about what you want to do differently going forward. Send the quiz anonymously to your boss. Keep the discussion going about the importance of ethics in business!

Copyright by Sally Rhys of Coaching for Perspective, July 2008

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

Each of us carries around within us a personal code of ethics. We may not be conscious of it; we may not deliberately consult it on a daily basis, we may not apply a decision tree against it to make a choice, but it exists. And, at times, it may falter, or we may apply different ethical principles in different situations.

Take a minute to identify your fundamental ethical philosophy. Which of the descriptions below best captures the way you like to operate in the world?

1. Humans have no special place within the world, but are just one of thousands of expressions of life. People have desires and free will and so can alter their nature. However, if one acts unnaturally, it upsets the balance of life. Therefore, one should seek balance in life.
2. Ethics is a practical science; you have to do it, not just think it. This philosopher thought in terms of virtue ethics which has to do with the proper function of a thing. Therefore, the best activity of the soul is to attain a joy in the good life.
3. The responsibility of all people is to help build the ideal society, and if it takes violating the norms of a society to do so, then do it. To some degree, the situation will dictate the proper thing to do at the proper time.
4. There is a single unconditional obligation, and that is to carry out your duty. How you feel when carrying out the action is what is important, although the outcome might not be what you intended.

Now, which statement resonates most with you? Which seems to be the path you travel in living your life?

If you select number 1, your pattern is most aligned with Laozi, a philosopher of ancient China and a key figure in Taoism.

If number 2 rang your chimes, your pattern is most aligned with Aristotle, the Greek who taught that to have a good life, you must live a balanced life and avoid excesses.

If number 3 resonated with you, your pattern is most aligned with Confucius, the Chinese philosopher who emphasized personal and government morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and mercy.

If number 4 makes the most sense to you, your pattern is most aligned with Kant, an 18th century Prussian philosopher.

No matter which philosophy attracts you the most, all are legitimate, honorable ways of being. In fact, you may apply different principles depending on any given situation.

While these are all laudable approaches to life, applying them will likely have different outcomes. For instance, consider the case of Zoe. Zoe has a co-worker, Alice, who was listing more hours worked on her timesheet than was true; she is cheating the company.

To apply the thinking of Kant in this situation, we’d say, “If everybody cheated on their time sheet, no work would get done and the company would be paying for nothing!” Since Zoe is a friend to Alice, she knows that Alice was just abandoned by her husband, and has two kids under four to care for. Day care is proving problematic. With this additional information, you might think about adopting a Confucian standard. This philosophy would encourage you to value helping to build an ideal society, which certainly includes making sure small children are well cared for.

See how applying different ethical standards would guide you to take different action?

Whichever approach makes the most sense to you, explore the strengths and limitations of your preferred approach. Under what circumstances does your approach work best? Under what circumstances would your approach result in unintended, maybe even negative, consequences? How have you consciously applied your philosophy in the past? Has it ever landed you in a hot spot? By the way, note that being in a hot spot may mean that you did exactly the right thing, it is just not well received!

Sometime tomorrow, find an opportunity to practice applying your favored approach very deliberately. It can be a small incident in your daily life. Think about driving in traffic, trash on the streets, standing in a line. What do you learn from the exercise? Knowing that, how will you change your pattern in the future, if at all?

And finally, I encourage you find out more about the thinking and teachings of the thinkers above. You might refine your thinking about how you want to live your life. Online encyclopedias are an easy first step.

Happy philosophizing!

Sally Rhys, MS, coaches and consults on business ethics. As the former Director, Ethics and Compliance at a $1.5B publicly traded company, her expertise will help you increase both your business knowledge and professionalism. Contact her at http://www.coachingforperspective.com

The pressures people face as entrepreneurs can at times become burdensome. You are the boss, the one person within your company that is ultimately responsible for everything that goes on. Sometimes you may feel all alone in the world that makes up your life. And sometimes the pressure can seem overwhelming. Being in business for yourself does not mean living in a perfect world. So when challenges arise and things become difficult remember what your own personal set of values and principles are. They will help to make up who you are and how you want to run your business. Values like honesty, integrity, trust, and treating others like you would like to be treated should not be taken lightly.

In business your values and principles are important and should never be sacrificed for any reason. But they will be put to the test on many occasions. So how might your values be challenged by your business. Let’s start with your employees. Depending on what kind of business you own your employees will come from all walks of life. They will vary in the cultures they come from, age, race, gender, and education levels. And at times they will do things that they should not. How will you handle them? If your business needs them bad enough will you look the other way when they do something wrong? What if they treat other employees badly or try to take advantage of you because they know how badly that you need them. Will you sacrifice your values and principles because you are worried by what would happen if they leave or will you make the right choice and get rid of them.

What if a customer puts you in a compromising position about doing further business with your company? Maybe an employee of theirs demands a kickback or something if you want to continue to receive their business. How will you handle such a situation? Do you risk turning them in knowing it could cost you that customer? You have to ask yourself what will cost you more. Standing up for what you believe in knowing it could hurt your company or giving in knowing it could hurt you. We can always come up with excuses for giving in; it’s taking a stand personally that is hard to do.

The choices you face as you develop and grow your business with be hard. Some will test your principles. They will force you to consider how far you are willing to go to get ahead and make your business a success. So choose carefully because the decisions you make now can affect you greatly in the future. One small exception to your values and principles can lead to bigger exceptions later.

Cash Miller is an experienced entrepreneur and speaker who has spent over a decade as a small business owner. His years of experience in small business cover a variety of topics. If you are looking for more small business help please check out http://www.smallbusinessdelivered.com

Business ethics is an interesting branch of business theory, primarily because of the fact that they are inherently interesting in a market economy. People tend to be extremely distrustful of corporations in market economies and the bigger they are, the worse that problem of trust usually gets. Business ethics therefore are politically charged in many different circumstances and that in turn serves to make them interesting. Aside from this academic interest however, business ethics are also important for a company and its success. Here are some ways in which this is true.

Public Image

It is impossible to discuss business ethics as a branch of academia without taking a look at the relationship between business ethics and public image. Each corporation has a particular public image, which represents the way in which the public views the corporation. Wal-Mart, for example, has a terrible public image. Toyota, on the other hand, has a very positive one. These public images are the result of a number of different things, but they are primarily the result of the way in which a corporation acts with respect to the different things around it.

A corporation’s environmental policy, the way they treat their employees and the way they treat the communities they exist in are all part of their overall behavior and this in turn is the principle factor in determining their public image. As proof of this, you will notice that even though Wal-Mart makes products that have a decent quality and an extremely low price, they still have a negative public image.

Since public image is largely a result of company behavior, business ethics play a large role in determining public image since they determine behavior. And public image is important to success in most cases, which is one of the reasons as to why business ethics are important to a company’s overall success.

Investment

Another reason that business ethics are important is the relationship they have to investment. When a person or an entity is considering investment in a particular stock, there are a number of things they take into account. Aside from the quantitative factors surrounding a company’s profit margin a future prospects, consideration is also given to a particular company from the point of view of the qualitative aspects such as their public image and the products that they happen to sell. All of these things are taken into account before the final investment is made.

Therefore, a company that would like to encourage extra investment is a company that has a strong sense of business ethics. Part of business ethics is responsibility to the investor and for that reason companies with strong reputations in the field of ethical business behavior are also companies that tend to attract more investment from people that are new into the market. Investment is most definitely important to success.

Partnerships

In the business world, joint ventures happen all the time. They happen all the time because they are ultimately of great importance to the bottom lines of businesses. A business can be made or broken on just one joint venture and part of the reason that joint ventures are successful is that they combine the forces of two extremely powerful companies on occasion.

If you want your company to do well in joint ventures, then you need to have good partners. The only way to get good partners is to have a good reputation both in terms of a track record and in terms of your business overall. And of course, the best way to get a good reputation is to ensure that your company has a strong tradition of ethical business behavior.

Canada Financial news site offering information related to the Canadian Financial industry.

Integrity in business, especially on the internet, seems to be a quality that, unfortunately, is rarely found nowadays. The internet marketing world has become so glutted with hype, scams and empty promises that even the most trusting of us have become skeptical about the claims we’re subjected to on a daily basis. So when we find a company or a person with real integrity, we’re impressed, and much more likely to do business with them.

Integrity is the basing of one’s actions on an internally consistent framework of principles. Integrity is also the cornerstone of every truly successful business. It is the idea of living consistently so your actions are in harmony with your professed principles and beliefs. It is one of the building blocks of earning and maintaining trust.

Integrity is described by Webster as the state of being sound or complete, being upright, honest, and sincere. It is primarily a virtue that comes from within, and the best way each of us can promote integrity is to exemplify it, to lead lives that embody our beliefs and our sense of moral values. Integrity, in short, is doing the right thing, doing the next right thing and doing things right, knowing that even if nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not, the rewards you will receive are much greater in the long run. It is the first step to true greatness.

Moving through life with integrity is freeing because there is nothing to cover up, no guilt, and a clear guideline for how to respond in every situation. The greatest fallout from a lack of integrity is the loss of trust, both from those we work with and, ironically, even within our own subconscious. A lack of integrity can have a subtle, but powerful, effect on our psychological state, which, in turn, affects our ability to be successful in the long term. Unfortunately, integrity is an old-fashioned virtue that, for many, has become a low priority in the quest for increasing profits, maximizing market share, or acquiring votes or tenure.

True integrity is more of a journey than a destination. It’s not something you do once and you’re finished. It’s an ongoing series of personal choices that we make as we go through our lives. If you’re running a home-based business, personal integrity is as important as the products you sell or the services you offer. As an entrepreneur, a reputation for integrity is your most valuable commodity.

Integrity, like most other good things, begins at home. Little things make a big difference. Developing a habit of honesty will set you free in ways that most people don’t even begin to realize. If we’re honest with ourselves, it is always easier to be truthful. For one thing, if you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. The greatest homage we can pay to ourselves and others is to walk with integrity. Making morally clear life choices is actually much easier and much more profitable in the long run. Do the right thing and speak the truth.

Whatever business you’re doing, it’s important to practice integrity in the way you operate on a daily basis. Serve others. Avoid making claims or promises that are not true. Offer real value through the products or services that you market. If you do these things, it is inevitable that you will succeed. If not, you’ll just get lost in the crowd.

Tim Wright, Ph.D. is a freelance writer and busy internet entrepreneur living in Virginia.
Visit his website at: http://godcenteredwealth.com

The probability that he will go to jail for what he did is almost zero. His lack of personal leadership resulted in thousands of people feeling violated, cheated and betrayed. If his patrons trusted him before, his impersonal approach to leadership shredded that trust in a matter of milliseconds. We won’t give our support to leaders we don’t trust.

2008 is an election year in the U.S., with selection of our next President taking the main stage. We want someone we can trust to lead us for the next four years. We’re willing to give our enthusiastic support to those we trust so that we can achieve significant results together. When trust is lost, disillusionment and disappointment set in, and the result is no results at all.

Blanked After 12 Years

On May 31st, 2008, the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) newspaper published “School chief makes a name shredding Clayton diplomas”. John Thompson started as the new Clayton County Superintendent on April 28th, replacing Gloria Duncan. The AJC reports that on May 29th he ordered the shredding of 3,000 high school diplomas because his name was not printed on them. The very next day, graduates attending their graduation ceremony were surprised to discover their diploma was missing. They would have to wait for them to be reprinted, to arrive in the mail weeks later.

John Thompson shredded the diplomas because he could. The powers associated with his position enabled him to do that, despite the fact that he didn’t know at the time how much the replacement diplomas would cost the county taxpayers. He made an executive decision, and his motives have been called into question.

Upward Turns Outward

We can’t deny it is human nature to be selfish. Abraham Maslow’s pyramid illustrating the hierarchy of human needs acknowledges that we are driven at a primal level to satisfy our needs for food and shelter. We must selfishly take care of ourselves and what we need to survive before we can think about others’ needs. Unfortunately, some never choose to think of others even after they are far above survival level. Until we put aside our selfishness and develop an outward view that considers others’ personal needs before we consider our own, we can’t be trusted with a leadership role.

Selfish people can never develop trust with others. They take actions that serve themselves and then find ways to rationalize them. They offer explanations that often sound hollow to everyone but them.
- “We either give them two diplomas or get the right one mailed. We decided to have them wait for the right one.”
- “I took the initiative and I did it.”
- “It’s no harm. It’s just a sense of pride, and they will have it soon.”

These don’t sound like explanations, but excuses. If you are ever tempted to offer an excuse, it’s probably time to offer a sincere apology instead.

It’s Your Life to Lead

Personal leadership is all about how you lead yourself in your own life. It’s about the decisions you make and the actions you take, whether people are watching or not. It’s about learning to trust your own actions so that others can learn to trust you. It’s about developing the habit of doing the right thing all the time, even when it causes you inconvenience, expense or embarrassment. Here are three tips to help you develop your own personal leadership.

1. Serve Others before Yourself

While your self-interest and self-preservation are important, get in the habit of first considering how a situation or decision will impact others involved. Look for ways to give before you find ways to receive.

When Davidson College made it to the Elite Eight in the NCAA basketball tournament this past spring, the trustees of the College offered to give any student who wanted to travel to Detroit to see Davidson play Wisconsin a ticket to the game, bus transportation and 2 nights lodging. The trustees knew that this opportunity may not come again to the College for a long time, and they wanted their students to have powerful memories of the experience. They gave to the students without expectation of receiving anything in return, because that’s what they want their students to learn. Should you ever meet a Davidson grad (from any year) ask them what they think of their school experience. “Trustee” — what an appropriate title. Nearly 300 students took them up on their offer.

2. A Deal is a Deal

Follow-through on agreements you’ve made, even if they seem trivial or insignificant. If your voicemail greeting says you will call back anyone who leaves a message, either call everyone back or change your voicemail greeting. Inconsistency is the enemy of trust.

Often we are paid to deliver a service. Many of us make a deal to receive a paycheck in return for performing a job. Make sure you’re living up to your end of the bargain by delivering good service to your employer.

Some employees (like school superintendents) are expected to deliver service across multiple key groups: in this example, to students, to parents, and to taxpayers. Serving multiple groups before serving yourself requires a high degree of personal leadership. Thinking selfishly for even a moment can rapidly extinguish trust with one or more of your key groups. Keep your deals, and do well the jobs you are paid to do.

3. Better Kind than Right

Often we find ourselves in situations that offer us two paths. One path will give us an opportunity to say something like, “I’m right, you’re wrong, and I can prove it.” The other path gives us an opportunity to decide that proving ourselves right in this situation isn’t worth causing another person pain or embarrassment. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer suggests that often it is better to be kind than right.

Debates can be healthy, and sometimes it is necessary to clearly establish right from wrong. Other times, who is right really doesn’t matter. For example, a friend recently remarked about how overpaid CEOs are. While I was prepared to debate it from the other side, I chose not to because the outcome would be neither productive nor supportive of our relationship. While I didn’t agree with him, I chose to be kind when I could have been right.

Take Trust Personally

Trust is central to all our important relationships. Some try to dodge trust issues by insisting on written contracts. Personal leadership puts its trust in personal behavior, not a piece of paper.

It takes time to learn to trust others, whether we’re hiring them, electing them, or marrying them. Trust is earned over time, yet it is lost in a moment of irrational behavior. Always strive to do the right thing by considering others before yourself. Then others will consider you a leader worth following.

Copyright 2008 Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson the Trouble Breaker is a keynote speaker who works with organizations to convert trouble into double and triple digit performance breakthroughs. Discover breakthrough concepts at http://www.paul-johnson.com. Visit http://TroubleBreaker.com for presentations on leadership.