C H A P T E R
O N E
Honesty and
Integrity
‘‘An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.’’
—P. 24:26
‘‘Judge me, O Lord, according to my . . . integrity.’’
—P. 7:8
od’s honest truth. Actions that back up the words and words
that are congruent with the actions. People of integrity and
honesty. People we can trust. That’s what we look for in our
leaders.
James Kouzes and Barry Posner, one of the best-known teams of
management experts in the United States and authors of The Leadership
Challenge, performed a survey of several thousand people around the world and several hundred case studies. They found that honesty was
the most frequently cited trait of a good leader, so frequently cited that
they wrote a separate volume about it, called Credibility: How Leaders
Gain and Lose It, Why People Demand It.
It doesn’t matter how noble or worthwhile your cause; if you haven’t
earned people’s trust by constantly keeping your word and being true
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
to your values, people won’t follow you too far. They may follow you
to a point, but when the going gets tough, they’ll start to hang back or
look around for another leader. You may tell followers that despite the
obstacles, the goal is achievable and that you will back them up 100
percent. But if you have failed to back them up in the past (or even if
you simply lack a track record of trust and honesty), no one is going to
line up to follow you through a deep mud puddle, let alone the Red
Sea.
Lately, managers and leaders across the world have often left us want-
ing in this key area. Richard Nixon hired people to break into the
headquarters of the opposing political party, then lied and claimed he
had nothing to do with it. Bill Clinton had an affair with a White House
intern a few years older than his daughter, then promptly denied that
he had ever participated in any sexual activity with her.
Morton Thiokol, the aerospace company, failed to listen to a scien-
tist’s warnings that the Challenger spacecraft was unsafe, causing the entire crew to go crashing to a fiery death just minutes after the launch.
Executives at Texaco engaged in a systematic pattern of discrimination
against minority employees and tried to hide it, but audiotapes provided
incontrovertible evidence of their actions.
The leaders in the Bible were cut from a different cloth. Even when
their visions seemed unrealistic, people followed them because of their
integrity and honesty. The Bible is full of examples of individuals who
kept their words despite incredible natural and human obstacles, and of
leaders who risked loss of power, money, and even their lives to keep
their integrity intact. Noah was selected and rewarded for his integrity;
Lot was saved from the hellfire and ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah for
his honesty.
Moses, who brought God’s warnings against lying, stealing, and cov-
eting to his followers in dramatic fashion, was a man of great integrity
himself. The Ten Commandments are very explicit: ‘‘Thou shalt not
steal.’’ ‘‘Thou shalt not murder.’’ ‘‘Thou shalt not give false testimony
against thy neighbor.’’ ‘‘Thou shalt not covet they neighbor’s house . . .
wife . . . manservant or maidservant . . . or anything belonging to thy
neighbor.’’ That’s four commandments out of ten that deal directly with
integrity and honesty.
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Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets, at great risk and with much
unpopularity, warned an entire people when they were departing from
their original precepts of truthfulness and morality. Jesus Christ brought
the message that ‘‘the truth shall set you free,’’ and he was willing to
die for the truths he embodied. And fortunately today we have been
blessed with a number of modern business leaders who realize that
without honesty and integrity, material ‘‘success’’ rings hollow indeed.
HONESTY (AND DISHONESTY):
ROLE MODELS
Fortunately for those of us who must work under modern leaders, in-
tegrity and honesty have not gone totally out of style. David Hunke,
advertising director for the Miami Herald of the Knight-Ridder chain, notes: ‘‘We don’t keep secrets very well around here, which is our own
kind of joke. It is impossible to keep secrets, largely because of the
issue of integrity. You can’t imagine somebody at the very top of this
corporation telling you something that wasn’t true.’’1
Now we all know that, at least officially, journalists have a code of
ethics. But what about Internet executives? CEO Robert Knowling
of Covad Communications, an Internet provider, puts every employee
through a three-day vision and values process, this in a fast-moving
environment where time (measured in nanoseconds) is indeed money.
An anchor of this process is the concept of integrity. ‘‘That’s not an
earthshaking aspiration but we give it some bite,’’ notes Knowling.
‘‘We once had to dismiss a highly visible manager for a violation of our
values. But, as Jack Welch says, you must be public about the conse-
quences of breaking core values. I don’t want to wake up one day with
a profitable corporation that does not have a soul.’’2
Compare the integrity of Hunke and Knowling with that of mon-
archs Ahab and Jezebel, that ‘‘dirty duo’’ of the Bible whose lack of
integrity would rival modern-day ‘‘monarchs’’ Leona and Harry Helm-
sley. For the uninitiated, Leona Helmsley was the New York ‘‘hotel
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THE BIBLE ON LEADERSHIP
queen’’ who, when caught paying almost no income taxes on a vast
business empire, cavalierly stated that ‘‘only the little people pay taxes.’’
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that she posted one of the ‘‘little
people’’ on each side of her swimming pool with a bucket of iced
shrimp so that she could partake while she swam her laps.
But Ahab and Jezebel’s lack of integrity certainly rivals ‘‘Queen Leo-
na’s.’’ A man named Naboth possessed a vineyard, which was close to
Ahab’s palace. Ahab wanted to buy it to use as a vegetable garden, but
Naboth refused to sell: Ahab became angry and sullen, refusing to eat,
but at least his first impulse was to obey the law, however distasteful and frustrating this might have been.
However, Jezebel saw no need for him to sulk or be disappointed:
‘‘Is this how you act as king over Israel? Get up and eat! Cheer up! I’ll
get you the vineyard.’’ (1 Kings 21:7) She devised a simple yet totally
amoral solution. She got two scoundrels (presumably through bribery
or intimidation, since she was capable of both) to publicly testify that
Naboth had cursed both God and the king (she wanted to cover all the
bases).
Jezebel succeeded in getting Naboth stoned to death. As soon as she
heard the ‘‘good news,’’ she said to her husband, ‘‘Get up and take
possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite that he refused to
sell you.’’ (1 Kings 21:15) Ahab, man of integrity that he was, was only
too happy to comply.
Compare Ahab and Jezebel’s approach with that of King David, who
wanted to build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of a fellow
named Araunah the Jebusite. David forthrightly approached Araunah to
humbly ask him to sell the threshing floor at full price (Ahab had Na-
both killed so he could appropriate Naboth’s vineyard at no cost).
Araunah offered David the threshing floor for free: ‘‘Take it! Let my
lord the king do whatever pleases him.’’ (1 Chron. 21:23) But David
insisted on paying full price despite the fact that as King he could easily have appropriated the property by executive fiat.
By comparison, here is a modern example of a ‘‘vineyard’’ that was
certainly coveted but not seized from its rightful owner because of an
executive’s integrity. David Armstrong of Armstrong Industries wanted
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to build a new plant next to the old one. In order to do so, the company
would have to buy the home of a retired employee in his seventies and
force him to relocate. The president vetoed the plan, exclaiming,
‘‘When we bought it (the company parcel), I promised he could stay
there as long as he liked. Making him move now might upset him to
the point where it shortens his life.’’3 The new plant was built on the
other side of the property.
And consider the integrity of Jean Maier, director of policy services
for Northwestern Mutual Life. In a sense, she is watching over the
‘‘vineyards’’ (financial resources) of thousands of policyholders. Before
she took the job, she told her boss, ‘‘ ‘I can’t do this job unless I know
I can do the right thing. I can’t take some old lady’s policy away . . . if I think it’s not honorable.’ And my boss said to me, ‘You will never
have to do that.’ And I have never been put in that position.’’4 Naboth