In 1986, something remarkable happened in the little town of Conyers, Georgia. High School officials there discovered that one of their basketball players - who had played forty-five seconds in the first of the school's five post-season games - had actually been scholastically ineligible. They discovered this after the championship game was history. What did they do in response? Had they just swept it under the rug, no one would have noticed. The studenthad only appeared once for forty-five seconds! It was not that big of a deal. But that's not how they saw it. They returned the state championship trophy they had won just three weeks before. They could have kept quiet and kept the trophy, but they had too much moral intelligence to do that.To their credit, the team and the town, althought they were sad, stood behind the school's decision. The coach said, "We didn't know he was ineligible at the time...but you've got to do what's honest and right and what the rules say. I told the team that people forget the scores of games; they don't forget what you're made of."
This is an amazing story of integrity. Integrity in leadership is critical for the credibility of the leader.
So, here's a few lessons for our leadership from this story:
1. 90% of our leadership life is about our character.
2. The invisible trumps the visible. The inside should always come first.
3. From our being as leaders flows our doing.
4. Small compromises by leaders can go unnoticed for a period of time but eventually these compromises will have a negative impact on the leader's influence.
Posts
4 comments:
Byron - this is a very cool new idea. Way to go.
The story about the basketball team is remarkable, and yet makes me sad to think it is considered so unusual. It shows that integrity to that degree is uncommon, rather than common. It also reveals that the pursuit of true integrity is not an easy task!
I couldn't agree more. The pursuit of integrity is difficult and critical to our leadership. Thanks for your comment.
Integrity is being the same in the dark as you are in the light and authenticity is being that same way all the time. Great story of integrity. Here is a quote from Maxwell.
"Integrity binds our person together and fosters a spirit of contentment within us. It will not allow our lips to violate our hearts. When integrity is the referee, we will be consistent; our beliefs will be mirrored by our conduct. There will be no discrepency between what we appear to be and what our family knows we are, whether in times of prosperity or adversity. Integrity allows us to predetermine what we will be regardless of circumstances, persons involved, or the places of our testing."
Post a Comment