Character, reputation and integrity for young careerists
For young careerists in the first decade of your careers, this is a time of great uncertainty and yet more opportunity to define your ‘own way’. When the rules of the game are in a flux, making this choice is all the more difficult.
While making this choice, one of my big learning’s has been:
When we start working, we join with our character, to build a reputation for integrity.
This is the only thing that is truly OURS.
A test of character
Character is who we are, strengths and weaknesses, the moral centre that we demonstrate in how we conduct ourselves, with our family, friends and colleagues, and especially when no one’s looking.
We are born with certain attributes. As we grow, these nature-given attributes interact with ‘nurture’ creating patterns of behaviour. We accept, get inspired by or rebel against what our environment teaches or expects us to do.
We carry these nature-nurture patterns into the workplace where we run into an organisational framework. At work, our challenges must allow us to ‘test’ what we are capable of doing and learning.
Equally important, the work place should not impede your growth. Look at how your peers or boss reacts to success, mistakes and failures? Overplaying success, repeating mistakes, humiliating those who have failed; and distrust among team leaders are all danger signs.
Also consider, are you setting an example worth emulating or serving as a cautionary tale?
Key question: Is work [and the office environment] helping my character grow or has a diminishing effect on me?
And two quotes:
Abraham Lincoln: “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”
H. Jackson Brown: “Good character is more to be praised than outstanding talent. Most talents are, to some extent, a gift. Good character, by contrast, is not given to us. We have to build it, piece by piece -- by thought, choice, courage, and determination.”
The impermance of reputation
We soon build a reputation for being competent, intelligent, a lone ranger or team player.
We often run smack into situations that demonstrate variance between our self-perception of character and our reputation. Pay close attention, these opportunities serve as a ‘mirror’.
Reflect, choose and work towards what you want to see in the mirror next time. Good reputation is the fruit of constant gardening.
The fear of losing your reputation is also a mechanism of social/ behaviour control. This fear holds us back from taking big risks. Its useful to question reputation and personal risk from this standpoint.
Since reputation is always evolving, it is essentially impermanent. I like to think of reputation as a prism. Different angles will show the person in different light.
For instance when speaking to references before making a senior hiring decision, I often observe striking differences in feedback from people who worked with the candidates at their first/ second job vs co-workers at the most recent place.
Key questions:
What does the mirror show?
Who are the best reference points on my reputation?
And two quotes:
Henri Marisse: “An artist must never be a prisoner. Prisoner? An artist should never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of style, prisoner of reputation, prisoner of success”
Vanessa Redgrave: “Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.”
The magic of integrity
A reputation for high integrity is that special magic that helps convert opportunity when talent, effectiveness or connections are a given.
Integrity is the magic sheen we must aspire for, irrespective of the ups & downs of our lives. While integrity won’t make problems go away – that requires constant work – what it delivers is a moral compass that guides us onto the right path, especially when we don’t know what to do.
Integrity is an inside-out way of living that underpins all our actions; and provides fertile ground for growth, personal and professional.
Two quotes:
Barbara De Angelis: “Living with integrity means:
Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships.
Asking for what you want and need from others.
Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension.
Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values.
Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.”
John D. MacDonald: “Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.”
As a young careerist we will often have to make difficult choices. During those moments of decision, its useful to ask:
Does this experience serve to mould my character?
Will this choice enhance my reputation? Is it worth risking my reputation for?
Does this choice meet with or compromise my integrity?
