Dave Anderson | Tag Archive | Integrity

Lying, cheating, and cowardice, are all habits that can become addictions in the same way smoking, drinking, pornography and drugs can become addictions.

I have often used the latter to explain how our character habits are formed. But last week I heard Pete Hinojosa (www.petehinojosa.com) speak on leading and coaching people. As he discussed a leader’s role in affecting the beliefs of his people he defined addiction:

An addiction is a compulsive belief or behavior that brings short-term benefit but creates long-term problems. Continue Reading…

I eat healthy most of the time. I am in a good mood most of the time. I am prompt most of the time. These are all statements that describe me. I could strive for better, but those are probably good enough.

I need to face the fact that I am a hypocrite when I call myself a man of integrity. Being honest is not something I should do most of the time. But that’s what I do.

Integrity can be defined as the quality of being honest and fair. Integrity can also mean whole or complete, undivided or unimpaired. Mostly honest is too low a bar. Continue Reading…

Most corporations claim to have core values. Most of the values that organizations claim are lousy. They stink. They have no meaning!

Integrity – Lousy.
Teamwork – Lousy.
Service – Lousy.

What does integrity mean? What does teamwork mean? What does service mean?

A corporate value like integrity doesn’t work. It is just another word on a website or on a poster hanging in a cubicle. Who cares what values an individual or a group claims to have! They don’t mean a thing! Unless…. Continue Reading…

Temptation hits me everyday. I am tempted by a lot of things I wish I wasn’t: French fries, Buffalo wings, the SI Swimsuit issue, naps, and sarcasm are just a few. This is just a sub-set of a much larger list.

But the most insidious temptation in my life is lying. What I used to call fibs, white lies, or exaggerations are truly the hardest temptations to beat. Continue Reading…

There is a lot of discussion of the word integrity in business books, in politics, in universities…in every walk of life. I read about it all the time. But, my father, General Jim Anderson, the former Master of the Sword at West Point, taught me more about integrity than any other source. He says:

INTEGRITY requires three steps:

Discerning what is right and wrong.
Acting on what you have discerned, even at personal cost.
Saying openly that you are acting on your understanding of right and wrong.

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point.” –C.S. Lewis

Wow. Opening this post with this quote from C. S. Lewis just heightened my level of attention to a subject that has been watered down through over use and misunderstanding through the years. How do we recover the word Courage from the Buzzword purgatory it’s currently relegated to?

My answer is to define it and to continually discuss it. That is the problem with corporate values statements as well. They are inadequately defined and communicated infrequently.

Leadership is a blend of competence and character.

BG (Retired) Jim Anderson, my father, taught me that. In 41 years in the Army, including two tours in Vietnam, he saw a lot of great leaders and a lot of leadership failures that formed his philosophy.

I started this website with this post. I have learned a lot since then. Thank you for joining me and contributing. Every time you comment on a blog, you make me better. Thank you for that!

Brad decided to write a book about effective management techniques. The title: How to Win, described his leadership philosophy. Just win baby! That was his motto and it had served him well. Continue Reading…

Character is now a buzzword. I use the term buzzword here to describe words that we hear frequently yet are rarely defined by the speakers. The Presidential campaign is full of buzzwords. I hear athletes described on Sportcenter using some of the same buzzwords as the politicians use. The problem is, if you dig into those words’ real meanings, you would see how much of a stretch the speakers are making. Continue Reading…

Brett was stealing from the company. Primarily, he was stealing his salary because he rarely worked a full day. However, I even found out after I fired him that he was also using his company credit card for personal household purchases!

In the interview Brett was great. He had a great resume and was a former college athlete. He was funny and people were drawn to him. He had all the tools to be successful. But, the truth was I hired a dud, and it was my fault. I didn’t do reference checks and my excuses for not doing them were lame. Continue Reading…