The term "missing link" occasionally makes headlines in terms of a skeleton or fossil being unearthed. But it also fits the human profile for success in such arenas as business, politics, and faith.
When we educate people nowadays, we tend to focus on competencies. When a university builds its business department, for example, it makes strategic hires in accounting, management, marketing, and human resources. The same principle holds from kindergarten through graduate and professional schools. We want people to master certain knowledge, skills, and functions.
Yet it continues to amaze us - or, so we say! - that CFO's rob their companies blind or CEOs tank them for some version of a double life. Late-night television makes fun of the same phenomenon with mayors, go...
Posts with Tag: integrity
The first duty of a leader is personal integrity. Whether in politics, athletics, business, education, or family, who the person is counts for more than what she does. His title, fame, or salary can never compensate for a lack of character.
We all know it is true, but we seem to have ignored it of late. So we have been willing to overlook a person's out-of-control lifestyle so long as he can still score points and win games for our team. We have tolerated flagrant excess and sexual infidelities so long as the bottom-line stayed strong.
We have put up with everything from perjury and kickbacks in public officials to abusive language and unfair treatment by owners and bosses. "After all," we said with straight faces, "someone's personal life has nothing...
We all know it is true, but we seem to have ignored it of late. So we have been willing to overlook a person's out-of-control lifestyle so long as he can still score points and win games for our team. We have tolerated flagrant excess and sexual infidelities so long as the bottom-line stayed strong.
We have put up with everything from perjury and kickbacks in public officials to abusive language and unfair treatment by owners and bosses. "After all," we said with straight faces, "someone's personal life has nothing...
Truth-telling seems to have gone by the boards of late.
Over the past few decades, college professors and best-selling authors have been found guilty of blatant plagiarism. Journalists have been exposed for writing stories from interviews they had with people they never met at places they've never been. There are periodic reports from major universities of students being expelled for printing term papers off the Internet and offering them as their work.
A turbulent American economy traces more directly to a fundamental lack of honesty among people in the financial markets than to terrorism. Investment firms urged their brokers to dump poor-performing stocks on trusting buyers. Top officers at major companies used "creative accounting" to pursue their greedy goals - and...
Over the past few decades, college professors and best-selling authors have been found guilty of blatant plagiarism. Journalists have been exposed for writing stories from interviews they had with people they never met at places they've never been. There are periodic reports from major universities of students being expelled for printing term papers off the Internet and offering them as their work.
A turbulent American economy traces more directly to a fundamental lack of honesty among people in the financial markets than to terrorism. Investment firms urged their brokers to dump poor-performing stocks on trusting buyers. Top officers at major companies used "creative accounting" to pursue their greedy goals - and...
A coach at a major university is convicted of molesting young boys for more than a decade. A would-be presidential nominee lies about an affair and the paternity of their child. Another round of bizarre behavior sends a music star into rehab. The stories keep hitting the press at a non-stop pace.
There will be more. Count on it. And one of the most common and off-putting responses we will hear in practically every case is this: What so-and-so does in private life has nothing to do with his or her public abilities.
At one level, that's right. Teaching kids how to be better athletes, wooing donors and getting votes, belting out a mesmerizing song - all those abilities exist independently of dumb, criminal, or evil things somebody does. For a time anyway. Until the nex...
There will be more. Count on it. And one of the most common and off-putting responses we will hear in practically every case is this: What so-and-so does in private life has nothing to do with his or her public abilities.
At one level, that's right. Teaching kids how to be better athletes, wooing donors and getting votes, belting out a mesmerizing song - all those abilities exist independently of dumb, criminal, or evil things somebody does. For a time anyway. Until the nex...
