Page 203 - Appreciative Leadership

176 Appreciative Leadership

growth. Now, ten years later, over 450 cooperation circles around the
world have organized to carry out interfaith peace-building activities
in alignment with their shared preamble, purpose, and principles.
So what does integrity cost? Not much compared to the lack
of integrity, which will cost your success. It begins small. Without
shared principles, good people do good work, but all in their own

way. This creates lack of congruity, consistency, and standardization,

all of which cost time, energy, and often money. And it magnifi es:
frustration grows, people distrust and blame each other, work and
sometimes customers fall through the cracks. The costs of rework,

customer dissatisfaction, and poor quality begin to mount. It gets
your attention, and you begin losing sleep. Morale is at an all-time

low; conflict is at an all-time high. The best people are leaving. Peo-
ple are not thriving at work; your health and that of others begins

to suffer. Without shared principles, people do not hold together or
work collaboratively. It shows, customers feel it, and they go else-
where. As this scenario shows, lack of integrity creates a downward
spiral of performance. And it keeps going down until you decide to
turn it around.
Just as strategy must change to keep you current or ahead of indus-

try and societal trends, so too must principles change. They must be
reviewed and adapted whenever you change directions and strategies.
And they must be reinvented to stay in sync with the changing demo-
graphics, values, and countenance of your workforce.

To Thine Own Self Be True

Appreciative Leadership embodies self-love. Integrity is a relational
process requiring self-awareness and other awareness, self-care and
other care, self-satisfaction and other satisfaction. To know what is
important to yourself, and to be open and able to respond to what
is important to other people—staff, customers, government agencies,

even competitors, for example—is an essential Appreciative Leader-

ship practice. Your integrity—your wholeness—reflects your personal
preferences, your understanding of what other people need and want,