Page 16 - The Bible On Leadership

Honesty and Integrity 3

Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the other prophets, at great risk and with much
unpopularity, warned an entire people when they were departing from
their original precepts of truthfulness and morality. Jesus Christ brought
the message that ‘‘the truth shall set you free,’’ and he was willing to
die for the truths he embodied. And fortunately today we have been
blessed with a number of modern business leaders who realize that
without honesty and integrity, material ‘‘success’’ rings hollow indeed.

HONESTY (AND DISHONESTY):
ROLE MODELS

Fortunately for those of us who must work under modern leaders, in-
tegrity and honesty have not gone totally out of style. David Hunke,
advertising director for the Miami Herald of the Knight-Ridder chain,
notes: ‘‘We don’t keep secrets very well around here, which is our own
kind of joke. It is impossible to keep secrets, largely because of the
issue of integrity. You can’t imagine somebody at the very top of this
corporation telling you something that wasn’t true.’’ 1
Now we all know that, at least officially, journalists have a code of
ethics. But what about Internet executives? CEO Robert Knowling
of Covad Communications, an Internet provider, puts every employee
through a three-day vision and values process, this in a fast-moving
environment where time (measured in nanoseconds) is indeed money.
An anchor of this process is the concept of integrity. ‘‘That’s not an
earthshaking aspiration but we give it some bite,’’ notes Knowling.
‘‘We once had to dismiss a highly visible manager for a violation of our
values. But, as Jack Welch says, you must be public about the conse-
quences of breaking core values. I don’t want to wake up one day with
a profitable corporation that does not have a soul.’’ 2
Compare the integrity of Hunke and Knowling with that of mon-
archs Ahab and Jezebel, that ‘‘dirty duo’’ of the Bible whose lack of
integrity would rival modern-day ‘‘monarchs’’ Leona and Harry Helm-
sley. For the uninitiated, Leona Helmsley was the New York ‘‘hotel