Earlier this week, I talked about community values as the promises you and the members of your community make to one another about how we will act and interact with one another as you go about your daily lives.
Now let us move on to consider whether you are indeed living with integrity in your community as you go about your daily life and activities.
Integrity is, first and foremost, living from the core. It is behaving, speaking and acting in ways that are consistent with the guiding principles and values that you commit to — the guiding principles and values that help you grow in credibility. In principle, it should make little difference what community you find yourself in.
Your ability to live with integrity in your community is easier when the values of your community align with your own — when the promises that the members of the community make to one another about how they will act and interact agree with the promises you make to yourself about how you will behave, speak and act.
For instance, one of the values of my community of professional leadership trainers is that we appreciate and look out for one another. I consider that this aligns with my personal values of honor other. The wording is different, to be sure, but as I think about the spirit that underlies these two values, I am comfortable with saying that the behaviors and actions that originate from my core around honor others are consistent with my professional community’s shared value that we appreciate and look out for one another.
Now to you. Given the values of your chosen community, let’s look to where you are in agreement — that is, with which values it is easy for you to live with integrity, to live from your core?
Excerpted from The Citizen Leader