During this week’s coaching session a discussion “Having integrity vs. being honest and telling the truth” was the topic.
The questions posed were:
“Can you be honest and not have integrity?”
“Can you have integrity and not be honest?”
Like many others, I usually think of honesty and integrity synonymously or having the same meaning.
Honesty and integrity are quite similar. In fact, integrity actually requires honesty.
The dictionary defines honesty as:
“truthfulness, sincerity or frankness; freedom of deceit.”
It defines integrity as:
“adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of character; honesty.”
So the difference is:
“Honesty simply means telling the truth, while integrity means doing the right thing whether it benefits you or not.”
I think we can be honest without having integrity but cannot have integrity without honesty.
We should try to live a life where having integrity and being honest is a core belief and a long term goal.
While not always successful, I think I’m getting better.
A few months ago I wrote an article “Learn to Sell Like a Kid”. In this article I discussed how we learn at an early age to do the things needed to get what we want. If it takes a smile, taking your Mom by the hand and showing her what you want or throwing a fit we learn how to sell to get what we want.
The thing that I didn’t mention was we also learn to say what we think others want to hear and not always tell the entire truth. As a teenager I remember (sometimes) only telling my parents what they wanted to hear. I would leave out the little things that I though they didn’t want to hear or things that might make them mad or would get me in trouble. I might have even told a “little white lie” just to make my story more believable.
So what does this have to do with sales integrity and honesty?
As account managers and sales professionals how many times do we do the same? We only want to tell our customers what they want to hear. Often times leaving out the things that might upset them. We are even tempted (willing) to add a “little white lie” to keep the customer from getting mad when we fear we might lose a sale or customer.
I think most of us would agree that when we begin “telling a little white lie” we are stepping across the line of honesty. Agreed?
By not telling the truth we cannot be considered honest.
But is not telling the whole truth or just telling our customers what they want to hear in fear of losing a sale any more honest? Probably not.
By not telling the entire truth or just telling our customers what we think they want to hear certainly fails the integrity definition of willingness to do the right thing whether it benefits us or not.
Honesty vs. Integrity
Honesty is doing the right thing in front of our Customers.
Integrity is doing the right thing when our Customers are not looking.
Conclusion
I’m convinced that without our “Customer’s trust” we cannot be successful sales professionals.
How can we ask to be trusted without being honest and more importantly having the integrity to always do the right thing whether it benefits us or not?
What do you think?
(Thinking back, I wonder just how much my parents really bought into my stories? Probably not as much as I thought. They most likely could see through the fluff.)
I’m embarrassed!
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Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
Now let’s get out there and over-deliver!
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