Below is an excerpt from Stephen Joel Trachtenberg’s letter
published in Letters from Leaders:
Personal Advice for Tomorrow’s Leaders from the World’s Most Influential People. Trachtenberg’s words eloquently address the importance
of integrity in business and the role of leadership.
I offer these thoughts as a parting gift along with my congratulations and best wishes to my graduating students. Exploring the theory and practice of successful leadership with you has been truly a privilege and a pleasure.
Business needs expansive leaders. But business also needs leaders who appear trustworthy because they are trustworthy—leaders who will keep their promises to their employees, stockholders, and customers. To put it simply—and as optimistically as I can—I would say that business needs leaders for whom integrity is built in or second nature. If you will, Integrity is not a product or the result of a course on the way to earning an MBA. It is not a veneer or public stance. To the contrary, it should be bred in the bone and be as important in one’s life as one’s public life; always on and functions, 24/7.
Leaders with such a deep-seated sense of integrity would, I
believe, profoundly and rather quickly help restore a great deal of the
public’s confidence in American business.
Good leaders would also choose to work with others who have the same
sense of integrity or, failing such perfect recruits, do everything they can to
instill the same belief in the irrevocable importance of integrity.
This last point is important. Part of leadership is the
ability to teach formally and by
example. Are there such young people
available today? Are they on the
campuses of America’s colleges and universities? And are they thinking of careers in business
and especially hoping for positions of leadership? Yes to all questions. Are there enough of them? I don’t know the answer to that. I think it has to be part of any university’s
mission to look at the character of its students and to encourage them to do
the right thing. In other words, to
increase the number of young men and women for whom integrity is the norm.
This is no easy job, but neither is teaching quantum physics
or neurosurgery, both of which we do extremely well. The questions “leaders” have raised are
difficult—and of course that is why they have raised them. But if difficulty were an insurmountable obstacle,
there would be no universities—and few if any men and women of any age would be
willing to take on the burdens of leadership, no matter how great the
rewards. But leading a life of integrity
and honesty is not an obstacle but an outlook.
And I am, finally, optimistic enough to believe that many young people
share that outlook and that many more, seeing their success, will emulate
them. Integrity, I would tell them, does
pay.
Stephen Joel
Trachtenberg
President Emeritus and Professor of Public Service,
The George Washington University
President Emeritus and Professor of Public Service,
The George Washington University
Letters from Leaders highlights excerpts from Letters from Leaders: Personal Advice for Tomorrow’s Leaders from the World’s Most Influential People, compiled by Henry O. Dormann, who says of leaders: “Some leave money, others leave inspiration. Many leave both. But all are anxious for young people to learn from their successes and even their failures.”
Published through LinkedIn 6/1/16
