Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. A conversation designed to help leaders

go further faster. On today's podcast, we're going to discuss the vital role that integrity

plays in the life of a leader. And yeah, I think integrity is something we all know when

we see it, but how do you define it?

I think the best way to understand integrity is to think of a word picture. The term

integrity is used to describe the whole of a ship from all outward appearances. It looks

like the whole of this ship is sound, but then they test it and they find out it is what

it appears to be. And that's what it means to have integrity personally, that we are

who we appear to be. When someone has integrity, we'll find that there's alignment between

what they say they believe and what they do, who they claim to be, and who they really

are. Again, the closer you get, the better they look if they're a person of integrity.

I think we'd all agree that integrity is important, but a leader can accomplish quite

a bit without it, right?

Yes. And that's one of the reasons this is so important. And one of the reasons this

issue is so confusing, I think, especially for young leaders. When we start off in leadership,

when we look at leaders who've accomplished a great deal, we see the highlight reels.

We see the mountain top experiences. We read the articles about their success. We see

the interviews on television. And oftentimes all of that is simply about accomplishment.

And there's really no talk of integrity. So number one, we don't hear much about it.

And secondly, the truth is, in some cases, a person went further faster because they lacked

integrity. And again, if they're successful financially, if they're successful in terms

of building a big organization, not necessarily a great organization, it's easy to think, especially

...