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WITI CAREERS
States of Integrity
David Creelman - What do you mean when you talk about states of integrity? Barbara Annis - States of integrity is a leadership model. When I speak about integrity I'm not talking about following the rules but more about being whole, entire and complete. It is not a moral definition but a definition of a state of wholeness. For example, a car that has lost a wheel has lost integrity and is incapable of functioning effectively. DC - That sounds a bit woolly. BA - I'll take you through the model to clarify the concepts but ofcourse the business issue is, what does it do? What matters is that by moving up to higher states of integrity you can increase productivity and attract and retain the best people because you've created a culture where people feel empowered. Some companies call this a climate of inclusiveness. DC - With the current concern about corporate scandals, integrity is an issue people care about in and of itself. However, you seem to be linking it to a couple of other desirable outcomes, retaining talent and meeting your diversity (inclusiveness) goals. BA - These things are all interconnected. That's what is so interesting. DC - Take me through the model. BA - As you see in the diagram the lowest level is one of conformity. This is a state where people just fit in, they quit and stay. It's a "Fit In" culture and if you have that you will also have a lot of disloyalty and covering up. DC - That has been a traditional norm in big companies. Certainly, from the 1950s through the 1980s many employers demanded conformity in how you dressed and how you behaved, even what clubs you joined. BA - The old sayings, "Command and Control", "Getting your Ducks in Order", "Great Minds Think Alike" no longer serve us. The old traditional blue suit, we all dress alike, we all talk alike is no longer useful. However, our cultural norms are still based on passed precedence and still force us to fit in and that creates a problem of conformity. I was speaking to an executive the other night and he said that at his organization, they pretend to be in conformity but really are in opposition. People are looking round and thinking things are being done wrong here but not going public with that concern. You often find this stage as the result of a merger or acquisition. The acquired employees feel they are losing their own authenticity, their own culture, their own sense of brand and pride. They feel forced into conforming to this bigger culture while inside they are in opposition. So this executive explained that people pretend to agree but when they are chatting in the hallway or go out for a beer, they are totally in opposition. As you know this has a huge impact on morale. No one's taking a stand and being vocal about the problem, it's all whining and gossiping. DC - Whining, gossiping and whispering in the corridors are very common. In fact, I suspect this is probably the most common stage of integrity. BA - What I find so fascinating is that people don't seem to know how corrosive that is. They don't know how it affects everyone. The best way I can explain the feeling at a firm where people are in opposition is to imagine you get up in the morning and you feel great. Then you go to work and all of a sudden you don't feel so good anymore. You go through your e-mail, talk to a few people and all of sudden you feel burdened. DC - Your model positions "success" as the level above opposition. What does "success" mean as a stage of integrity. BA - Success is acknowledging the way things are and a full and frank discussion of what's so without blame. Just telling the truth, clearing the ground with the intention of being complete, which makes the next step possible. Essential to success is making it safe for people to talk, enrollment of all people in the solution. Including them in something they already have a stake in but don't feel part of. All of this stems from the feeling of exclusion people have at work, which costs the company the valuable creativity available in their employees. To get beyond this, you go to stage four which is to declare a breakdown. DC - Declaring a breakdown doesn't sound like progress. BA - Declaring it a breakdown is the first step towards dealing with the issue. I told this executive that while you might think you pretend to be in conformity and inside are in opposition, but really, if you look at it, you are in breakdown. You have executives on stress leave, morale is low and everyone is talking about how the days when people felt like a team are gone. I would call that a breakdown. He acknowledged my point but said nobody would have the guts to declare a breakdown. DC - Standing up and saying "this company is broken" is usually considered a career limiting move. BA - That's the common perception but it's not true. More people get fired who are in conformity than those who stand up and say, let's honestly work to make things better. You really need to shift your mindset away from fear and say this is the time when you need to up the ante on your values. When people are fearful and morale is low you need to take a powerful authentic stand. DC - If we do acknowledge a breakdown where does it lead us? BA - Breakdown is an incredible turning point for companies. I've seen it many, many times. Acknowledging breakdown sounds so bad and so negative that people will avoid it at all costs. However, it's the stage you need to go through to achieve success. Once you declare a breakdown, you first have to move away from the blame game to taking full and total accountability for the current state. DC - I can imagine it being as simple as saying, "I don't have the solutions and I don't want to point fingers but I want to put up a red flag because we can all see we're off course." BA - Yes, it could be as simple as that. You don't have to come in with a case study on it. People think they need to find all this evidence; they spend too much time navel gazing saying let's go find what the problem is and are going backwards rather than forwards. What I mean by moving to success has to do with looking towards the future and inventing something brand new. You need to do this in a way that honors what you have done. In most future vision exercises, they declare that the past was wrong. You can be much more positive and honor the past while inventing a better future. DC - Let's talk about how you do that. BA - You work with the team to move out of CYA politically correct talk to an authentic conversation. You work to first of all get clarity of intentions. Forget talking about vision; people are tired of trying, hearing about vision, mission, and values. Let's shift mindset and try to get to the heart of the matter. Everybody who has ever joined an organization had some personal idea what he or she wanted to contribute. It's not money that's the primary motivator, it's pride in what you do. That's what you want to uncover and tap into. DC - What's the next step after people start to have the authentic conversations about where they want the company to go? BA - The last level in the stages of integrity is breakthrough. That's where you do something unprecedented, something that you really believe in. I did this for an insurance company that had been acquired and their breakthough was deciding to get in touch with their clients about how being acquired would affect them. Some of the clients came from families that had been with the insurer for over 140 years. That customer relation was something special, something they were proud of and didn't want to lose. Recognizing the breakdown caused by being acquired helped them move to the stage where they took really positive action. DC - What kind of tools do you use to help people with this process? BA - One of the things I work with are linguistic tools, what Fernando Flores calls speech acts. That raises your level of clarity and thinking, and allows you to frame the conversation in such a way that you get better results. DC - Most people won't be familiar with speech act theory but they will recognize that language is important. BA - We know language is important, but in the heat of the moment we tend to forget. If you go into companies that are in the conformity stage you'll notice the sameness of the language, the reliance on acronyms. As people get in touch with their authentic purpose their language changes. You start talking in terms of commitments not just activities. Everything is either stalled or initiated by language. DC - Do you have any final ideas you'd like to share? BA - Remember the experience of work the first week you started? Now imagine if you could experience that same excitement and commitment now. Imagine if a critical mass of people could get together in a room for a couple of hours and generate that feeling for themselves. That is what I see time and time again. And this is needed more today than anytime in my corporate business life because we're so distressed. We need to re-invent ourselves.
This interview was originally published by HR.com and is reprinted here with permission.
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Integrity is a worthy end in itself but it also plays a role in such core HR outcomes as retention, inclusiveness and productivity. David Creelman spoke to Ms. Annis about her model on the five states of integrity.