#davesdailychallenge (156): Questioning Integrity. When is the right time to question the integrity of someone on your team? The short answer is that there should never be a question before the question is posed. I write about this today because in the last few months I’ve seen multiple occurrences of leaders questioning the integrity of people on their team and not once was it correct or even close to being warranted. Let me be clear on what I mean by this. The vast majority of us hold our integrity to be an important part of our personal brand. We want people to trust us and the vast majority of us believe ourselves worthy of that trust. Some people place their integrity near, or at, the highest level of importance in their lives. Integrity, to these people, is not something to be sacrificed or given up. It is a north star that holds them to their path. You can imagine, therefore, that questioning anyone’s integrity, nonetheless those in the latter group, should be an extremely rare thing. 

Two of the instances that I referenced earlier occurred from the same person. A leader questioning the integrity of two separate people on their team. What’s worse is that this leader did it with other people in the room on both occasions. What this leader, who is still young and relatively inexperienced, doesn’t yet understand is that the result of questioning someone’s integrity is essentially the same regardless of whether or not the leader is right. The result is that the relationship is over. If the leader is right and the team member has had a major breach in integrity then it’s time for that person to go. Even worse, if the leader is wrong then that team member, and this is doubly so if they are a high-performer, will no longer trust the leader and that bond that is so important for success is gone or at the very least severely eroded. What makes this even worse is that it can take a great deal of time for that team member to leave and in that time they are most likely doing far less than their best and eroding the morale and trust of others on the team. Questioning integrity can, at rare times, be necessary but it can be a poison to success when done poorly.