How do you behave when no one is looking?
How do you behave when no one is looking?
Character is when you do the right thing even when no one is looking. Why do I bring it up? Well, in a recent business meeting the person next to me tried explaining to me how a business acquaintance of his sometimes just “forgets to tell us everything he knows”. This acquaintance apparently thought no one was looking or listening to him. I do not know about you, but in my book this kind of “forgetting” is form of a lie. No amount of creative word-smiting can fix or change it. It is toxic to your career and most of all your long term sustainable success in business.
In social and business life there is only one thing that determines how people feel about you: your integrity. Can you be trusted, or do you require full time attention what you are doing? You lose this trust once and it is very tough trying to regain it. You lose it in a split second and it may take months if not years to get it back.
What can you do about it? Think about how the post started. Look at what you do when no one is looking. Are you congruent with your values, goals, personal aspirations, and of course generally accepted virtues. Reflect, compare, and contrast how you are doing. Creating self-awareness is the easy part. Aligning your behavior 24/7/365 towards achieving congruence is the tough part, which also explains why people fall victim to taking short cuts. Can you afford this in the long run?
Ralf
