How to integrate integrity into your company culture

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by Ron Johnson

 

According to a recent study conducted by the global consulting firm, EY, 97% of respondents reported that it is important for companies to act with integrity. Many companies tout integrity as a core principle of their organizations in an attempt to reassure customers, employees, and the wider public that their organization “plays by the rules.” By some estimates, integrity is ranked as one of the most cited corporate core values, with over 80% of companies listing integrity as a core value.

But simply including integrity on your list of core values and mounting that list on a plaque on a wall (as many companies do) won’t positively influence your culture unless your core values are fully embraced and lived by employees each and every day. After all, Enron was once the darling of corporate America and a supposedly stellar business success story—until news broke that Enron had engaged in what would turn out to be one of the biggest accounting scandals in U.S. history.

Here’s why listing “integrity” as a core value and getting employees to live with integrity in the workplace can pose a challenge—even for companies with the best of intentions.

A few years ago, the CEO and chairperson of a large financial institution were caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, engaged in what could be described, at best, as questionable behavior. When the media asked the chairperson if what she and the CEO had done was aligned with the company’s core value of integrity, the chairperson replied, “Integrity means different things to different people.”

The media and the public were outraged by the response. But, y’know what? The chairperson was right! Integrity does mean different things to different people when it comes to business practices.

Here are three steps to take if you want to build a company where everyone understands exactly what integrity means to the organization and exactly how to demonstrate integrity in the workplace.

1. Define what integrity means for your company

An organization’s perspective on the topic of integrity most often comes from the leadership of that organization, and their various versions of integrity are often reflected in corporate policies.

For instance, ice cream chain Ben and Jerry’s version of integrity is reflected in their policy to only use fair trade–certified ingredients, ensuring that farmers along their supply chain are paid a fair price for their products. Chipmakers like Intel demonstrate their version of integrity by avoiding using “conflict minerals” that are mined under conditions that could be considered to be abuses of human rights. The Body Shop demonstrates its version of integrity by committing to never testing its products on animals.

Some companies whose very business models, products, services, or waste may be viewed by others as causing harm to the communities in which they operate try to demonstrate integrity by engaging in acts of restitution. For instance, timber company Hampton Lumber plants three trees for every tree it harvests.

Outdoor clothing company Patagonia, known not only for the quality of its products, but also for its efforts to minimize damage to the environment, donates 1% of revenue to environmental groups. (Despite these actions, some critics insist that the acts of restitution pale in comparison to the destruction caused by the companies and even accuse these companies of “greenwashing”—a deceptive practice designed to paint organizations as being more environmentally conscious than they are.)

But, demonstrating “boardroom integrity” through corporate policies isn’t enough to qualify a company as being one that acts with integrity. Companies also need to demonstrate integrity at the grassroots level. It makes little sense to list “integrity” as a company core value unless that commitment to integrity permeates every corner of the organization on an individual, team or departmental level.

2. Clarify what integrity means for your employees

So, since integrity may mean different things to different people, how can a company’s employees truly commit to integrity as a core value?  There’s no easy answer to that question, but one way to stay within the boundaries of ethical behavior is to use “the social media test” where you instruct your employees to ask themselves, “would I be comfortable if this behavior, action, or decision were to be reported on social media (or in the newspaper) for everyone to see?” If the answer is “no” to this litmus test, then deep down in their hearts, they probably recognize that whatever they are considering probably isn’t aligned with the principle of integrity.

Another way to clarify to your employees how to act with integrity in the workplace is to articulate clear behavioral expectations expressed not in abstract concepts but in clear, crisp, and concise language, using what I refer to as the “even if” principle to make it crystal clear that your organization values integrity over the potential short-term benefits of acting unethically. For instance, members of your organization’s sales department might be told: “Integrity means never misrepresenting a product to close a deal, even if it means losing a sale.”

Consultants that provide services on an hourly rate to clients might be instructed to never overestimate or bill clients for time not spent on the account—even if that means not hitting monthly billing targets. Quality control managers at a company that manufacture parts may be told in no uncertain terms to never ship faulty products—even if a customer might never notice the defects.

3. Take Accountability Seriously

Next, it’s important to hold employees (especially leadership) accountable for these standards.

One way to hold people accountable is through the use of independent oversight—such as an empowered board of directors, ethics committees, or external auditors. To be effective, these bodies must have the authority to investigate ethical concerns, insist on transparency, reward employees for acting with integrity, and apply consequences to those who violate their company’s standards for acting with integrity. Most importantly, these bodies must not be influenced by internal politics and should not be able to be fired on the whims of the leadership team who they are holding accountable. Ideally, these oversight bodies should be proactive, with audits that identify potential conflicts early enough to prevent ethical mischief.

Another way to hold leaders accountable is to create a culture where employees at all levels feel safe reporting ethical concerns without fear of reprisal. Anonymous reporting and whistleblowing channels can help identify problems that leadership might otherwise miss—or worse, knowingly condone.

The desire to operate a company that acts with integrity is a noble one—but, as we have seen, one that is fraught with challenges—particularly because acting with integrity means different things to different people. No wonder research shows that just 23% of U.S. employees strongly agree that they can apply their organization’s values to their work every day!

If you want your organization to be one in which employees can apply integrity to their work every day, follow the three steps above. Define what living with integrity means for your organization, drill down to the employee level and remove any ambiguity about how employees can live with integrity, and hold everyone in your organization (especially the leadership team) accountable for living with integrity. Once you’ve done this, you will be in a much better position to lead with integrity, maintain your reputation in the marketplace, and navigate complex ethical challenges.

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com

How great leaders step into new roles

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BY Art Markman

 

 

Across all sectors of the economy, there is a lot of churn in leadership right now going all the way to the top. The C-suite and its equivalent in many organizations has become a merry-go-round. When a new leader is hired into a key role, they must quickly get adapted to how things work in order to make positive changes while breaking as few things as possible.

Great leaders have strategies to enable them to engage their new team quickly and institute change effectively. Here are four strategies that are critical.

1. Meet your team

In a leadership role, you are likely to have many teams in your portfolio. In order to do anything successfully, you need to know who you have working for you, how their teams function, and which groups can be relied on to carry out their work.

No matter how much intel you get from others before starting the role, there is no substitute for sitting down with the teams and getting to know them. This can take a while, so it may seem like a waste of time. But, talking strategically and tactically with the leaders who work for you can give you a sense of their capacity to understand, collaborate, and implement your vision moving forward.

High-level leaders can never understand every detail of what every team is doing, of course. But, it is important for leaders to know the portfolios of the people who report to them, the strengths and weaknesses of those portfolios, and the pros and cons to the structure of the organization as it is.

2. Listen first

Too often, leaders come in wanting to prove that they deserve to be in their role. So, they start by issuing orders. The assumption is that good leadership involves information flowing from the leader down to the team.

Great leadership is collaborative. A leader must understand the situation in the organization, where the problems are, and what goals are just about ready to be achieved. That can only be done by asking good questions and listening to the answers.

Listening also helps to develop trust. People are more apt to want to follow your strategic recommendations when they are tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of their team. When the teams reporting to you feel understood, they are much more likely to engage and to adopt your goals as their own. Ultimately, great leaders get teams to work with them and not just for them.

3. Find a quick win

Much of high-level leadership involves significant strategic plans that can take quarters or even years to implement fully. In order to get teams to follow you on that longer journey, it is valuable to demonstrate that you can achieve a goal.

Through the conversations you have and the listening you have done to understand your teams, find a short-term goal that would lead to a meaningful step toward one of the major strategic pillars you would like to pursue. Then, engage with the teams that can help to achieve that goal and work with them to help make it happen. Provide the resources and guidance to move the project forward.

The key for these quick wins to succeed is to use your growing knowledge of the organization to merge your strategic vision with the tactical strengths of your teams. That way, the success of the venture feels like something that could not have been done prior to your engagement with the team. That success helps to provide additional trust that longer-term projects will also succeed.

4. Transitions are better than purges

Of course, no organization is perfect, and it is often necessary to move people and positions around. There may be great people playing the wrong roles. And sometimes, there are people on the team who are not contributing enough to warrant keeping around.

There is often an urge to cut people immediately to make a clean break and move forward. And when a team is bloated and has a lot of redundancy, that is often necessary.

But, the management and leadership members of the team are also are likely to have a lot of institutional knowledge that will help you to better understand how to achieve your aims. That is where slowing things down can be helpful.

After all, the new people you put in place may be aligned with your vision for the future, but they may not know which processes in the organization were put in place to keep other demons at bay. Creating an overlapping period of transition can help new people to get up to speed on how to be effective in their new roles while also providing a humane exit ramp to those who will be moving on.

 

Source: Fast Company

Why great leaders encourage people to do a career pivot

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by Tad Phelps

 

Early in my career, a boss encouraged me to leave a stable operations role for a position in sales. They noticed my natural persuasiveness in communication and approach to problems, skills they believed could translate into success in a completely different discipline.

It felt like a gamble. I was trading a steady income for compensation directly tied to performance and sales volume. And, I would be venturing into a role where I had no prior experience. But I ultimately took the leap, and that shift changed the entire trajectory of my career.

That experience taught me to embrace discomfort and trust in my capacity to grow. It also revealed something fundamental about sales: success doesn’t come from a single mold. Coming from an operations background, I spoke the language of operators, and that authenticity gave me instant credibility with the very people I was selling to.

That experience didn’t just redefine my career path; it reshaped how I lead. Today, I actively look for opportunities to help others pivot into roles they never would have considered on their own. With the right encouragement and adequate support, people can thrive in roles in which they have no prior experience.

People want growth, but rarely make the first move 

It’s tempting to keep strong performers exactly where they are. When someone excels in a specific function, moving them can feel like a loss, especially when resources are tight and hiring is competitive. But this mindset is shortsighted. Holding people in a specific track because they are performing well may feel efficient in the short term, but it can stagnate both the individual and the organization.

One of the most effective ways to help people reach their full potential is to create pathways to grow outside their current functions. This isn’t simply a leadership philosophy; it’s reflective of employee feedback. Overall, 42% of workers are interested in upskilling or looking for upskilling opportunities, according to a McKinsey report. Continue reading →

Change is a leadership test—here’s how to pass it

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by Julie Turpin

 

Five actions you can take to adopt change and lead your team through it.

 

The American Psychological Association’s 2025 Work in America report found that 89% of U.S. workers experienced organizational change in the past year, and more than half said it had a negative impact on their mental health.

That’s a staggering figure, but not a surprising one. Change is no longer an episodic disruption in today’s workplace. It’s the environment we operate in day in and day out. Mergers, restructures, AI adoption, hybrid work shifts, and evolving economic pressures have made change a constant variable.

These are the real tests of leadership—not during calm, but in times of motion. It’s no longer enough for leaders to respond to change. They must know how to lead from within it.

While no two change events are identical, the leaders who consistently pass the test tend to lean on the same core capacities. These aren’t personality traits or fixed skills. They’re practiced, intentional ways of showing up, especially when the path forward isn’t yet visible.

1.  Communicate with transparency and consistency

When the future feels uncertain, people look for signals of stability. As leaders, we often feel pressure to wait until we have perfect information before we speak. But in times of change, silence breeds speculation, and speculation fuels anxiety. Stability doesn’t come from having all the answers, but a steady voice—even when that voice says, “We don’t know yet, but here’s what we’re doing to find out.”

In times of change, the most trusted leaders aren’t the ones with the most polished messaging. People trust those who consistently show up, share updates regularly, and speak plainly about what is changing and why.

Leadership action: Speak with clarity, share what you know (and what you don’t), and repeat your message more than once. In times of change, repetition becomes reassurance.

It’s natural to want to shield people from the messiness of change, but the further people feel from what’s happening, the more threatened they become. One of the most powerful things a leader can do is stay close to the change and bring others with them.

That doesn’t mean having all the answers. You want to make the process visible. Let your teams into the “why.” Involve them in the “how.” Invite them to see the moving pieces rather than simply react to the final result. This process fosters understanding, engagement, and ultimately, shared ownership.

Leadership action: Don’t wait to bring people in. Identify one or more decision-making processes or initiatives you can open to the team. This could be a planning session, sharing early-stage thinking, or asking for feedback on a developing plan.

3. Stay grounded

In periods of rapid change, emotions can run high—not just for your team but also for you as a leader. Uncertainty can trigger fear, doubt, and overfunctioning. That’s why leaders need to anchor themselves before they can stabilize others.

Grounding is finding a way to return to center in the middle of the chaos. For some, that’s a routine. For others, it’s a mentor or a guiding principle that restores focus. Being grounded also means noticing when you’re reacting instead of reflecting. Self-awareness is the first signal. If you’re feeling activated or scattered, take a moment to reset and re-engage with intention.

Leadership action: Write down one stabilizing practice you can turn to: a routine, reflection point, or person you trust. Use it regularly, especially before high-stakes conversations or decisions.

4. Lead with empathy

Change doesn’t land the same way for everyone. A merger might spark an opportunity for one teammate and fear for another. A tech rollout could excite some and overwhelm others. The truth is, you won’t know how change is impacting someone unless you ask and listen. Empathy becomes a leadership superpower. Leading with empathy builds psychological safety, surfaces unseen risks early, and reinforces trust.

Leadership action: Schedule intentional check-ins. Ask open-ended questions like, “What’s been challenging about this transition?” or “What would help you feel more supported right now?” Then listen.

5. Model a learning mindset

No change initiative goes exactly to plan. Priorities shift. Assumptions get tested. People stumble. It’s the nature of transformation. What distinguishes strong leaders in these moments isn’t flawless execution, but a willingness to learn in real time. A learning mindset keeps you adaptive, grounded, and humble. It also gives your team permission to be the same: to experiment, speak up, and evolve together.

Leadership action: Be open about your own learning. When things don’t go as expected, share what shifted, what you’ve learned, and how you’re adjusting. Invite your team to do the same.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Change is the truest test of leadership. The leaders who pass the test are those who recognize that in times of uncertainty, people don’t need perfection. They need presence—a leader who listens, steadies, and helps them take the next step forward. Julie Turpin is the chief people officer for Brown & Brown, Inc.

Source: Fast Company

The only way to future-proof your career? Be more than one thing

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Story by Kudzi Chikumbu

A friend once asked me how I could be a marketing executive, a fragrance influencer with over 400,000 followers, and a paid public speaker all at once. “Don’t those things live in different worlds?” she asked. My answer was simple: It’s the only way to survive.

In today’s career landscape, having just one title, one path, or one platform isn’t safe—it’s risky. We have all heard the clarion call about AI rapidly transforming the workforce. It’s no longer just about skill; it’s about diversifying and leaning into your identity as your moat. What we’re living through is a strategic career inflection point—a moment where the rules of the game change so dramatically that the old playbook becomes obsolete.

When I was earning my MBA at Stanford a decade ago, one of my favorite classes was called Insight to Outcome taught by Thomas S. Wurster. To this day I think about the concept of strategic dissonance, as outlined by Michael Tushman, Charles O’Reilly, and Andy Grove in their legendary paper from 30 years ago, which I read as part of the class. This wisdom from 1996 is still applicable today. In a business context, strategic dissonance is what happens when a company’s actions no longer reflect the changing external environment—even if they keep doing what once worked. When applied to careers, I think of it as career dissonance: when what we’re doing day-to-day doesn’t get us to the life we actually want because the rules have changed.

And right now, AI is the change that is accelerating that dissonance.

People are talking about AI replacing jobs and we need to focus on what to do next in a strategic way. According to McKinsey, nearly 12 million U.S. workers may need to change occupations by 2030 due to AI and automation. That’s not hypothetical. That’s an inflection point.

What to do

So how do we not crumble? We need to understand inflection points. In class at Stanford I remember learning that at every strategic inflection point, three things happen:

1. The degree of difficulty of evolving increases. Getting to your new goal gets harder. The path becomes steeper.

2. Only a few strategic actions move the needle. Not everything will work. You have to make sharper bets. Focus on what matters.

3. Resources are even more constrained. You need to think about more efficient ways to use your time and energy. If you keep doing everything the way you used to, you’ll burn out.

Yes, these challenges feel uncomfortable. But they’re also invitations—to focus, experiment, and grow. So what do you do in this moment of massive shift in the workplace? These are the three things I’ve found that worked for me and people I admire to address the challenges brought on by the advent of this specific career inflection point.

1. Use the tools to become more of yourself

Instead of fearing AI, leverage it to ease the degree of difficulty of building your “portfolio” career. This way you can address the first challenges of strategic inflection points. When LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude dropped, I didn’t use them to replace my voice—I used them to refine it. I used AI to launch my podcast (Not Just One Thing), structure my content, and sharpen my public speaking. People say AI tools kill creativity. In my case, these tools didn’t diminish me. They revealed more of me.

2. Build your calendar like it’s your portfolio and buy back your time

Each strategic inflection point forces you to get sharper about where your energy goes. And the good news is, constraint breeds clarity. Only a few things are going to move you forward. People get stuck trying to master prompt engineering by never starting. You are better off testing, measuring, and iterating. You don’t need to master every prompt—just experiment out loud. That’s how you find the next version of you. When you find out what’s working, focus more on that. This helps you address the second and third challenges of strategic inflection points.

You will no longer need to waste all your energy on low-impact actions. Use AI to automate your logistics. Reclaim that hour to work on your side project. Book time to journal, plan, or build a content system. According to a RescueTime study, the average knowledge worker spends just 2 hours and 48 minutes per day on productive tasks. That means you’re not just fighting burnout—you’re fighting wasted energy.

In my case, I used tools to streamline my work and double down on my fragrance content. I tested ideas, launched small, and iterated fast. You can build a micro business, pitch yourself for speaking, or start developing a product—all with the tools already at your fingertips.

3. Make your story your competitive advantage

One of the most powerful ideas from the strategic dissonance paper was that most companies keep expanding their existing competencies instead of evolving with the market. The same is true in our careers. We double down on what we’ve already done, instead of asking what will matter next. What’s the best way to do this? What’s your everlasting competitive advantage? Your real edge in this new world isn’t technical. It’s personal. Your personal story.

I was born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa. I started out in accounting, but I always knew I wanted to be a creator. I made YouTube videos. Then pivoted into tech. I joined musical.ly, which became TikTok, and spent years helping creators find their voice. I was using my own passion of wanting to be a creator and my analytical skills from my time as an accountant. This use of my authentic story allows me to stand out and build a career. People call me multi-hyphenate. I just think of it as an integrated portfolio career.

In a world built for sameness, difference is your power. I learned that from another class at Stanford that was taught by Allison Kluger and Tyra Banks. Your background is your moat. It’s the thing that no prompt can generate, and no algorithm can replace.

In this new world, your hybrid path isn’t a hurdle, it’s your blueprint to success. We are not at the end of work as many people fear. We’re at the beginning of becoming. As Maya Watson said on an episode of my podcast, Not Just One Thing: “It’s not about what you do. It’s about who you’re becoming.” That’s the work. She’s right. And you’re going to need more than one title to get there. Being multi-hyphenate isn’t indulgent—it’s how you stay employed, inspired, and in motion.

The people who will thrive are the ones who use the tools, manage their time like a portfolio, and tell the truth about who they really are. That’s how we build careers that are dynamic, fulfilling, and truly human.

This post originally appeared at fastcompany.com