#LeadershipTuesdays: Speaking Truthfully Matters!…Adlai Stevenson

“Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse.”

—Adlai Stevenson

The Worst Disease...Bono

“The worst disease in the world today is corruption. And there is a cure: transparency.”


—Bono

The Right Way To Do The Right Thing...George Bernanos

“The first sign of corruption in a society that is still alive is that the end justifies the means.”

—George Bernanos

#LeadershipTuesdays: Leading by Example...H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.”

—H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Every other Tuesday, womenatliberty.com provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays, check
us out on Twitter: @LeadershipTues.

Stick With Truth And Love...George Orwell

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”

—George Orwell

The Most Unpleasant Truth...Theodore Roosevelt

“In the long run, the most unpleasant truth is a safer companion than a pleasant falsehood.”

—Theodore Roosevelt 

So You Really Want To Help People?...Thomas Sowell

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

—Thomas Sowell

#LeadershipTuesday: Speak Truth...Ursula K. Le Guin

“One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.” 

—Ursula K. Le Guin, Author, “The Left Hand of Darkness”

Every other Tuesday, womenatliberty.com provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. For more information on Leadership Tuesdays, check us out on Twitter: @LeadershipTues. Happy New Year!

#LeadershipTuesdays: Want To Be A Great Leader?

Great leaders have integrity.

Full stop period. They are not perfect, but they are motivated by core beliefs and values that are based on truth. No matter what you see and hear in the press, most people want leaders who possess and consistently act with integrity.

Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage, and strengthen women leaders. Today's Leadership Tuesdays' post talks about the importance of leaders modeling integrity within the organization. 

In order to have integrity in your organization, you as a leader must communicate your expectations, demonstrate your values, and correct behavior that is inconsistent with a comitment to integrity. Anything less leaves the door open for behavior that will eventually manifest itself in acts that are detrimental to others and the organization.

Integrity has the opposite effect. Integrity builds trust. It builds trust and currency within and outside of the organization. People are willing to be patient in difficult times when you have built trust with them through your consistent commitment to them and truth-telling.

Check out today's resource on building trust and maintaining integrity within your organization:

"Trust and Integrity – The Core of Leadership" by Karen Colligan 

For more information on Leadership Tuesdays, click here. 

by Nona O., Founder, womenatliberty.com

#Leadership Tuesdays: Leading In A Crisis

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."

--Abraham Lincoln

To effectively lead people in a crisis, you must have the trust of the people you lead. How do you gain their trust? You gain their trust by telling them the truth about the situation and the path forward. Telling the truth builds trust, lying destroys trust. Give them the facts, don't give them spin. People know integrity when they see it.

Secondly, they must believe that you care about them and their wellbeing. Listen to them. Talk to them, not at or down to them. Walk with them. Empathize with them.

Also, please know that your track record matters. If you have been tone deaf in the past, or if you have been callous or untrustworthy, people are not going to trust you. They're going to trust your actions.

As crisis manager and lawyer Judy Smith said, "There's always an opportunity with crisis. Just as it forces an individual to look inside himself, it forces [an organization] to reexamine its policies and practices." A crisis is not the end of the world. It can be the beginning of something much better than what was before if leaders meet the challenge with integrity and a commitment to change.

If we look at our current national crisis, the #BlackLivesMatter protesters are saying what we have, the policies, systemic racism, and callousness regarding black and minority lives when it comes to police accountability, is not working. Do you hear them? Don't be tone deaf.

We must take this opportunity to build something better now. But it must start with the truth. What we have is not working for all. Only then can we move to build something better that includes accountability, true equality and opportunities for all.

On Tuesdays, womenatliberty.com provides #LeadershipTuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. Follow #LeadershipTuesdays on Twitter at @LeadershipTues to see daily posts with resources that help you develop and strengthen your leadership skills.

#LeadershipTuesdays: A Leader With Integrity

"There are some things that money can’t buy… like manners, morals and integrity."

--Unknown

On Tuesdays, womenatliberty.com presents #LeadershipTuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. There are some qualities that are integral to a person who desires to be an impactful leader. One of those characteristics is integrity. People must be able to trust that there is consistency between the words you speak and your actions. This in fact builds trust which is the foundation of any lasting relationship between a leader and those he or she leads.

Secondly, people want their leaders to speak truth. Truth-telling is an external demonstration of an internal moral code. It signals that your words can be trusted.

Lastly, people also want you to care about how your decisions affect them. We saw so many examples of this during the government shutdown. With more than 800,000 federal employees going more than 30 days without a paycheck and some having to still go into work because they were deemed essential, hundreds demonstrated in the U.S. Senate's Hart Office building during the week of January 21st, the 33rd day of the shutdown. For 33 minutes they stood in silence, many held signs and messages written on paper plates saying "federal workers are going hungry."

Image: @KellyO, Twitter, Kelly O'Donnell, NBC News 

The negative impact of the government shutdown extended beyond just the furloughed workers to other contractors and businesses who depend on revenue from the federaI government. Federal contractors were also sent home without pay and will not receive back pay when the government re-opens.

Last week, discontent was exacerbated when it was reported that U.S. Secretary of Commerce, billionaire Wilbur Ross, who leads more than 46K government employees with an estimated 86% furloughed, stated that federal employees should go to the bank and take out a loan to pay their mortgages, rent and food expenses because they were guaranteed to receive back pay. His comments were largely viewed as out of touch.

View video: https://wapo.st/2CSpWr0 washingtonpost.com

There is no getting around it. People want their leaders to tell the truth, act with integrity and understand how their decisions affect people in the organization. For more information on how essential integrity is to a leader, read "Leadership character: The role of integrity" by Colonel  Eric Kail.

Follow #LeadershipTuesdays on Twitter @LeadershipTues to see daily posts with resources that help you develop and strengthen your leadership skills.

Sources:
1. Federal workers protest at Senate office building by Michael Burke, TheHill.com, 1/24/19
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/federal-workers-protest-at-senate-office-building/ar-BBSE9v5
2. For federal contractors, the shutdown isn’t quite over by Ian Kullgreen, Politico.com, 1/28/19
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/28/federal-contractors-shutdown-not-over-1125034

Character...J.C. Watts

"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught."

-- J. C. Watts

May Our Actions Be Based On Truth...Kami Garcia

“We don't get to chose what is true. We only get to choose what we do about it.” 

― Kami Garcia, Beautiful Darkness

Us vs. Them

If you do the same things that they do, you are just like them. The end does not justify the means. You are just like them.

Live Your Truth...Steve Maraboli

Live your truth. Express your love. Share your enthusiasm. Take action towards your dreams. Walk your talk. Dance and sing to your music. Embrace your blessings. Make today worth remembering.

--Steve Maraboli, "Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience"

Leadership Tuesdays: Building Trust...Joel Peterson

But building an enduring trust is rooted in facts, in truth-telling, in delivering on promises. Though trust is earned a conversation or transaction at a time, its durability flows from a lifetime of promises kept. In a fast-food-for-thought culture of instant gratification, many don’t recognize that real trust is derivative of intentionality, discipline, and effort – saying what you intend to do and working hard to do what you say.*

--Joel Peterson, Author of The 10 Laws of Trust, Robert Joss Professor of Management at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Chairman of Jetblue Airways.

*Quote from "The Real Reasons Clinton and Trump Lost America’s Trust" by 

Joel Peterson


Every other Tuesday, WOMEN AT LIBERTY provides Leadership Tuesdays, a platform for a variety of voices and resources to develop, encourage and strengthen women leaders. 

Today's quote is from a Fortune magazine article talking about Americans lack of trust in our current presidential candidates. Current polls state that Americans' trust in our political system is at an all time low.(See Pew Research article here.) 

As stated in the quote above, trust is the currency that enables us to do business with each other, build safe communities, establish meaningful relationships, and provide nurturing and supportive environments for ourselves and our families. At the root of trust is truth-telling and commitments based on facts. Trust that took years to build can be destroyed in a moment of deceit and betrayal. Conducting oneself in a way that builds and sustains trust is essential and the currency for success in life and business.  

For more information on Leadership Tuesdays and WOMEN AT LIBERTY, click here.

--Nona O.

Bringing About Change...@vnona

We must exhibit the behaviors we desire to see in others. That's the responsibility of being an adult and a #leader. This will bring about the  #change we seek.

--Nona O.

Measuring Our Actions Against What We Say We Believe...@vnona

Integrity, honesty, ethics... These principles are as timeless and universal as the Biblical Ten Commandments: Thou shall not steal; thou shall not lie; and thou shall not kill (murder). These principles do not change to accommodate our beliefs or adherence to them. They stand all by themselves. Here is a test you can use to determine whether your actions are "right": If you have to cover up your deeds, 9.999 times out of 10, what you have done is wrong. It is wrong whether the whole world knows it or just one person knows about it.

What we need today is courageous leaders who are willing to "do" and be accountable for their actions. We need them to do more than just say the right things. They must do the right thing, not just what is easy, convenient and concealable. We have enough leaders who lead and govern using situational ethics. The news is full of stories about communities and individuals who have been victims of their ill deeds and hypocrisy.

Where do you stand? What type of leader or team member are you? How does your actions measure up?