The voice of trustworthiness—modeling character and competence

A leader’s character can make or break an organization. A person with integrity and one who is trusted by his peers and employees will be seen as a good leader.

Trustworthiness is an important factor in any relationship—personal and professional. It is the glue that holds together a family and an organization.

Personal trustworthiness

Trustworthiness comes from character and competence. There are three aspects of character that build trustworthiness:

• Integrity: you incorporate principles and natural laws when dealing with people. You are honest and you keep promises made to yourself and to others.
• Maturity: you can deal with difficult issues with compassion.
•  Abundance mentality: you see life as full of opportunities. You don’t compare yourself with others and you are sincerely happy for other people’s success.

Each individual is born with the potential to be great. What you do with this potential is up to you. You must remember that the more you use and expand your present talents, the more capacity you are given, and the greater your ability becomes.

All great achievers have expanded their four innate human intelligences and capacities into:

1.  Vision (mental)Seeing with your mind what is possible in yourself, in people, projects, causes, endeavors, and enterprises.
2.  Discipline (physical)Commitment—bringing vision into reality.
3.  Passion (emotional)It is the fire or the drive that sustains the discipline to achieve the vision.

Effectiveness is the tool for survival in today’s fast-paced environment. However, in order to truly become excellent and succeed in the new Knowledge Worker Age, you must build on and move beyond effectiveness and into greatness. You must find your own voice and inspire others to find their own voices as well. Finding your voice requires a shift in thinking. To succeed in your journey towards greatness, you need a new mindset, a new skill-set and a new habit.