Category Archives: Integrity

AFL, Australian Football League, Collingwood, Gary Ablett, Geelong, Gold Coast Suns, Great Western Sydney, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Port Adelaide, The Age, Tom Scully, Travis Boak, Travis Cloke

Geelong’s Behaviour Shows Integrity Despite Criticism

The recent criticism of the Geelong Football Club in the AFL for visiting Port Adelaide player Travis Boak is an example of the rampant hypocrisy prevalent in our community and business world.
Geelong has the right, as does any employer, to seek and recruit anyone it deems talented enough to help it be the most successful organisation that it can be. Travis Boak, as an employee or prospective employee also has the right, bounded by explicit rules within the AFL to discuss his future employment prospects with any organisation that may be worthy of his commitment.

Geelong was explicit about what it was doing. Boak’s contract situation means that in 2013 he will either be playing with Port Adelaide or he will be playing somewhere else.

If you can, consider his position from an employee’s perspective. He is talented and  he has a current rival organisation wanting to speak with him about moving across to them. There is nothing wrong with talking with that organisation. In fact doing so could re-enforce the very reasons why he might choose to stay with Port Adelaide.

People are very naive if they believe that rival clubs haven’t spoken with soon-to-be out of contract players during a season in the past. I’ll cite Gary Ablett and Tom Scully as two examples and you “…would have to be dreaming” (a quote from the Australian move The Castle) to believe that Travis Cloke’s management hasn’t been speaking with other clubs throughout this season. How could a decision about where he is going to play next year occur if they haven’t?

Geelong should be commended for their integrity in being open and honest about what they were doing. Yet they got criticised for it. Some people have suggested that they were arrogant and under-handed. How could they be under handed when they were open and honest about what they were doing?

‘Political correctness’ doesn’t necessarily help integrity. Would people honestly prefer that Geelong drove to Adelaide in the cover of night, spoke with Travis Boak and then publicly denied what they did?

Seriously, think about the values that such a view is projecting… Dishonesty. Is that what we really want? I don’t think so.

It is time that more people stood up to protect honest behaviour. No doubt Port Adelaide does not want to lose Travis Boak. If it is an organisation that is worthy of his commitment, then he will stay. At least Port Adelaide knows what it is up against with Geelong being open about what it has been doing. But what about other clubs who may have spoken with Boak but have not been honest about what they have been doing (for the record I don’t know if any other clubs have spoken with him)? How is that good for Port Adelaide?

The challenge with honesty is that sometimes we might not like the honesty we are hearing. That doesn’t mean the honesty is wrong. It means that it triggers a fear in us, in this case the fear for some people that Travis Boak will move to another club. For others the fear that is triggered is the mere thought that, “This could happen to one of the stars in my club!”. Folks it’s happening anyway and we should be encouraging this type of behaviour to be above ground and not below ground.

Below ground behaviour doesn’t support integrity, yet it is the criticism of organisations like Geelong that drives such behaviour underground because it is considered ‘politically incorrect’. I, for one support Geelong with it’s actions and for it’s integrity in this situation.

Gary Ryan is a long time member of the Western Bulldogs and Richmond AFL clubs.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Camilla Vascon, Employability, Employability Skills, Integrity, Law, Law Graduate, Personal Values, Values

Honesty Does Pay!

Recently after having concluded a ‘Getting ahead as a Young Professional’ workshop (which is part of a leadership development program for the Faculty of Law at Monash University in Melbourne Australia) one of the students, Steph Wallace, shared a story regarding the power of honesty with me and I’d like to share her story with you.
Steph had applied for a clerical assistant role for a law firm and the role was due to start mid December 2010. At the time Steph had a year to go to complete her degree and was aware that graduate positions going into 2012 were going to be few and far between. As a result of this knowledge Steph had hoped to gain the clerical assistant’s role so that, after the firm having experienced the quality of her work throughout 2011 she would be well positioned to obtain the graduate position in 2012.
From my perspective this is a very sound strategy.
Steph successfully negotiated the first round of interviews and was invited for a second interview, this time with the person to whom she would be reporting if she gained the position.
It was at this point that Steph confronted a dilemma. Her father was ill overseas and Steph had already booked a 6 week visit to spend time with him. Her trip commenced the second week of January, a mere three weeks after she was to start the position. As there was a lot ‘riding’ on getting this job in terms of increasing her chances of obtaining a graduate position, Steph was unsure whether she should reveal in the second interview that she would be away for 6 weeks three weeks after starting her new job, or wait until being offered the job before revealing this information.
What would you do in this situation?
Well this is exactly the question that Steph asked her friends, family and colleagues. Interestingly the majority of people said, “Don’t tell them in the interview. Get the job first, then tell them.”
Steph’s mother had a different view. “How would you like people to treat you if you were in your future bosses’ position?” she asked.
After their conversation Steph decided to go with her intuitive response to this dilemma. “If I didn’t get the job and I bumped into this lady in five years time, I’d want her to remember me for being honest.”
At an appropriate time in the second interview Steph shared her dilemma with her potential boss.
“I know that what I am about to tell you will probably kill my chances of getting this job, but I feel that it is important that I am honest with you.”
Steph then went on to explain her situation.
The outcome: Steph got the job, and has been mentored in the role ever since.
Given that our conversation was nine months after Steph had successfully gained the job I asked her if she had repaid their support.  
“Many times over Gary! I really do everything I can for them because they were so supportive of me, even when they didn’t even know me. I now participate in Subcomittees and try and give that extra bit of work/ effort whenever I can. From the IT team to my boss, to the Chairman they are both supportive colleagues, friends and mentors in a variety of ways.”
What I have found fascinating is that I have shared this story with many people. The vast majority have said that they would not have told their new boss about the trip until after getting the job.
If you stop and think about the mental models underlying this response one that keeps popping up for me is that people have a theory that if they are honest, bad things will happen.
Hopefully this story will help to challenge this theory.
In this case, honesty was rewarded and well done to the organisation for having the courage to do so.
What are your experiences of honesty in the workplace? Does it pay?
Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
High Performance, Integrity, Professionals, Service Excellence, What Really Matters For Young Professionals, Young Professionals

What are the fundamentals in your business that you just cannot afford to get wrong?

I have spent the last couple of days in hospital having had my appendix removed. My experience of the hospital was fantastic with a high level of care shown by all the staff with whom I came into contact.

Last evening I witnessed an event that displayed integrity and courage, while also highlighting that serious mistakes can be made even in a well run hospital.

At about 8:30pm a senior nurse came in to speak with an elderly gentleman with whom I was sharing my ward. She informed him that he had been given someone else’s medicine an hour earlier. She told him that she had checked with his doctor and that there weren’t any issues regarding side effects with the incorrect medicines that he had taken. She also apologised profusely for the error.

From my perspective the nurse showed courage and integrity by admitting the mistake, initiative by checking with the patient’s doctor before informing him of the mistake and she also provided a genuine apology.

This experience got me thinking. In a hospital it would seem that giving the wrong medicine to the wrong patient is a fundamental error that shouldn’t occur. It would appear that human error was involved. Six Sigma was a system that was introduced at Motorola as a way of creating a culture that minimises such fundamental mistakes. Six Sigma officially translates to 3.4 mistakes every 1 million efforts. I’d like to think that, at the hospital where I have just spent the last few days, the mistake that I experienced was one of the 3.4 in one million!

So, the question for you is, “What are the fundamental errors that you should be minimising? What systems do you have in place to ensure that human error is minimised?” Even a short stay in hospital can provide opportunities for reflection and improvement. I’m certainly reviewing our systems and processes in the context of this experience.

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com
Elite Sport, Gen Y, Generation Y, Integrity, Leaders, Leadership, Professionals, Values, What Really Matters For Young Professionals, Young Professionals

Storm Damage – Why leading with integrity matters

While this article focusses upon the revelations of the systematic cheating by administrators within the Melbourne Storm Rugby League Club, the article is about organisational leadership and not sport.

The Melbourne Storm is a multi-million dollar business. It is in the business of elite-sport, television and entertainment. The deception not just a sporting deception, it is a business deception and legal investigations may result in charges being laid. Time will tell.
Today many thousands of people will wake up feeling betrayed and disgusted by the behaviour of a small number of people. Michelle Hunt from www.dreammakers.org suggests that leadership involves a serious meddling in other people’s lives. Many people will have their reputations tarnished simply because they work for the Melbourne Storm. If that doesn’t highlight the serious impact that poor leadership can have on other people, then I’m not sure what does!
On the morning of Thursday 22nd April 2010 I was compelled to add a comment to an article posted on the The Age website. I was unaware of the Melbourne Storm issue that was to unfold later in the day. The article was titled, “Congratulations you’re a manager….now what?“. I was drawn to the article because it mentioned a series of tips for first time managers. However, one of the sentences in the article’s introduction caused me some concern. The sentence was, “Is honesty always the best policy when managing up?”. I thought to myself, “Why wouldn’t it be?”. If you are honest when managing up and you got into trouble for that, then my view is your organisation is not worthy of your commitment and you have a choice to make.
The ‘war for talent’ still exists so if you have a strong and clear sense of your values and a good work ethic, then my view is that you have choice regarding where you work. Working for organisations that aren’t worthy of you commitment is therefore a choice.

To me preparation to become a leader starts well before a formal leadership role in an organisation is offered to you. It starts with becoming clear about your values and practicing them every day in all your life’s roles. Vision without an understanding of your values can lead to behaviour, such as systematic cheating, that is inconsistent with the vision. I don’t know the motives of the senior Melbourne Storm administrators for their behaviour. I do know that conscious development and mastery of your personal values takes time and is important for people to have mastery of their values before they commence formal leadership roles. It is my view that not enough people are clear about their values and how they are reflected in their behaviour at work. Are you clear about yours?

Please feel free to comment on this article.

Gary Ryan enables individuals, teams and organisations to matter.
Visit Gary at http://garyryans.com