Talked to Perry on Saturday. During our conversation, he spoke highly of the book Integrity by Dr. Henry Cloud. It was required reading for a recent gathering he attended with Bill Hybels. Perry said, "It rocked my world." I swung by Barnes & Noble last night and picked up my copy. I’m through the first four chapters. Good stuff.
Made me wonder, what would it look like if we went on a reading journey together? What if we took the rest of 2006 to commit ourselves to reading about improving our "character" as leaders? Would it make a difference in our ministries…in our lives?
If you elect to join the journey, feel free to post comments about what you’re learning here or email me your thoughts. I’m most interested in hearing how the book impacts who you are in your leadership role. If we do this right, maybe we can even invite Dr. Cloud to engage in our dialogue.
Tony,
This was one of my favorite books that I read this year; along with Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box, by Arbinger Institute. I presented a speech to my staff recently combining my learnings from the two books. I like the concept about how the immature character asks life to meet his demands; but the mature character meets the demands of life. Can we substitute God and desires in there where the immature character sometimes asks God to meet his desires and the mature character is willing to try to meet God’s desires?
Grace to you,
jhook
Here is a short overview of the book if it helps. For those who wish to increase their performance or to help others to do so, Dr. Cloud believes integrity is the key. By integrity he means being a whole, integrated person. It’s about wholeness. It means a person who is “running on all cylinders.” It’s more than simple honesty and ethics.
In his book, Integrity, he focuses on the essential need for the character development necessary to make a person or an organization successful. The concept is built upon six traits of integrity:
1. Establishing Trust. This is the ability for someone to get outside their reality, agendas and concerns and connect with, understand, and work with the realities and concerns of the other person or people.Integrity
2. Orientation Toward Truth. This gets at the ability to operate in reality and deal with it.
3. Getting Results. Beyond a work ethic and working hard this trait is about how a person is put together that actually causes hard work and effort to end up in real results.
4. Embracing the Negative. Those who succeed are those that understand that life is about solving problems. They seek out the problems and develop the ability to solve them. The ability to move something forward when something bad happens.
5. Orientation Toward Growth. Not the desire to maintain but a real desire to grow and increase.
6. Orientation Toward Transcendence. The ability to see the big picture and to serve something larger than yourself.
Any of these areas can be developed, but growth won’t happen because you feel you ought to do this. “Ought “ is not a good motivator. So how do you change? Cloud suggests:
People change when they play the “movie,” which is to take a hard reality look at your life and work, then play that reality forward to see if you like the way the future movie of your life and career plays out. In that way, people begin to experience the future losses, rewards, and consequences right now and get with reality. When you look, for example, at your present performance, and the things that you are not getting, and then you realize that if you continue to do the same things expecting different results, you will never get what you want, you will change.
BTW, Tony, I saw you recommended Second Guessing God on this blog, so I got it and read it. An excellent book that helps to clarify some important issues.
One of the best books I have read on character is Andy Stanley’s Like a Rock. He really takes on issues of personal character and it will challenge the reader to look inward. It’s been out a long time so it’s a little hard to find but it’s worth the search. I think it’s still listed on Amazon.
John:FYI, a new revised version of that same book – Like A Rock – is available. The new title is “Louder Than Words: The Power of Uncompromised Living”
And yes, it is an excellent book.
I asked Jeff Hook if he’d share his notes from the staff presentation he mentioned in his previous comment. Here is his PowerPoint presentation that incorporates his learnings from Integrity.
tony
Tony, Count me in! I ordered the book!