PART 6: DESTRUCTIVE ABUNDANCE

Lesson 3: Integrity Matters

The Foxhole test
Simon Sinek says that when we cannot trust the people who are supposed to lead us and serve
us, then the whole fabric of our groups come apart.
Leaderships is about:
 Integrity: the adherence to a code of morals; telling the truth; incorruptibility, and
when our words and deeds are aligned. The worst betrayal of integrity is when people
tell us what we want to hear and change their stance to suit their interests (politicians)
 Honesty: telling the truth. That simple.
 Accountability
"The foxhole test" is a great pattern for integrity. According to the lesson, the leader should
not say things to make themselves or the
company look better than they are or to avoid humiliation or accountability then the
employee's trust in them falters. This is a natural response from our brain. In daily, trust was
based on integrity and it's not easy to earn the trust from someone, you have to build it day by
day. The same true in the leadership thing. Integrity will help you gain clarity at work and
build trust in others. From there, the relationship between team members will be stronger and
work efficiency will increase greatly.
How not to build trust
Integrity is not about being honest when we agree with each other; it is also about being
honest when we disagree or, even more, important when we make mistakes or missteps.
Again, our need to build trusting relationships, as our social brain sees things, is a matter of
life and death, or in the case of our modern Western lives, a matter of feeling safe, secure and
protected versus feeling isolated and vulnerable. We need people to admit when they falter
and not try to hide it or spin the story in an attempt to protect their image. Any attempt at spin
is self-serving, and such a selfish motivation can do damage to our group should danger
present itself. This is not a complex idea.
For leaders, integrity is particularly important. For example, in term of teamwork, your duty
is making our team trust that the direction we choose is a direction that is good for all of us
and not just good for us. We in the group will work hard to see our vision become a reality
and will offer the protection for staff along the way, which includes honest assessments and
commentary. When they feel we care about them, valuable and grateful will be their top of
mind.
Building trust requires nothing more than telling the truth. No complicated formula. For some
reason, too many people or leaders of organizations fail to tell the truth or opt to spin
something to appear that they did nothing wrong. That will break the bedrock of trust.
Lesson 4: Friend Matter
To Win To Serve
The US Congress worked better in the past because democrats and republicans mingled with
each other and spoke to each other once the business was settled.
It’s very healthy indeed to meet and spend time together out of the business context as we are
more inclined to see people as human beings and develop deeper friendships. When we never
meet and speak to our opponents, we also tend to demonize our opponents.
Enemies Fight. Friends Cooperate.
when the responsibilities of our jobs are not forcing us to work together, when our competing
interests are put aside for a while, we seem to be quite open to seeing others as people rather
than coworkers or competitors. This may be one of the reasons peace talks so often happen in
serene environments where the two warring parties can go for a walk together.
Cooperation doesn’t mean agreement, it means working together to advance the greater good,
to serve those who rely on our protection, not to rack up wins to serve the party or ourselves.
What the two members of Congress built was a genuine appreciation and respect for each
other. What they formed was nothing more than what we in the world outside of politics
would call a friendship. That such a relationship should be considered extraordinary enough
to serve as fodder for a book is somewhat disturbing. Getting to know the people with whom
we work every day seems like it should be the normal way of doing things.
Lesson 5: Lead people not numbers
Neutron Jack
When putting benefits on a scale, shareholders and employees, which one should be the best
strategy for a company. For the long history of business development, there has been a huge
gathering on this issue "Employees and customers often know more about and have more of a
long-term commitment to a company than shareholders do". In a win-win situation, the
shareholders are the "owner" of the company, would build wealth, create jobs and fuel the
economy. It seems reasonable that the leaders of companies should work hard to protect the
interests of the companies’ owners. In a short term, corporate directors and stakeholders are
eager to protect their interests and return to growth, and economists sought a simple metric
for measuring corporate performance, called "shareholder value". However, it is not a culture
that inspires people to give their blood, sweat and tears to the company, its leaders or each
other.
While in the long term, great companies and great leaders are the ones able to succeed in
devoting all their energy to training, building and protecting their people instead of trying to
command-and-control everything. That is a leader’s legacy, which is only as strong as the
foundation they leave behind that allows others to continue to advance the organization in
their name. Legacy is not the memory of better times when the old leader was there. When a
leader has the humility to distribute power across the organization, the strength of the
company becomes less dependent on one person and is thus better able to survive. Moreover,
despite the lower early performance, teams led by an empowering leader experience higher
performance improvement over time because of higher levels of team-learning, coordination,
empowerment and mental model development.
Boom and Bust
The perverse interpretation of shareholder-first has created cultures in which barely a single
person working in any public company, large or small, feels protected by their leaders. Too
many CEOs seem to skip the hard work of actually leading their employees. With an eye on
short-term results, executives can’t truly inspire workers. Wall Street’s priorities maintain
unreasonable power over executives and, by extension, entire company cultures. People in
these companies fear they could lose their job if the stock takes a tumble. And to our
embryonic human brain, that feeling initiates instincts of survival. When fight or flight is the
name of the game and no broad Circle of Safety exists, then remove or get fired is the best
strategy. Feeling uncertain and insecure, our ability to create relationships and trust in any
scalable or meaningful way is near impossible. And when that happens, our work suffers, the
culture suffers and the whole organization suffers.
But not so fast. It is also important to note that we, the shareholders, are just as susceptible to
the lure of profits over people. During the dot-com bubble, we were the ones investing based
on tips from our friends. The research was something we largely ignored. With dopamine
driving our need for instant wealth, we lunged at opportunities without taking the time to
check out all the facts. Worse, fearing we would miss out, we seemed to blindly trust
information regardless of the source. We cannot get away with simply pointing a finger at
people like Welch or BP or the theory of shareholder value when we have behaved just as
irresponsibly to make a quick buck.
To maximize the working performance, we must define the source of information and choose
the right one.