7 Skills for the Future, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4

INTEGRITY

‘If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.’

Alan K. Simpson

‘I Integrity’ is a word you hear almost every day, but it’s not a word that people spend a lot of time thinking about. If you try to define it, what would you say?

The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete.¹ In this context, integrity is the inner sense of ‘wholeness’ stemming from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character. As such, one may judge that others ‘have integrity’ to the extent that they act according to the values, beliefs and principles they claim to hold. Doesn’t that in turn depend on specifically what those values, beliefs and principles ...