Engaged Leadership: Building a Culture to Overcome Employee Disengagement, 2nd Edition

The Importance of Character Core

In the fable, Seth learned about the importance of character from a cab driver named Barry. Barry seemed to think someone can lack integrity in his personal life, but still have integrity in his professional life. While there may be many people who share Barry's opinion, Seth was not one of them, and neither am I. In fact, I believe there is no way to separate what you do in your private life from what you do in your professional life when it comes to character. You either have character or you don't. Period. You can't turn it on and off.

Every day you are faced with a myriad of options and opportunities. You make decisions regarding these options and opportunities based on a set of values, and if you don't have those values in place in your personal life, then you certainly don't have them in your professional life.

This leads me to the whole idea of business ethics. From time to time I will get a call from someone asking if I can do a program for their company on the topic of business ethics. With the increasing number of high-profile corporate scandals, many companies want to ensure they keep their name off the front page of the newspaper. I certainly see the problem of ethics in the workplace, but I do not believe it is an issue of business ethics. Why? Because businesses don't make decisions—people make decisions:

• Enron failed not because ...