I happen to be in South India for a Leadership Conference. As I was preparing my talk for this morning, I was thinking about the preparation I had done for the leadership talks that I would be giving through the day. I've been looking very closely (and I've shared this with you before) at Indra Nooyi's Five C's of Leadership. They are:
1. Core Competency: What is your core competency? What is the one thing that you are the 'go-to' person for?
2. Courage/Confidence: Having a core competency is of no use if you don't have the courage or the confidence to showcase it or use it.
3. Communication Skills: The first two are of no use if you are not a good communicator and are not able to back up what you have by communicating your confidence and courage.
4. Consistence: You need to be the person of whom people can rely on to get good work consistently.
5. Compass: This is your moral compass. It always needs to point north.
I kept going back to this – compass. How important it is for us in the work place to make sure that our integrity is never compromised! It takes years to build up a good reputation, a good character, a name in the industry or the area of work. It can be broken so easily if we compromise on integrity. I was talking at a camp for young people, all of who were at the point of making names for themselves at their jobs. I was talking to this person who was in the services and serving as an ADC at that point to a high-ranking person in the ministry. As I was walking back after lunch, he stepped up to me and said, "I agree with everything that you said. Yet, I am scared that when the time comes, when I have the opportunity to go ahead, I will cut a corner." I remember talking to this young man, praying for him, saying that I hoped that it did not happen. He was such a fine young man. When we fall, it not only hurts us, it hurts people all around us.
I remember the whole ordeal that Rajat Gupta put his family through. He was indicted for one of the largest insider trading scandals in the US history, while he was director at Goldman Sachs. But a few days after he was convicted, he said, "Anita (his wife) and I have brought up our daughters with the values of honesty and integrity and hard work. We are a close and loving family and they have had to endure a barrage of negative press about their father and husband, unkind comments from their colleagues and classmates, uncertain prospects for their future careers and a host of other negative outcomes. It is unbearable to me to see how much they have suffered. I just feel terribly that I have put them through this." How sad! A little too late to have that kind of remorse and regret. It would have been so much easier on his entire family if he had thought about the consequences before the act.
I was walking with a person yesterday just after lunch and he told me, "I have done wrong today. When the sweet bowl came around, I took a sweet; and I shouldn't have." Then he laughed and said, "But there will be consequences." Because every time you do something that you know is wrong, there are consequences. That's the thing! There are many things we do unknowingly – and we can't help that. But when we do something knowingly, that is an avoidable act.
I was looking at a quote by Aditi, Rajat Gupta's daughter. She says, "One of my most difficult moments when I tried to maintain my composure to the best of my ability was when I was sitting in my class as a freshman student at Harvard Business School and Preet Bharara, the US Attorney who prosecuted my father, was the guest lecturer. It was so difficult to go through that entire lecture." It infects and affects people that we love and care for all around us.
In our Holy Scriptures there is an account of a king, who, when everybody had gone out to war and he should have been leading the war, he decided to stay at home. When he stayed at home, he let his eyes linger on a woman who was bathing. He called for her and she had to come because he was the king. He slept with her and then he had to cover it up because she was expecting. So he called her husband who was at war, fighting for his country. He tried to get him drunk and go and sleep with his wife to cover up what he had done. But this man was a man of honor. He said, "How can I sleep with her when all my colleagues are at the forefront." He slept at the gate. The king tried a second time and it didn't work. Finally he sent him back and told his commander, "Let him go out in the front, then you withdraw the troops and he will be killed."
A sad story! How one person who shouldn't have been in that place, looked at things that he shouldn't have and then took a wrong decision and how it affected not only him, but the lady, her husband and the child that would come. All were affected.
It's so important for us that our compass points north, that it is absolutely straight. There will be many times in our day, in our lives when we are tempted to cut corners. But we need to remember that it is not only an infection that will make us sick, but it is something that will affect our near and dear ones. Maybe you are struggling with something today, or you know somebody who is. Maybe you have compromised on a small issue and you think that it is fine. But that means that your compass is not pointing north this morning.
The king went back after this and cried out to God and wrote these beautiful lines:
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
That's the good news for us today, that even if we have been compromised, even if we have done something wrong, we can go back to God and say, "You create a clean heart again for me, and help me to have the right spirit so that my compass is pointing north always."
That's my prayer for me and you this morning and I pray that our compasses will always point north, that we will not give into the temptation of getting into any kind of areas that will affect us or the people who we love.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, on each of us this morning, we know that we are prone to fall. Lord, we consciously go the wrong way sometimes. We compromise on our integrity, our honesty, the virtues, the moral standing that we have. Today, help us to realign with your standards. If, by some way, we have fallen, please restore us. Create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us. We ask this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
• "Rajat Gupta's Lust for Zeros," http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/19/magazine/rajat-guptas-lust-for-zeros.html?_r=0
• "Feel terrible I put my family through this: Rajat Gupta," http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-10-26/us/34749046_1_rajat-gupta-hbs-legal-team
• Story of David's Adultery, 2 Samuel ch. 11
• "Create in me a clean..." Psalm 51:10
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