• About

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

~ Leadership Coach and Trainer

Kathy Stoddard Torrey

Tag Archives: GoldenRuler

Integrity and Your Golden Ruler

10 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Kathy Stoddard Torrey in Emotional Intelligence, Leadership

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

GoldenRuler, integrity, rationalization, success, values

Integrity meme

NOTE: This is a blog that I wrote back in 2015, but the topic has come up a lot lately.

We are happier, more confident, and more successful when we live in alignment with our values. Imagine a ruler that shows the values that are most important to you. I call mine my Golden Ruler.

Ideally, we want to hold each action that we are considering against our Golden Ruler and see if the action is in alignment with our values. For example, kindness is one of my main values. I want to be kind and be known as a kind person. However, I have a tendency to be a little snarky and sarcastic sometimes. I’m hilarious when I’m snarky, but the laugh is short-lived and I don’t feel good about the action because it’s not in alignment with my values. If I stop and ask myself, “Am I about to say something unkind?” I am measuring my possible action against my Golden Ruler. I feel better about myself and my life when my actions are in alignment with the values of my Golden Ruler.

In my leadership seminars, we talk about our values quite a bit. It’s important to know what your Golden Ruler looks like! We talk about how we want to be remembered when we are gone and what qualities we want to define us. We talk about specific examples of how we live those values. Then I ask them to tell a partner about one time when they didn’t live their values.

Without fail, everyone has to tell the story around the action. They explain why they “had” to do what they did that one time. They RATIONALIZE the behavior. That’s the red flag. If you hear yourself rationalizing a behavior, you are convincing yourself to go against your own values. You aren’t rationalizing behavior that goes against my values or your neighbor’s values, you are rationalizing to yourself in order to make it OK to violate your own values. This was a major revelation for me.

The concept really hit home for me when I was working with a particularly difficult group. This group was always late. Management did not support the training. People drifted in and out and no one really paid attention. It was the worst group I ever encountered in a decade of training in industry. When I was getting ready for one of our sessions I thought, “Why am I bothering to prepare? They are never on time. They don’t really care. There is no good reason for me to spend time prepping for them.” Wow. Then it hit me. Being prepared and professional is important to me; it’s who I am! I was letting other people’s actions and attitudes influence my actions. I was letting them influence who I was and how I showed up in the world. Scary!

The phrase I use in leadership workshops is “Rationalization is bad judgment’s best friend.” We use bad judgment when we violate our own code of conduct and make it OK by rationalizing it. Rationalizing a behavior helps us sidestep that fact that we are using bad judgment.

Acting in alignment with the values on our Golden Ruler is acting with integrity. We are doing what we feel is right no matter what the circumstances are. Integrity is a solid, constant thing that lives within us. We are happier, more fulfilled, and more successful when we remember that we have the power to choose our actions no matter what the rest of the world is doing.


For a little bit of fun leadership development, join 53 Leadership Challenges at KathyStoddardTorrey.com.

Want to go further with your professional development? Check out the courses offered at PositiveEffectLeadership.com.

If you are interested in taking your career to the next level quickly, contact me for a sample coaching session at KSTorrey@tapferconsulting.com.

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,001 other subscribers

  • RSS - Posts

Categories

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Archives

  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • February 2014
  • January 2014

Powered by WordPress.com.