It is extremely difficult to build team integrity if individual members of the team are not exhibiting characteristics of integrity all the time. Personal integrity is the key to building successful team integrity.
What is personal integrity? Individuals demonstrate integrity by upholding personal values and ethics in the work environment.
Team integrity can have two meanings, the building up of a team as a whole unit that works successfully as one, and integrity that allows the team to fulfil the ethical standards and guidelines expected of the team project. Without personal integrity, team members are unlikely to build team integrity.
People with personal integrity work as hard to make the team’s project a success as they do to ensure their own personal projects are a success. A person with integrity will complete agreed tasks that benefit the team in the time allotted, without turning up to the next team meeting with an excuse.
A person with integrity will ensure the time available is put to good use and will not waste valuable time and resources, whether a supervisor is watching or not. Personal integrity is an important characteristic of team players, because if someone cannot work well for his own satisfaction at a job well done, the person will be unlikely to work well for the team.
If a team member lacks personal integrity, the team as a whole will suffer. A person lacking personal integrity will be likely to be late to team meetings, be unprepared or not complete allocated individual tasks, and may even use unethical means to take the credit for other’s work, instead of giving credit to the team.
Obviously, other team members will not appreciate this kind of team destroying behaviour and having just one person in the team who lacks personal integrity can cause huge rifts in the team. If the team spends more time arguing instead of getting on with the work of the project, the team will achieve nothing.
So, how you build personal integrity? For many people, the concept of personal integrity links directly to self-esteem. If you feel confident in your own abilities to work well on a particular project, you are less likely to employ unethical or underhand methods to look good in front of the boss. You will let the work speak for itself.
Personal integrity is linked to the moral and ethical values the individual employs in daily life. If a person lies to people around them, including family and friends, then a lie to the team is unlikely to worry the individual. If a person plays underhanded political power plays at work to either make trouble for other individuals or to boost their own individual standings with the boss, then the person is unlikely to be a good team player.
People with high levels of personal integrity will find it difficult to lie or to play power politics at work, especially if it means belittling someone else in order to get ahead. This means a person with high personal integrity will be more likely to support the team and give credit to the entire team, rather than try to get individual credit to boost his or her own personal self-esteem.
Individual personal integrity is an essential building block to becoming a good team player and to creating the indispensable team integrity that will ensure the team’s project is a success.
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