Can Integrity become a practice?

Integrity is a word that sends shivers down my back. It is one of those words that we often use in business especially in mission statements. But how to overcome my fear of bringing the word integrity into a meeting and develop it as a practice with my peers and supervisors?

I decided to look up the word in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) to bolster my confidence, and found that its root is in Latin. The OED states that the word integrity comes from the Latin integritās wholeness, entireness, or completeness. The first definition is: The condition of having no part or element taken away or wanting; undivided or unbroken state; material wholeness, completeness, entirety.

I was disappointed, because my version of integrity is that one does what one says one will do, more or less like honesty. I scrolled down the OED website to see if I could find a definition that fit better with my personal views. And I found one…as the third and last definition: “3. a. Unimpaired moral state; freedom from moral corruption; innocence, sinlessness. Obs.” The Obs. here means obsolete! Oh no! Luckily the next definition 3 b. was what I was looking for “b. Soundness of moral principle; the character of uncorrupted virtue, esp. in relation to truth and fair dealing; uprightness, honesty, sincerity.”

Bringing integrity into the workplace as a living breathing entity is not the same as reading a concept from a dictionary or putting it into a mission statement. Putting integrity into practice takes looking at myself, and where I have not done what I said I would do. So the practice in the coming months and weeks will be to keep bringing integrity to my own life and engaging in conversations in the workplace to bring integrity in as a practice, something that is alive for the whole team, not a dry anachronism on a wall plaque.