Integrity in Leadership

"Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence." British Field Marshall Montgomery Integrity and leadership go hand in hand. Integrity is one of the positive traits for an effective and good leader. Personal integrity represents an honest, reliable and trustworthy person. If you are a leader; then you will bring along that good trait into your leadership style. It is a blessing for an organization to have such a leader in their organization. Having many integrity leaders will indirectly shape up the organization to be an integrity organization; be respected by employees and public. Why integrity is very important to leadership? Since integrity is a trait that exists from inner self; as a leader, you only can prove your integrity by the actions that you took and the decision that you choose. Integrity speaks by itself and it reflects on all your actions and decision. A leadership that built with integrity normally is part from an integrity organization; they can be confident that an individual with flawed character will not last long in their organizations ; as it goes to the good people, will not stay for long in bad organizations. As the result; only integrity people will be working in the integrity organization. DPS lacks this integrity combined with leadership. The most recent events concerning the superintendent accepting a pay raise in light of the current economic conditions makes this issue even more important. Employees have gone three years without a pay raise, several employees have lost their job, teachers lack adequate materials for their classrooms, yet the board offers the superintendent a raise for mediocre performance? Being paid over $50,000 more then the county superintendent with a district almost 25% smaller shows just how far out of touch the board is to the realities of the time. At least the county superintendent had the integrity to turn down any raise. That is one word that we will never hear describing the leadership in DPS—integrity. This lack of integrity carries over to the board. Have they been living under a rock for the past three years? Have they not observed the recent economic conditions in Danville? How totally out of touch can one board become? The proverbial handwriting is on the wall. This is not Wall Street. We should not reward bad, unethical behavior. The board needs to show some integrity themselves and resign and apologize to Danville on their way out.