1. What you see is what you get. Outer and inner are connected, parts of one whole.
2. A person who has basic integrity honors commitments and keeps promises. If they say they will be there, they are. If they promise to do something, they do it.
3. A person with integrity is truthful. You can trust what they tell you.
4. Consistency. Someone who has integrity isn't your new best friend one week and then next week doesn't seem to know you.
5. Integrity doesn't mean that a person never makes mistakes. But a person with integrity accepts responsibility for his or her own mistakes or failures and does what's in his or her power to put things right.
6. Related to No. 5, people with integrity are slow to blame others for their problems or frustrations. They aren't whiners.
7. People of integrity care about the work, the mission, or the product and about a job well done, and not just about what they personally will get out of it in terms of money, recognition or advancement.
8. While receptive to learning and change, people of integrity are skeptical of simple answers to complex problems, and not inclined toward fads or buzzwords.
9. A person of integrity minds his or her own business. I don't mean isolation. I mean paying attention to your own responsibilities and work rather than freely inserting yourself into the responsibilities of another.
10. People with integrity know that they aren't perfect and that sometimes in this life it's not possible to avoid disappointing or hurting others. Because of this they are able to forgive and they recognize their own need for forgiveness.
If some philanthropist were to offer me money for a conference on integrity, I don't think I'd take it. Integrity isn't something you get at a weekend conference. It's gained slowly, taught by example and experience, in families, schools and religious congregations and communities where it flourishes.
