Prisoner 119104

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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Prisoner 119104

 

A gentleman I admired tremendously named Viktor Frankl lived to the young age of 92. Out of all those years he was fortunate to live, three of them were spent in a German concentration camp. Those years were practically stolen by the Nazis and as you all know my dear readers, time lost can’t be recovered.

 

As bad as that fact is, those lost years have no comparison to what the Nazis took away from Viktor and destroyed: His wonderful bride and unborn child, she was a few months pregnant, his mother and father, his brother and the manuscript of a book he had practically devoted his whole life to writing and didn’t have a copy.

 

How could a man that suffered so much choose victory over defeat in the midst of so much sadness, suffering, heartbreak and unimaginable emotions?

How could he chose not to be subjugated by his captors, how to win instead of lose?

 

How come he didn’t lose faith in mankind and hate his captors after what they had done to his family and were doing to him?

 

The answer to those questions and others I had are in a book written some time ago by Viktor Frankl, which I read and loved and which by the way, he wrote in nine successive days after he was liberated. In other words, the manuscript stolen from him by the Nazis which took him years to write, he wrote, adding this prison experience in just nine consecutive days.

 

That book, I am sure some of you have read, is titled: “Man’s Search for Meaning”

In the book and what I want to share with you today, he writes:

 

“Everything can be taken away from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.

 

That is a profound thought he shared with all of us.

 

Some people have lost their homes, their cars, their jobs in this recession, (depression if it hit you) that has practically affected the whole world including and severely Puerto Rico and the United States. 

 

The recession might have taken everything away from you and you might be reading this newspaper right now because you found it in a garbage can thrown away by someone that could afford to buy it, read it and throw it away.

 

You might have lost a lot and I sympathize with you my friend but compare it to what Viktor lost.

 

Is there a comparison?

 

I think it is safe to say that Viktor lost much more and he didn’t let his circumstances defeat him, he didn’t quit, he never gave up. He survived and not only survived but took notes on what was happening in the concentration camp in order to someday write a book about it.

 

In other words, he couldn’t die, he had to survive because he had to write that book to help us cope with circumstances that will definitely affect all of us sometime in our lives.

 

I wish that this article could be read by a dear friend named Richard who graduated from my High School, the Sacred Heart Academy in Santurce, same year than I did,  and who I was told was homeless asking for money in a red light somewhere in Rio Piedras.  Richard my friend, if Viktor Frankl did it, you can also. Reach out to me or to the dozens of your classmates that are still around and would surely give you a hand and some understanding.

 

I hope that anyone reading this article will learn such a valuable lesson Viktor Frankl taught all of us.

 

He endured humiliations even torture so that he could survive and he could send you this message, through my writing to you who I know are going through tough times.

 

Look for opportunities, reach out to family and friends, be creative and think on what you need to do in order to get out of the rut you are in today.

 

To those that are not going through tough times, lend a hand to someone that is.

Remember the ancient saying “He who holds a lantern to light the pathway of his brother sees more clearly his own”.

 

To finish this article, I remind you of the week that three important people in the world died a couple of days between them.

 

Lady Diana died on August 31, 1997. I remember well since I was in Europe on my honeymoon when it happened.

 

Viktor Frankl died on September 2^nd, 1997.

 

Mother Theresa died on September 5, 1997.

 

Some of you might remember who received the most attention, worldwide: Lady Di.

 

Not that I want to take anything away from her but I do think that Mother Theresa and Viktor Frankl deserved at least as much, if not more, recognition than her.

 

Sometimes our values and priorities are not in the exact order they should be.

 

 

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The Effect of Negative Words When You Communicate

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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The effect of negative words when you communicate

 

The art of communicating effectively is so important not only in business but also in your personal life.

There are some words that provoke a negative reaction just by hearing the word. When we hear those words in a conversation, we stop paying attention, the communicator loses credibility and you probably will discard everything else the person will try to communicate. These words when our brain hears them, prompt us to react defensively and sometimes aggressively by emotional people.

 

Studies have been conducted to identify some of those “trigger words” that bring out immediate and negative reactions from listeners.

 

As an example, the word “never” often elicits a bad reaction. Let’s analyze it: Do you remember the last time you were involved in a conversation either in business or in your personal life in which the word “never” was used in a happy context?

 

You go to work every day as most people do, you might arrive a few minutes late because of a traffic jam in Baldorioty de Castro and your boss says, “you are “never” on time. When you hear this, your brain will probably not elicit a rational and constructive word and the possibility of a positive dialogue is eliminated. You will probably go on the defensive, your adrenaline response will take over and you will try to bite your boss somehow, either by telling him that it is not true, accusing him of exaggerating or in some occasions waste your time in looking for situations where your boss is late or screws up. Your concentration goes away from doing good productive work to finding ways to screw the boss.

 

Let’s look at another word that most of the time elicits a negative reaction and I know you will be surprised when you read it: The word “always”.

 

If your boss, colleagues, family members constantly told you that you are “always” so smart, that you “always” help people in need, and you “always” are considerate and well educated, the word would certainly be a very positive word.

 

But, in reality, the word is very often used in negative ways. You are “always” complaining, you are “always” criticizing the company, you are “always” late for meetings, you are “always” sending emails with lots of mistakes or typos in it.

 

This word will then make you defensive and you will respond with:” You are wrong, I only complain when there is a reason to complain”, “no, I don’t criticize the company all the time, I only do it when there is a reason to criticize it” and “my emails only have typos when I use the damn I-Pad that self corrects and has a mind of its own”.

 

Think about it. Are there absolutes in life? 

 

How about always being compassionate?

 

Most of the time yes, but sometimes it will hurt the person. You are compassionate when you see a motorist stranded and you stop to help the person. You get mugged and he takes your car. In this case being compassionate was not a good thing, correct?

 

Let’s look at another one: Always be happy.

 

Do you think that always being happy is a good thing?

 

Some of my most creative work I have developed when I was very unhappy. That unhappiness made me react or act and do things that I would have never done if I had been happy.

 

My point is words like “never” and “always” are called “absolutes” and due to the fact that they have an emotional charge are very intense and preclude diplomacy or subtlety, they are not the best words to give feedback or start a constructive conversation.

 

A third word that could be very negative: “You”. Yes, don’t be surprised. That word could really be very negative.

 

Let’s say you are giving feedback to an employee who works for you and you use the word “you” in a menacing way.

 

“You have to stop being late” “You have to quit doing that”, “you need to stop being individualistic and work in a team”. And, if you use your index finger while using the word, it is a lot worse.

 

The word is so often used to attack and criticize and when people hear the word it consciously or unconsciously elicits a negative reaction when it is heard and it raises the levels of stress and tension.

 

The most effective way to communicate is to use better words, to use a style of communication known in the communications field as “fact based communication” which uses words that are as objective as possible, unemotional, timely and with a specific purpose which shouldn’t be to put the other person down or hurt his or her feelings.  

 

I hope that some politicians read this article. Some are so aggressive and use words that are so inappropriate that the public shuts them off and don’t even listen anymore.

 

 

Think about which words you use. There are many more that elicit negative responses; I only used three in this article. Get together with your coworkers or loved ones and find out which words you use that they dislike.

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Impulse Control: The Difference Between Success and Failure

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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IMPULSE CONTROL: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUCCESS AND FAILURE

 

I have just finished a speech at the NASA Space Center in Port Canaveral for employees and executives. I was very pleased to have so many intelligent, creative people with an open mind, eagerly listening to any idea I could offer to make them more successful in their jobs and personal lives. I have so much to learn from them also.

 

As in many of my speeches, I discussed a very important principle that is very much required for anyone to succeed:  Impulse control.

 

There is perhaps no psychological skill more fundamental for human beings than resisting impulse.  It is the root of all emotional self-control, since all emotions, by their very nature lead to one or another impulse to act.

 

What is the meaning of the root word, emotion?  To move

The capacity to resist that impulse to act recklessly, to quash the initial movement is perhaps one of the most important factors involved in success.

 

A Stamford University psychologist, Walter Mischel said “goal directed, self imposed delay of gratification is perhaps the essence of emotional self regulation: the ability to deny impulse in the service of a goal, whether it be building a business, solving an algebraic equation, or pursuing the U.S.Open Tennis Championship”.

 

I was telling some of the members of my audience how important it was for them to understand this principle. I told them that I could be addressing tortilla salespeople in Mexico who are very poor, newspaper salespeople in Caracas who are also very poor or flower salespeople in Guayaquil who are definitely not known for their riches and the message would be the same I was giving them.

 

There is no short cut. Everyone has to pay the price and if you sacrifice now, you should be much better off in the future. In financial terms, a good practice for you to immediately put into practice is to save at least 10% of everything you make. 

 

I could be speaking to the tortilla salesperson in Mexico, not known for being rich, the newspaper salesperson selling papers in the railroad in Caracas or the flower salesperson in Guayaquil, Ecuador.

If you sell 10 tortillas in a day, you save the proceeds of one tortilla. Same with newspapers, or flowers, you sell 10 you save one.  In 30 years, you will be very well off, you will have money and you will live comfortably the rest of your life.

They were stunned. In essence, what I said is that even the poorest person, saving 10% of what they make, can become rich sometime in their lives.

 

I told them there was no excuse whatsoever for anyone to reach retirement age, and not have a nest egg that will carry you through the rest of their lives.  

 

I recounted one of  the stories in my book “How to Survive Among Piranhas” the story of Legson Kayira, a very, very poor man,  who walked from his tribal village in Nyasaland, north across the wilderness of East Africa to Cairo, where he boarded a ship to America to get a college education. He left on foot with a five day supply of food and no money. Two years later he arrived at Skagit Valley College to start his college education.

 

He said:  “I learned I was not, as most Africans believed, the victim of my circumstances but the master of them”.

 

Let’s analyze what he said. He said that you can become proactive and rise above your circumstances in order to achieve whatever you want to achieve in life. Most people accept their circumstances and never ever try to change them. That is the kiss of death.

 

There are a lot of people that have a problem with impulse control. For example, if you run out of money before the end of the week, you are not managing your money effectively. I sometimes ask in my sessions “how can I tell if you have problems with impulse control? Well, to begin with, when you see someone 100 pounds overweight, or smoking a cigarette, you know he or she has a problem with impulse control.

 

But, financially how would you identify someone with impulse control?

 

There is a definite answer. “We have to look at their assets”.

 

. Those that are right now out of money don’t have many valuable assets, who are living day to day, are always struggling, have had a problem with impulse control for a long time and the percentage of people in this situation unfortunately is very large.

 

There is some hope. First of all, pay off all your debts. Stop paying interest for money owed. Then, start saving 10% of everything you earn and in a few years you will see your savings grow and that will motivate you to continue saving and very soon you will have a good chunk of money saved up. 

 

This is the marshmallow principle, which I hold dear to my heart.

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Some years ago, the President of a client company was driving me to the airport, and he mentioned that what I said about impulse control was one of the most important lessons he had learned in his life. He proceeded to explain that when he was a young man he started working for an energy company and he had a boss that he got along with very well. 

The boss was an older fellow that had worked 35 years for the company.  He had a company car and a good salary. When he reached 65, by law, he had to leave the company. (I think this is absurd since at 65 an executive has 10, 20, even 30 good years ahead)  This gentleman told me that he was the one that had to accompany the boss to his house the last day of work.  When they got to his home and he stepped out of the car, he noticed the man was crying. He gave him the car keys and confessed to him that he had no money to buy a new car.  He was broke.

Imagine working 35 years for a company and reaching your retirement age with no money, not even enough to buy a car.  

That made such an impression on this company president, at such a young age, that he swore that this would not happen to him when he reached 65.  He started a savings program and has kept it to this day. This man is a rich man and he is in his mid- fifties.

 

Yes, many of us, me included, have had trouble with impulse control.  It is our psychological make up and sometimes the environment or our upbringing contributes to our inability to control our impulses. But it is never too late for us to start changing our behavior.  I learned my lesson a few years ago and I now have a good savings program.

 

What about you?

 

Can you afford to continue expending all your resources so that when you get to 65 you are like 90% of all people in the world, flat broke?

 

Those of you that are lucky enough to work for companies that have high regard for their employees and offer a 401 k and or a matching contribution program and financial advice and do not take advantage of this situation, can’t be forgiven.  What a waste if you are not taking advantage of that program. It is never too late to start saving.

 

Those of you that work for companies that do not have those programs, take responsibility and start your own savings program.

 

In our society, one of the richest in the world, there is no excuse for anyone to reach the golden age plain broke. Hey, if Legson made it, everyone can.

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Persistence and a "Can do" Attitude are key factors to succeed.

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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Persistence and a “can do” attitude are key factors to succeed.

Next week I will be speaking at a NASA innovation conference. What I will talk about is the fact that all of us are one applied idea away from a big success in our lives, a success that might not only change our lives but also change the lives of our loved ones, our community, country or even the world.

Since I was invited to speak at the Rotary Club of Santurce, I decided to try out most of my NASA speech in that forum. Since I wasn’t getting paid, I could try out new material and if worked great, if it didn’t, I would not have to return their money because I wasn’t charging anything. That is the beauty of speaking to non-profits for free, you can try out new material and if it works, you use it with paying clients, if it doesn’t, you take it out.

I told the story of Jean Dominique Bauby, former editor of Elle magazine in Paris who was doing great in his wonderful job and he decided to buy a brand new BMW. The car, with a chauffeur delivered to his office and he told the driver to take him to his home so that he could show the car to his two children. They got there and the little girl wasn’t home but the boy was. He told the chauffeur to stay put and he took his little kid for a ride. Thirty seconds into the ride, he felt a sharp pain and passed out. When he opened his eyes a month later, he was in a hospital, totally paralyzed. He had had a stroke, the kind they call “the locked in syndrome”, totally paralyzed with the ability to move only one part of his body, in his particular case, the left eyelid. No need to tell you what this man went through, it is difficult to put into words. While he was in bed, he had a big idea. Write a book! Can you imagine, writing a book when all you can move is an eyelid? It is a crazy idea! But he wanted it done and to be able to do so, he teamed with a young lady and every morning she would go to his bedside and with the French alphabet in a board, he would blink every time she mentioned a letter he needed to form a word, then a sentence, a paragraph and a full page. With great effort, he wrote a magnificent book,” The Diving Bell and the Butterfly”. There is even a movie about it. When he finished the book, it was taken to him and he died a few days later. It seems his mission in life was to write that book and to teach us that there is nothing more powerful than the human spirit.

I also told the story of Hirotada Ototake who wrote a book with no arms and no legs and he even graduated from college. When I was writing my first book “How to Survive Among Piranhas”, I had to do a speech at the Rotary Club building in Rio Piedras for some members of the University of Puerto Rico faculty. In order to be able to leave quickly, I had the brilliant idea of leaving my car on the outside of the club’s parking and when I came out, I found my car vandalized and my planner with my book’s manuscript  gone, a devastating blow that demotivated me and made me stop writing books.

When I met Hirotada, I stood in front of the mirror and felt ashamed that just because someone had stolen my almost finished manuscript, I had stopped writing while a guy with no legs and no arms completed a whole book. I started writing again and a year and a half later I had the book done.

I then presented three very special Puerto Rican writers that have made me very proud.

The first one was Frances Rios, a young lady that called me five years ago and invited me to coffee in Starbucks and told me she wanted to be a professional speaker. A very important part of being a professional speaker is to write a book. She did everything that I suggested she do to a tee and now, five years later, she is an accomplished speaker, a member of the National Speakers Association and the author of “The Glue Factor” a very successful book.

The other young lady I introduced was Arleen Muniz, a very young writer, a cashier in a supermarket in Ponce who with great persistence and effort wrote a book about poetry that has sold extremely well. She sells it when people go through the check- out lane and in any place that allows her to speak about her book.

My third “case” was Anita Paniagua, a very nice business woman  that I met while she was a sales consultant for WOSO when I was doing some consulting work for them. She was also teaching a night class at the university and married with children, with a full plate, she found the time to write her book, “Emprendeser” and with great perseverance, completed it. Today she is conducting seminars and webinars and selling her book very successfully.

You can’t imagine the amount of people that approach me to tell me that “someday” they want to write a book and become a motivational speaker.  You know what? “Someday” means never! Unless you take it very seriously and you write down in your planner the steps you have to take to write the book or become a speaker, and then take action, it will never happen.

Anything in life you want, you must take it from your original idea to reality, to the real world, and with a very positive attitude ready to tackle every obstacle that will come before you; you will persist until you achieve it.

How proud I felt today with those three young ladies that said they would do it and they did. They are a great role model in our society.

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Cheating to Win? Not Even Lance Armstrong is entitle to it.

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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Cheating to win? Not even Lance Armstrong is entitled to it.

I have mixed feelings in writing this article but I think the issue is important and should be analyzed and thought about.

At 2 am today I got an email from a major news source saying that Lance Armstrong was going to be stripped of all his titles and that he would never ever be able to race again.

I was shocked. It definitely caught me by surprise.

But what really shocked me even more was that he wasn’t going to stop fighting against it. Even though quitting would mean giving up his seven Tour de France titles, and never ever be able to participate in any kind of USADA races, he chose to simply give up.

We are talking about a superstar, a cyclist whose incredible victories after his comeback from cancer helped him to become a super hero, in fact, transcend sports.

Obviously, besides being stripped of his titles, his name would be wiped out from the record books of a sport he once dominated, was admired and hailed as the king.

Armstrong probably knew his legacy would be stained by his decision. He said he had grown tired of defending himself, in a perceived, never ending fight against charges that he used drugs while winning more Tour victories than anyone in history.

He has, and I have heard him say it, passed hundreds of drug tests that he had to submit to during his incredible run of races from 1999 to 2005.

“There comes a point in every man’s life when he has to say, “Enough is enough”. For me, that time is now”.

He added, “I have been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. The toll this has taken on my family and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today-finished with this nonsense.”

I think this is a sad day for all of us who admired Lance Armstrong. It breaks my heart to have to admit that the guy that I have cheered on and spoken about in many of my speeches is actually a cheater.

In all fairness, even in the event that he did dope himself in order to win, having beaten cancer and gotten on top of that bicycle to pedal for hundreds of mails in order to win a medal and represent his country is really to be admired.

But, to cheat in doing so, takes away so much, really, takes away so much!

Even though he said he wasn’t going to fight this anymore, he did say “I know who won those seven Tours, my teammates know who won those seven Tours, and everyone I competed against knows who won those seven Tours”.

Well, if this is the case, why give up? Giving up is accepting that you might be guilty.

What about 10 of his teammates willing to testify that he did use drugs? This is clearly not good for him and it might be one of the reasons he decided not to fight it. What about a journalist that has covered him for many years and when interviewed by CNN, said that he had no doubt that Armstrong used drugs?

Some of the people close to him were caught up in the investigations. Bruyneel, the coach of his teams, and three members of the medical staff and a consultant were also charged.

Bruyneel is taking his case to arbitration, while two medical team staffers and consulting doctor Michelle Ferrari didn’t formally contest the charges and were issued lifetime bans by USADA. Ferrari maintains he is innocent. Yet he was banned by Italian authorities over doping charges in 2002. Also, former personal and team assistants accused Armstrong of having steroids in an apartment in Spain and getting rid of syringes that were used for injections of steroids.

There is a recorded testimony from a former teammate, Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy, saying that Armstrong told doctors during his 1996 fight with cancer that he had taken a bunch of steroids and performing enhancing drugs. .

I have to think about this more much carefully. I just received the news, I am under a deadline for this article and I haven’t had the time to really think about this.

As of now, I am against any athlete that has the attitude of win at all costs, making fun of being fair and playing straight. I am against cheating or trying to gain an unfair advantage over your competitors.

I used to tell some of my athletes who did the sign of the cross before a race to not do it because asking God to make you win was actually cheating. Why not win for yourself without God’s intervention?

It was more of a joke than anything else and we all had a good laugh about it but think about it. If you need to pray in order to win, you are in bad shape and if you don’t win, you will think that God let you down. Bad outcome whether you win or lose.

There is absolutely no glory in cheating to win, not even for Armstrong who came back from a deadly disease and almost, almost became the number one cyclist in the history of mankind.  Now, everything has been wiped out. What a shame!

 

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A Very Difficult Subject: Integrity

Joachim De Posada

By Joachim De Posada

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A very difficult subject: Integrity

In working with dozens of companies as a consultant, I have been seen vision, mission, principles and value statements that companies exhibit in posters pasted  all over the company and now a days in their websites.

I have had a lot of fun asking employees about what is written in the posters and almost 100% can’t recall or verbalize what they say. Sometimes they can’t even name one single principle out of the 5 to 7 that are usually listed.

Honesty and integrity are present in most statements, along with excellence, teamwork, customer service, innovation and a few others.

Sometimes they list only the words, other times they use stock phrases such as:

“We act with integrity in everything we do…”

“We combine integrity with superb customer service…”

“Our employees hold honesty and integrity as our guiding principles…”

They are positive statements, right? Have you ever wondered why they have to be listed in the first place?

After all, who would want to do business with a company that is not ethical, honest or that provides poor customer service? Nobody wants to get involved with an organization that doesn’t tell the truth, cheats or takes advantage of clients.

Nor do people want to work for an organization or supervisor that is not honest, lies or mistreats employees.

As one senior executive said to me, “we do what we say we are going to do. We keep our promises”.

Hours later, I asked an employee about a pay raise that was promised and he said that he never got it. Six months had gone by after they promised him.

It is not that simple as you may imagine to really practice integrity.

It is a natural human ability to rationalize all kinds of behaviors. For example, if you ask students in school, college, high school or middle school if cheating is wrong, most will tell you that it is wrong. 

Yet, research shows that at least 95% of students have admitted to have engaged in some form of cheating. Most of the time it involves a particular situation, maybe under pressure, where a choice had to be made in order to get a better grade and the choice was made: Cheat.

Looking back, the students often justify the choice as “no big deal”, “everyone does it”. “I don’t do it all the time”. In other words, they rationalize their behavior and in their minds they are honest people.

Let’s be real, all of us, not only students constantly are being tested by choices we are faced with on a daily basis. Do we tell a client that wants to buy a house that in the master bedroom the previous owner killed his wife? Or that every night at 2am a train goes by and makes such a noise that people can’t have a peaceful sleep and always wake up?

Do we tell the prospective buyer that the transmission in the car we want to get rid of acted up and we bought real heavy oil to mask the symptom until we sell the car?

What is considered a legitimate expense when we go on a company paid business trip?

Do we declare some expenses as business expenses even though we were on vacation?

Do we list everything on a resume or we leave out some incidents or experiences that might disqualify us from a much needed job.

By the way, social media is really affecting people looking for work. Employers are searching for you in Facebook, Linked in, Google plus and some pictures you posted or statements you made will disqualify you from being hired. Be very careful.

Also, there is a new site, www.klout.com that will measure your level of influence in the world. For some high level positions, employers are looking you up to see how influential you are. As of today I have a 68, anything above 50 is very good. Check your score or sign up if you don’t show up.

Getting back to integrity:

How honest should I be when I see that my boss is not doing the right thing?

None of these examples have crystal clear answers and no company policy, no matter how hard it tries, can cover every situation. As a result, no matter what choices we make, we are very good at convincing ourselves that we acted with integrity.

In fact, let me take this to an extreme.

Ted Bundy, one of the worst serial murderer in history, when caught, he defended his actions in terms of the fact-value distinction. He scoffed at those, like the professors from whom he learned the fact-value distinction, who still lived their lives as if there were truth-value to value claims. He thought they were fools and that he was one of the few who had the courage and integrity to live a consistent life in light of the truth that value judgments, including the command "Thou shall not kill," are merely subjective assertion.

Even a murderer can rationalize his behavior.

Another problem we face with integrity is the fact that there is no one definition that applies to all.

Paying a purchasing agent under the table to be able to win a contract might be considered an acceptable business practice in a particular country and inexcusable in another. I have travelled all over the world, at last count over 60 countries, and I have been told in many countries that if I was not willing to bribe the buyer (la mordida); I would not get the business.

I know of reputable, big name companies here in Puerto Rico and the United States whose officers have bribed government officials in Latin American countries.

The ability for people to rationalize and the difficulties to define integrity, leads us to believe that the matter is not easy or simple. This is why only relying on compliance measures, policies, rules and even accounting audits is usually not enough. These mechanisms can be of help in identifying clearly illegal violations but they don’t come close to dealing with the little choices, the little decisions we face every single day.

For this, you will have to rely on personal judgment.

So, let me end with three good integrity quotes so that they can be of help in your daily professional and personal lives.

In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you.
— Warren Buffet

There are seven things that will destroy us: Wealth without work; Pleasure without conscience; Knowledge without character; Religion without sacrifice; Politics without principle; Science without humanity; Business without ethics.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Trust is rebuilt by focusing not on what the other person did or did not do but on critiquing one's own behavior, improving one's trustworthiness, and focusing attention not on words and promises but on actions, attitudes, and ways of being.
- Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmith

One last question: What are you willing to do to make integrity more than just a word in your company's mission statement?

 

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