Integrity henry cloud pdf

Cloud explores the six qualities of character that define integrity. He uses stories from well-known business leaders like Michael Dell and sports figures like Tiger Woods to illustrate each of these qualities. He shows us how people with integrity:. Success is not related to only talent or brains.

There are a lot of bright, talented people who are never successful. And the most successful are not only the ones with the most talent. The real factor, Cloud demonstrates, is the makeup of the person. But, I have to do something and I was hoping you could get the team back together, or fix him, or something.

But we need something. I mean, look at the numbers. They speak for themselves, and if you talk to him about any of this, that is what he will say as well. It is hard to tell him that he is a problem when he can just point to how well we are doing.

And, that is a little of where I find myself too. So, he is helping me. That is how you come up with thinking he is a good deal? That is his job, to make the revenue side work. Our CFO, controller, project managers, and others watch the expenses. He is compensated well, but he is more than worth it. What I meant were the other expenses that he creates.

How many hours do you think you have spent listening to other people talk about their problems with him over the past couple of years? Just a few meetings a week would get us in the hundreds of hours.

Multiply that times your hourly rate to the company and you get a different picture of his expense to you. Do you still feel like he is such a great deal? One of my favorite things to do is to sit on the aft deck of a boat going across the ocean and just watch the wake. It is such a beautiful, ever-changing creation as the ship continues on its path. You can tell a lot about a ship as you look at its wake.

If it is in a straight line, you get a feeling that the boat is steadily on course, and that the captain is not dozing at the wheel, or that an engine or a shaft is not somehow out of whack.

But if it is wavering, you begin to wonder. Also, if it is smooth and flat, you know something about the speed of the boat, and if it is steep, you can tell something about its drag. In other words, what the wake looks like can tell you a lot about the boat itself. With people, the same thing is true.

And just as with a boat, there are always two sides to the wake that a leader or someone else leaves when moving through our lives or the life of an organization.

The two sides of the wake are: 1. The task 2. And we can tell a lot about that person from the nature of the wake. In terms of the task, what does the wake look like? Is it a wake of goals being reached? Profits being made? Growth of the business or the deal that the person was working on with you? The mission being accomplished? Things getting completed? New ways of doing things being introduced and perfected? A stronger brand? A stronger reputation for the work and company?

Better systems and processes? Cleaner operations? Or, is it a different kind of wake? Unreached goals and projections? Mission not accomplished?

Lack of completion? Disorganization and chaos? Inactivity and nothing happening? Lack of focus? False starts? Resources and money lost? And from the wake, which is the real performance and results, we can tell a lot about the person.

Results matter. They are the stuff from which we are evaluated and for which we strive to bring our dreams and plans into reality. When we look at results, the wake, we are really looking at ourselves and learning something about our character in the same way that the wake of a ship tells us a lot about the ship.

At the end of the day, we must look back and see if the wake of our work is profitable or not. The wake is the results we leave behind. It is what it is. No matter what we try to do to explain why, or to justify what the wake is, it still remains. It is what we leave behind and is our record.

On the other side of the wake are the relationships. Just as we leave the effects of our work behind in results, we leave the effects of our interactions with people behind in their hearts, minds, and 18 Dr. Henry Cloud souls. We leave a wake of people behind us as we move through their lives and their organizations. We leave a wake behind as we move through the lives of clients and partners. We leave a wake behind as we move through our relationships with vendors and other alliances, as well as our entire industry.

Or are they out there bobbing for air, bleeding, and left wounded as shark bait? Did they consider it a blessing that they were associated with you, or a curse? What is the nature of the wake? Are they smiling or reeling?

In the people side, just as in the task side, there are results. Are they more trusting after working with us? Are they more fulfilled as people? Have they grown as a result of being associated with you?

Do they feel better about themselves, and working with others? Did they learn from you and feel lifted up and encouraged? Were they stretched and inspired to become more than they were before they worked with or for you?

Did your relationship cause them to produce more? Or, are they wounded? Less trusting? Feeling put down, cheated, or manipulated? Disappointed, let down, or lied to? Are they angry and just waiting for a chance to get even?

Do they feel inferior, like a loser, or ashamed because of how you interacted with them? In doing all of the due diligence in my search, I called two of her former bosses. I asked a lot about the wake on both sides, the task side and the relationship side. It was encouraging to hear them talk about her work, the results that she would always get, and the way that people INTEGRITY 19 who worked with her and clients felt about her. I also pushed and asked about the downsides of the wake as well.

They told me a few things about her that were ripples in the wake, i. I paid attention to them, as I knew that if I hired her, I would also run into those aspects of her wake as well. In my estimation, as in theirs, these were not a big deal. That was the answer that I needed, for it was clearly out of the wake that she had left behind. Since I know that those kinds of wakes are produced out of who a person is, I could be confident in the kind that she is most likely to leave with me.

So, that is how I wanted Brad to evaluate his VP. Look at the total reality of the wake. The truth is that his character, who he was as a person, was leaving a wake behind that included much more than just the sales numbers. These are all things that affect the task, the mission, and the bottom line.

And, on the pure relationship side of things, people were definitely not water-skiing on the wake of working with him.

Some were headed to the emergency room, and others were just hating the climate that he was developing. In just about every direction, things did not look good, and even with the people who were not negative on him, such as the CEO, it was because they were just 20 Dr. Henry Cloud looking at shortsighted results and not at the larger cancer that was growing right in front of them. In the end, the CEO was slow to do what he should have done, and the board got involved.

The superstar was disciplined for some things and left, with a hefty severance. The CEO left shortly thereafter as a result of losing the confidence of the board. Not a healthy wake for either of them as we look back. They were gifted people. But they did have some shortfalls in the thing that leaves the wake: character.

In the case of the sales VP, his relational abilities left a lot to be desired. His interpersonal dealings not only left people being hurt by working with him, and disliking him, but also desiring to leave the company as a result of having to work with or report to him.

Not a good wake on that side of the boat. And, on the task side, although he appeared to be doing well, his interpersonal shortcomings got in the way so much that the very tasks that he was accomplishing were getting compromised in a big way and ultimately brought down to nothing. And we can say the same thing for the CEO. He was smart and gifted as well, but who he was as a person allowed this VP to virtually split his company apart and cause things to fragment to such a de- INTEGRITY 21 gree that key people were either completely disrupted or looking at leaving.

His inability to deal with the relational side of his work eventually caused the task side of things to go down as well. In effect, due to his personal weaknesses, he lost everything he had worked for.

And if those things are in place, then we often put the character issue to rest and begin to talk about business or performance abilities, competencies, and the like. Do you think that anyone ever asked him in his job interview how he goes about building trust with people and making sure that other parts of the company trust him as well?

But he obviously lacked that interpersonal ability, and it made all of his strategic initiatives that were extremely effective worthless in the end. Ultimately, it turned out to be the most important thing. Similarly, in his interview or training, how much attention do you think was paid to his ability to regain broken trust or repair a relationship after a conflict? Or to making other team members feel valued and want to give all of their service to him?

Obviously not enough, nor does it appear that he paid much attention to de- 22 Dr. Henry Cloud veloping those aspects of his personhood either. In the end, it cost him and the company dearly. We can see that even though those two skills were relational in nature, they affected both the relational and the task side of the wake. And, the truth is that those issues flowed out from who he was as a person, his makeup.

That is what I am referring to as character that includes more than ethics and morals. Similarly, Brad, the CEO, had his own character or makeup issues that affected his own wake as well. Do you think it was a lack of business sense in Brad that created this mess? Certainly not. He understood the markets, the strategies, the operations, and the other aspects of the business picture.

He also understood that he had a problem with Brad. All of those calls with the attorneys kind of clued him in on that reality. But, in the end, it was something about his makeup that kept him from dealing with this issue directly. He was afraid of losing him, and losing the performance. He was also afraid of confronting in a direct way someone that he needed so much.

He could not get tough enough to face into it. In the end, he lost them. Both were impeccably responsible. If you are a general in the air force, and you need a new airplane built, you go see Boeing or someone like them and tell them that you want a new jet. They get a roomful of engineers together, and before they decide on what kind of material, or metal, they will use to build the airplane, they have to ask you an important question: What are you going to do with this plane?

If you say you want it to be able to go from a standstill to mph in a flash, then they will design it in one way. It will begin to break apart at that kind of acceleration. We need a design with a different character, or makeup. If it has to carry cargo or reach other speeds or go for long distances without refueling and thus have better fuel efficiency, then weight and other issues begin to get specifically important. Character is everything, depending on what demands are going to be put upon the design.

In the same way that the realities of torque, weather, temperature, gravity, and other things put demands on a metal that it has to meet in order to perform and not crash, there are realities that put demands on people that they have to meet in order to perform and not crash as well. Henry Cloud And the character of the person is what determines his or her ability to meet those reality demands, i. Their makeup, their integrity, will either be able to deliver or not. They will meet the demand, and succeed, leaving a wake of goals being reached and people being fulfilled only if their character can meet that demand.

The demands that reality brings are many and varied. There are interpersonal demands, such as difficult people and relationships that one must negotiate and make work. Everyone, at whatever level of business he or she has conducted, has experienced that reality. On the task side, the reality demands are ever present also.

INTEGRITY 25 Think of the realities that make demands on the metal of your character: You have put your lifeblood into a project for months, you get the first numbers back, and they are bad. What happens inside? Some people proactively wrap their arms around the situation, get energized, become clearheaded, get to work, and have all their capacities available to them.

They turn it around. They meet the demand of the reality of bad numbers staring them in the face. They deliver. But other people go into a black hole, feel like a loser, get afraid, get mean, panic, stall out, or retreat. The bad numbers do them in. Here is another example: You are given a new opportunity, project, or task.

The possibilities are enormous. But, they bring realities that make tough demands. There is going to be a season of no rewards, and people are going to question your every decision to go in that direction. There is going to be risk, and the possibility of failure means a lot of loss.

There are going to be chances to move too quickly as well. There is going to be the need to hold yourself back and be strategic before making a move, and then to have the courage to make it. You must be able to delay gratification and keep going while it is all building.

What if a new opportunity comes along in the middle of things that looks attractive, but would sidetrack you and get you scattered?

Can you say no to that one? Do you have the guts to eliminate the ones that are already distracting you? What if there are people involved that you need to move or lay off? What if you have to call the investors or the bank and ask them for more money? Depending on your makeup, when those demands come, you will either meet their requirements and succeed, leaving a wake of results, or your makeup will be overcome by them.

For some, opportunity itself causes a problem. The risk is too scary, the pressure too great, and fear overcomes talent, brains, and abilities. The status quo is more comfortable, yet not really. Or, you get too frus- 26 Dr.

Henry Cloud trated with the process, begin to take shortcuts, and screw it up in some way. In the end, character always rules. It is never the business issues that cause David stress. He loves those. It is always a problem that was caused by a person. It is always the personal side that creates the problems, the stress, or messes up the goals. I have had the privilege of working with and consulting with some very successful people over the years, and there are reasons that they make it as they do, from Fortune 25 to family-held firms.

I have gotten to watch them and see their character deliver results time and time again. And as a consultant, I have seen the problems that these personal, character issues bring as well, even in people with enormous brains and talent. What I want to do here is to get specific about what those elements of character are that make it all go one way or the other, and in doing so, to give you a helpful template by which to grow into the person who can deliver whatever reality asks you to do.

When you do that, your brains, talents, and potential will intersect with reality and find themselves creating a wake that will be fulfilling to you, and enjoyable and profitable for those who are in it with you. And I want to give you hope for yourself, or for some of the ones that you work with or are responsible for. As we shall see, character can change and grow. That is the exciting part. You have to make sure you pick people with good character because that is what you are going to be stuck with.

Character is fixed from early on. People grow and people change when the right experiences are brought to the person, and they have the right response in using those experiences. Once you build it, it is pretty much going to stand there just like that. Those are two different issues.

It all depends on what kinds of investment one is willing to make in bringing about that change, and whether it is worth it to the parties involved. So, I agreed with him in a different way. You should always pick people with the best character possible, because of the very things I have been saying. It is what produces the results that you are looking for, and why in the world would you intentionally pick someone who is not equipped to deliver? Or that you would have to change or fix?

But, selection and growth are two different issues. So, since you do have a big stake in your own success and results, you will be willing to make the invest- 28 Dr.

Henry Cloud ment that brings about change, no matter where you need to grow. As well as to help the ones you work with and depend on. That is the hope that you can have. I have seen it a zillion times. But to grow, we have to know what character is, what it looks like, and ultimately what its relationship is to reality. Where does it intersect real life?

That is the question that we will address. You have told me about some. I never invest in businesses other than my own. I invested in the people. Henry Cloud in a person. If I know their character, their history, how they operate, what kind of judgment they have, what kind of risks are acceptable to them, how they execute, and things like that, and I know them well, I will invest. All I could do was reflect on what he had said. It was such a clear picture of what makes for success.

When you have the right people on board, they deal with bad markets well. They come up with a way to make it work. When they get far enough along to find out that their strategy is flawed, or not working, they adapt and fix it.

When they run out of resources, they either find out where they are losing them, or they find new ones. What he was describing was a picture of character at work. But it was a particular kind of character.

As I mentioned in chapter 1, when asked about integrity, we usually think of the moral and ethical aspects of integrity. And it is always absolutely essential that those things be present.

As we shall see in the section on transcendence, without those aspects of integrity where someone can be depended on to live out values, everything falls apart.

The structure of life, from relationships to societies, depends on moral and ethical structure being intact and practiced. But, my friend was talking about more than that. He was talking about a complete picture of performance, all the way from gaining trust, to getting results, and a return on investment.

But it is also more, as even the Oxford Dictionary and the history of the word integrity itself tells us. Listen to the definitions as Oxford Dictionary or whoever lists them: 1. The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness. But, there is more. The condition of bring unified, unimpaired, or sound in construction.

Internal consistency or lack of corruption in electronic data. And, the origins of the word we can see in the French and Latin meanings of intact, integrate, integral, and entirety.

It is about wholeness and effectiveness as people. He would give millions only to a person who did not have a gaping hole in one side of the boat. It would not be enough for someone to be able to sell well, to have a good idea or a good business plan. For someone to get his money, the person would have to have good judgment as well. It would not be enough to be aggressive, or a risk taker. The person 32 Dr. Henry Cloud would have to be able to finish things and be a closer, not leaving a bunch of good ideas undone, unexecuted, and scattered.

Too Much to Ask? That for someone to be successful that they have to be able to do everything well? No one does everything well. We all have strengths and weaknesses. In fact, a lot of research and experience shows us that capitalizing on our strong areas and avoiding our weak areas is an essential concept. First of all, it would be a waste if George Lucas spent all of his time calling on and selling films to distributors.

Or if Tiger Woods had to negotiate and follow up with Nike. I am sure that if Tiger were a weak negotiator or business executive, he could still win the Masters.

If I am an investor, I want Tiger focusing on golf, not business. So that is not the idea here. We all have strengths and weaknesses and we need to operate in those strong areas where we are talented and gifted.

As we shall see, they are things that will actually affect the golf itself, whether or not he ever decides to do the bookkeeping or selling of his name, brand, INTEGRITY 33 image, products, and the like. And that is true of his accountant and business manager as well as whoever does all of the other functions in his kingdom.

Bottom line: the character issues will affect the one or two things you do well, forgetting any need to do the rest. Put them in human resources or psychology or customer service. If they lack that ability that is not so relational in nature, then their living out of their gifted area is going to suffer greatly.

Character transcends gifts and the context of the expression of those gifts. So, the concept of integrity being about needing wholeness in all areas of character does not negate the reality that we are not gifted in all areas, nor the reality that we do best when we are working within our gifts. What it does say is that if we do not have integrity of character, wholeness of character functioning in the ways that we will describe it, then our ability to capitalize on our strengths will be severely affected.

In the last chapter, there is no doubt that Rick was working in his area of giftedness, which was sales. But, a lack of wholeness in 34 Dr. Henry Cloud character integrity, not his gifted area, did him in. We need our gifts, but without wholeness of character—integrity as we are calling it—our gifts will become unusable or at least less fruitful. There are a lot of ways to look at it and a lot of definitions.

I can assure you that many other good models about character and integrity are out there. What this one attempts to do is to share the most discrete aspects of character functioning that affect results. And as we have seen in the case of Brad and Rick, results in the interaction of the two.

What I have tried to do here is to take those aspects of character and put them into functions that tend to be different from each other, therefore discrete, and at the same time, related to each other, therefore integrated. If we have that combination, then we can focus on specific aspects of our makeup and, at the same time, be focusing on all of our makeup and getting it working together.

That is what brings results and effectiveness, i. The ability to connect authentically which leads to trust 2. The ability to be oriented toward the truth which leads to finding and operating in reality 3. The ability to work in a way that gets results and finishes well which leads to reaching goals, profits, or the mission 4. The ability to embrace, engage, and deal with the negative which leads to ending problems, resolving them, or transforming them 5.

The ability to be oriented toward growth which leads to increase 6. The ability to be transcendent which leads to enlargement of the bigger picture and oneself If people are able to function well in these areas, the good wake is virtually inevitable. Their gifts are able to come to fruition in the real world and get real results for meaningful purposes. And the people with whom they accomplish those, as well as the people for whom they accomplish those goals, are better off for having been with them.

Likewise, the ways in which we are incomplete in these things will have a real effect on our fruitfulness both functionally as well as relationally. We will see it in the wake. At this point in our discussion, it will be difficult to completely see what I am referring to with regards to what all of these actually mean.

What if, for example, someone is good at the fourth trait, the 36 Dr. Henry Cloud ability to face negative realities and solve them. She would be a good problem solver. Over time, and not much time, she would flatline, and we know what happens to any business or organization or person that has flatlined and stopped growing: they are usually going backward and the indicators have just not caught up yet.

They are often dying if they are not growing. A flat line is usually the beginning of a downward line. Or, as I hinted at earlier, what if someone is really good at building connections, establishing trust with people, and treating them in ways that strengthen the bonds. But, there is a real weakness in their orientation toward the truth and they have blind spots that keep them out of touch with certain realities. Then, they end up forging connections with people or in situations where real warning signs are telling them to back off, not go forward.

They do not see what is wrong with someone or a situation. There are going to be some real effects in their decision-making, alliances, ability to deal with the resulting problems, and ultimately the fruits of it all. The street term for this is he is just too trusting. But, it comes from a lack of other parts being integrated into trust so that the trust ability is pure and not corrupted.

There are many other examples that a lack of integration of character brings about and we shall see, but suffice it to say at this point that integration or incompleteness in these areas of functioning is a huge problem with real-life results, both personally and professionally for people. The reason is that the opposite of integration is compartmentalization. That means that a part of oneself can be operating without the benefit of other parts, and that spells trouble.

Or people who are creative, but without the benefit of being structured or organized. They are impulsive.

Strengths turn into weaknesses without the other parts of a person to balance them out. The Gap Besides integration, or completeness, there is also the problem of underdevelopment in these areas, which we will focus on in great detail throughout the book. What happens when we are underdeveloped in one of these critical areas? First of all, it means we are human. That is the good news! There is always room for improvement.

If you take any of the six character traits, we can conceive of what it would be, or at least think about what it would be, to be perfect in that ability. But, the reality is that none of us is there. We are somewhere on a continuum from little ability to connect and the ideal. So, underdevelopment leaves a gap between where we are at any given moment and where we need to be. That gap is our need and opportunity for growth. It is also the place where dysfunction occurs and the interruptions in our pursuits of goals and relationships.

Remember, charac- 38 Dr. Henry Cloud ter equals the ability to meet the demands of reality. So, to reach our goals and deliver in our relationships, we have to be able to negotiate those realities or they crush us, stop us, hurt us, or thwart us.

The places at which we are underdeveloped are the places at which problems occur. If you remember, in chapter 1, I talked about three specific ways in which this occurs: 1. Reaching great success only to self-destruct and lose it all Character growth is what insures us that these three things will not happen or will happen in lessening degrees over time.

Besides our just not closing the gap between where we are and where we should be, a bigger problem can occur when we lack character integrity. With all the talk in the last years about dysfunctional families, management teams, people, and the like, it might be good to define what I mean by the term. I do not mean imperfection, or that you make mistakes, or that you have areas of immaturity, weaknesses, or flaws.

Those things just mean that you are human. Getting better and growing is fun. What I mean by dysfunctional is something way worse than the natural need to be or do better. Dysfunctional as I use it means that not only is someone imperfect in some ability, but the actual exertion of effort in that area causes more problems, or a greater gap, than it solves.

In other words, it would have been better if people had not tried, because the end result is worse than where they started. You could accomplish more when he was absent than when trying to contribute. Or, the person who tries to resolve a conflict with someone, but only makes it worse.

In the attempt at resolution, these people not only repeat the original mistakes, but add some new ones as well. They go in to apologize for something and end up yelling at the other person or blaming him or her in the apology.

It would have been better for them not to have shown up at all. The real factor, Cloud demonstrates, is the makeup of the person. All of us can grow in the kinds of real character that bring about fruitful relationships and achievement of purpose, mission, and goals. Integrity is not something that you either have or don't, but instead is an exciting growth path that all of us can engage in and enjoy.

Leadership Nonfiction Business Psychology More details. Henry Cloud 95 books 1, followers. Cloud has written or co-written twenty-five books, including the two million-seller Boundaries.

His most recent books are Boundaries for Leaders and Necessary Endings. As president of Cloud-Townsend Resources, Dr. Cloud has produced and conducted hundreds of public seminars around the country. He speaks on relationships—marriage, parenting, dating, personal growth, and spirituality.

His seminars are often broadcast live to over two thousand venues at a time. Search review text. Great book with valuable lessons. This is definitely a keeper. This involves the ability to: 1. Establishes trust "True listening and understanding occurs when the other person understands that you understand" Build trust through vulnerability; allow yourself to be transparent enough to express need.

Oriented toward truth "Reality is always your friend" Gets results Know who you are: "People who do best in life have a well-defined identity on a number of fronts" Know when and how to "lose" well. Embraces the negative "Profit comes as a result of facing problems, so doing it is seen as a good thing, not a negative thing" Own up to mistakes: "Leaders take ownership of the results and do not try to excuse those or blame someone else Oriented towards growth - Develop the drive to grow via integration.

Take risks, but know that: "Risk means that you do something that has the possibility of a bad outcome, and that you embrace that possibility and are OK with it" Some traits of people whose orientation is toward growth: - Submits to someone further down the road - Values the present but doesn't want to stay there - Subjects themselves to their inability - Rests and recovers - Helps others develop more 6.

Oriented towards transcendence "To live and flourish, we must bow to the things larger than us" But the mature character meets the demands of life" Truly, there were parts of it that made great sense and that I will remember when I am "working on my character. I have things I want to improve on in life but I don't need to read them written 65 different ways to get it. This book was horribly repetitive. In fact, the conclusion was the best part and summarized for me what is really important and what the obstacles are to developing integrity.

I also was glad the author recognized both the unchangeable factor of genes or personality as I was thinking of it and the need to have a safe environment in which to become a better person. Smack in the middle of a medical residency, sleep-derived and perpetually irritable, was not the place for a natural hothead like me to "have the courage to meet the demands of reality.

I particularly appreciated the tone. It doesn't promise more than it provides and only relies on a handful of overly-hackneyed stories that I noticed. Rounding up because I'm still smarting from how much I loathed that Seth Godin book I just finished and it made this one shine all the more. Nothing groundbreaking but coherently presented piece of the importance of integrity and how one can work towards self improvement.

Not preachy, which is often the off-putting aspect of those kind of books, but addressed with polite understanding of humans faults.