Integrity Leadership
The rarest and most powerful form of leadership.
If you want comfort, stop here.
This is not a feel-good read, it is a mirror and a knife.
A mirror to see what is true, a knife to cut away what is not.
Enter with intent.
If you want clarity, read deliberately, question yourself, act on what matters.
Know thyself — The first command of leadership
Know thyself - Gnōthi seauton - was inscribed at the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, where seekers came to consult the Oracle. It is not merely advice; it is a warning, a compass, and a lifelong discipline.
At its core, it means: before you attempt to rule the world, govern yourself. Before you seek to understand others, understand the machinery within you. It is the first principle of wisdom because without self-knowledge, every success becomes misaligned, every failure misinterpreted, and every choice reactive rather than deliberate.
To know yourself is not to describe your personality, your strengths, or your story. It is to observe the mechanisms beneath them. To observe the patterns of thought that repeat, the emotions that command, the fears that disguise themselves as ambition. It is to see, without judgment, the forces that move you.
In performance terms, self-knowledge is calibration. It is the athlete who senses fatigue before burnout, the leader who detects ego before blindness, the parent who feels projection before control. The one who knows himself is no longer driven by the noise of the unconscious but acts from clarity — making integrity possible, the rarest form of power.
From humility to self-knowledge to integrity leadership
Standing on the shoulders of giants like Aristotle, Lao Tzu and Plato, legendary coach Vince Lombardi once said: “Only by knowing yourself can you become an effective leader.”
For Lombardi as for me, this isn’t philosophy, it is practice. Leadership begins with understanding your own values and limits, for that is where integrity is born.
“Lay first the foundation of humility. The higher your structure is to be, the deeper must be its foundation.”
Humility does not mean weakness, but its opposite. It allows leaders of all stripes to observe themselves with a sense of wonder rather than expectation. To (re)connect with their deepest values and the wider world. From this self-knowledge grows integrity.
In Legacy, this integrity is called character. In my language, integrity is having the character to align who you are with what you do. From integrity flows the most powerful form of leadership.
This echoes a moment in the life of Buckminster Fuller, the visionary architect. In despair, he once asked himself: “What is my job on the planet — what is it that needs doing that probably won’t happen unless I take responsibility for it?” The question saved his life. It anchored him in purpose.
These questions, in turn, inspired Lombardi, and might in turn inspire us. This might mean taking responsibility for a team, for a company, or for a family. Or it might be something as simple as sweeping the sheds — a powerful metaphor of humble service and high standards, drawn from Legacy by James Kerr.
I’m paraphrasing: After the win, the sheds fill — journalists, sponsors, a soundtrack of Pacifica and reggae. But soon it's just the team. The inner sanctum. McCaw, Carter, Read, Dagg — icons, now schoolboys on benches, debriefing. Each voice is heard. Coaches speak in turn — unsparing, specific, grounded.
“The challenge is to always improve, to always get better, even when you are your best — especially when you are your best, ” says head coach Graham Henry.
Then a toast. To McCaw. To sacrifice. To what's next. And then, quietly, two of the most decorated players in the world each pick up a broom. They sweep the sheds. So no one else has to. Because no one looks after the All Blacks. The All Blacks look after themselves.
In the All Blacks, no one grows too big to do the small things. Jim Collins refers to this as the core of level 5 leadership: a paradox, or rather, an alignment of personal humility and professional will. Either way, leadership begins with integrity. And integrity begins with humility.
No one is above service. Even superstars sweep the sheds. It’s not ceremony. It’s alignment. You leave the space better than you found it — the locker room, the boardroom, the world.
The Wooden lesson — Excellence in the ordinary
Another master of fundamentals, John Wooden began every season not with strategy but with socks. He sat his players down and taught them how to put them on properly — no wrinkles, because wrinkles cause blisters, blisters cost minutes, and minutes change games (and careers).
The lesson was never about fabric. It was about humility and precision — doing the basics right, caring for yourself so you can care for the team. Wooden understood that integrity is revealed in small things long before it’s tested in big ones.
“Winning takes talent; to repeat it takes character.”
People don’t rise to the occasion; they fall to the level of their preparation. Integrity is forged in the quiet, routine moments no one sees.
Wooden started at the smallest unit of control — a sock — because personal discipline is the seed of collective trust. When you can be counted on in the details, a team can count on you in the storm. That’s the hinge from self-mastery to how we operate together — what Stephen R. Covey frames as the progression from dependence to independence to interdependence.
From independence to interdependence — The Covey bridge
Covey’s point isn’t semantics: each stage of maturity shifts what leaders must optimize.
Dependence needs direction — it says, you take care of me.
Independence demands preparation and accountability — it says, I take care of myself.
Interdependence requires integrity — the willingness to share power, ask better questions, and create conditions so others can win with you — it says, we take care of each other.
Many leaders stop at independence. They master control, competence, and clarity, but they do not yet collaborate from strength. True leadership lives in interdependence — when mature individuals choose creation over control.
“Independent people can cooperate; dependent people can’t,” Covey wrote.
Interdependence is maturity meeting humility — the shift from ego to ecosystem, from being the answer to asking better questions. Dependence is survival. Independence is power. Interdependence is creation: it demands shared ownership — use questions to transfer ownership of the how to the team while the leader keeps the what/why and standards clear and non-negotiable.
The All Blacks case - Questions that cut away
As James Kerr shows in Legacy, the culture of New Zealand All Blacks changed not through more instruction but through better questions. Instead of telling, coaches asked: What do you see? What might happen if…? How would you handle it? This shifted ownership from authority to individuals. Standards became internal, not imposed.
The Latin root of decide means to cut away. Through questioning, the All Blacks cut away ego, clutter, and assumptions — until clarity remained. This is not just a sporting lesson. No one person has all the answers, and pretending to is arrogance in disguise. Questions challenge the status quo, reconnect people to shared values, and drive growth. The better the question, the cleaner the decision.
At the heart of this culture sits the Māori concept of mana — strength and dignity anchored in humility. Humility is not weakness; it is strength under self-command. It ties leadership back to something greater than personal ego.
Now, I can hear some think: “If I keep asking questions, won’t I look weak and slow down decisions?” Only if inquiry replaces leadership. Used well, questions are sense-making; the leader still owns direction, decision, and cadence.
Leader’s playbook (fast):
Widen → narrow → move. Ask to widen facts/risks, decide to narrow options, execute to learn.
Time-box inquiry. “8 minutes explore; then I decide.”
Type the decision. Type-1 (irreversible): deeper inquiry, leader decides. Type-2 (reversible): quick inquiry, delegate the call to the front line within guardrails.
Name owner + first step. Prevents drift.
Disagree & commit. After the call, even if not everyone agrees, align on execution.
Use questions to transfer the how to the team while you keep the what/why and standards clear and non-negotiable.
Why this works: inquiry builds shared reality (Amy Edmondson: psychological safety → fewer errors, better execution). Experts decide faster because they ask sharper questions first (Gary Klein, RPD). Bezos’ Type-1/Type-2 framing protects speed without recklessness. In mission command, leaders set intent and constraints; teams own the how.
Wisdom is freedom from experience
Inquiry gives you the picture. Wisdom is choosing what to do next — separating signal from noise and acting in line with values, not ego, habit, or optics. The choice you make in that moment reveals whether you’re leading reactively or deliberately.
Here’s the difference, in plain terms. Reactive leadership is bound to memory and optics — what worked last quarter, how this will look. Decisions defend the past. Deliberate leadership stands on values and current data — what matters, what’s true now. Decisions serve the mission in front of you.
Leader’s translation: use inquiry to widen, wisdom to choose, and integrity to follow through. You’re not chasing certainty; you’re reducing noise so the next action is clear and aligned.
Put it in a room. Tuesday morning, product review. We’ve surfaced the risks, spotted an opening, killed a few myths.
A wise close sounds like: “Here’s the outcome we’re aiming at. The smallest move that teaches us most is X. Alex owns it. First update by Thursday. If we’re wrong, the blast radius is small and we’ll adjust.”
No theatrics. No dragging yesterday into today. Just a clean call that fits our values and the facts.
That’s why wisdom isn’t “more experience”; it’s cleaner use of experience. We learn from the past without letting the past run the present. Or, in Krishnamurti’s shorthand, understanding yourself is fresh and moment-to-moment — not a museum of old conclusions.
How does it feel in practice? Calm, practical, forward. Name the outcome. Pick the smallest reversible step. Set an owner and a time. Check that the bar — the what/why — stays non-negotiable while the team owns the how. Then move.
This leads straight to the next gear: staying fully committed without clinging — not to the past, and not to the past we project into the future — so pressure sharpens attention instead of tightening it. That’s where we go next.
Integrity leadership in practice — Alignment in action
Integrity leadership is simple to say and hard to fake: who you are, how you think, and what you do line up. Not perfection — coherence.
In practice, that means your behavior matches your values, your thinking is chosen (not inherited), and the way you show up — under pressure, in conflict, in success — still looks like you. No costume change between rooms.
It’s also not a one-time declaration. Integrity is a daily act. Each day you pick clarity over habit, responsibility over reaction. Those quiet choices build the real structure of leadership: trust, clean communication, dependable follow- through. Leaders who operate this way stop performing leadership and start being leaders. Presence replaces performance. They don’t chase consistency; they become it.
From principle to practice: here’s how alignment looks in a real-life story — one leader, one team, one messy Tuesday.
A few years ago, I worked with a senior executive leading a global organization. Highly intelligent. Intensely driven. On paper, everything was ascending. Yet inwardly, something essential was slipping. He was trying to manage the machine, but the machine was clearly beginning to manage him. One Tuesday, he said, softly: “I know what’s expected of me, but I’m not sure anymore what’s true to me.”
That was the turning point. Instead of refining strategy, we explored self. What do I stand for when no one is watching? What energy do I bring into a room? If this organization mirrored my deepest values, what would it look like?
As clarity grew, his leadership quieted. Meetings became shorter. Decisions cleaner. Words simpler. His authority stopped coming from the title and started flowing from who he was. He subtracted everything that wasn’t aligned to that. He didn’t become a different leader. He became himself — fully, deliberately.
This is integrity leadership: not expansion, but purification. Or like an essentialist, described by Greg McKeown, would call it ‘less but better’.
Wisdom only matters if it lands in action
Here are five daily disciplines to turn integrity from idea to practice:
Pause before reaction. Ask: What in me is being touched? Leadership is clarity under pressure. Create space, then act.
Cut away what clouds. Remove one habit, assumption, or commitment each day that no longer serves clarity. Subtraction creates vision.
Lead with questions. Replace “Here’s what I think” with “What do you see?” Ownership begins where instruction ends.
Serve before you shine. Tie authority to contribution. Sweep the shed, literally or figuratively.
Reflect on alignment. End the day asking: Did my actions reflect what I value? Integrity is value made visible.
Closing — The return to the self
Leadership, stripped to its core, is not about control, charisma, or scale. It is about alignment.
To lead others, you must first lead yourself. To lead yourself, you must first know yourself. The circle closes where it began — at the threshold of Delphi: Know thyself. Everything else — courage, clarity, compassion — flows from there.
Integrity is not what you stand for. It is what still stands when everything else falls.
