Integrity and Reliability – They’re Related
A local college teacher called last night and asked if I had another recommendation for a technical support person to help with his Public Speaking class, because the first guy I recommended wasn’t working out. Here’s how that dialogue went…
Me: “What happened to Ed? I thought he was your guy for that?”
Teacher: “Ed is great, but he’s not reliable. I have classes starting again this week, and he was supposed to come to campus yesterday morning to help with the computer setups for the classroom. I have 23 students who will be here tomorrow morning, and I spent all day yesterday – and far into the evening too – trying to get everything ready. He bailed out on me – and asked to reschedule – at the last minute. He doesn’t understand my scheduling situation with classes.”
Me: “I don’t get it. You told me Ed was a high-integrity guy. This is news to me.”
Teacher: “He is high-integrity. I would trust him with my bank account, and with almost anything. He’s totally honest, and does good work. But this is the third time he’s pulled the plug less than an hour before he’s scheduled to be here. His “emergencies” always leave me with a problem, because by the time he notifies me, I’ve already made arrangements that box me in to our agreed schedule, then he goes and changes it!”
The two of us solved the problem – we each looked through our contacts and found a backup person who could come on short notice for future “emergency” help to get computers ready for a class demonstration, in case Ed had to cancel again. But it left me thinking about integrity and reliability. Are they really two different things? An “Integrity Seminar” I took suggests they’re not.
Integrity is not only about being an ethical and good person – it’s about my relationship to my word. If I say I’ll make a pizza for you, or that I’ll be at your place by 5:15, then you can count on me to do that. And if, for any reason, I’m not going to keep one of those “promises”, you can count on me to let you know in advance, and/or to clean up any problems it creates for you when I break my word. It sounds like Ed didn’t realize he was causing the teacher a problem.
I’m sorry that Ed wasn’t reliable enough to gain my teacher friend’s confidence, but at least he called his client to reschedule. I suspect that my friend was partly reacting to how upset his wife was when he didn’t come home for dinner because he was setting up for his class. Still, reliability matters for Ed’s reputation, and he could possibly lose a client. Fortunately, the students didn’t notice any problem: their computers were good to go for the class this morning.
