Integrity, Is It Over Rated?
One of our colleagues recently raised an interesting point. He suggested that we teach to “Negotiate with integrity” as a key part of our Advancing Negotiation Skills program.
I agree 100% that we in Scotwork should negotiate with integrity, but if we proclaim that as a message we are at risk of trying to change the world to that philosophy, instead of giving our participants the skills to handle both those with and without integrity.
Integrity to me means; being honest with what you can and can’t do, following up with promises you make, apologizing for mistakes that you make, taking responsibility for your actions, acting upon issues in a timely manner. But I do recognize that others may have differing views.
In the 1900's many in the British navy thought that submarines were morally indefensible; battles should be fought man to man by battleships. In the age of chivalry armies lined up and started the battle at a pre-arranged time. The Geneva Convention wrote the “rules” the conduct of warfare. “Getting to Yes” has a philosophical message. Yet when we look around the world we see advantages gained by those who don’t play by the “rules”.
The Israelis occupy land taken by force of arms in the face of UN resolutions; North Korea sells nuclear weapons to rogue states; Iran and Syria arm the Hezbollah in defiance of world opinion; the Russians are planting flags at the North Pole contrary to international treaties; the Faroese are catching 10 times the agreed sustainable fishing quota; the Pakistanis are cheating at cricket to allow betting fraud; the Zimbabweans are seizing farms and giving them to government cronies; the US imprisons “foreign combatants” in Guantanamo Bay without any rights under US law or the Geneva convention; Greek workers riot on the streets until they g