Attitude, Integrity and Competence - Different facets I see

By: Tulasi S. Sastri

On: November 7, 2014

In Attitude, we have Negative Attitude, Positive Attitude and Proactive Attitude.
Negative Attitude generally stems from past failures or disappointments where trust levels go down, and people develop a tendency to doubt and conclude that things do not happen. One possible way to overcome this attitudinal problem is to challenge one’s own assumptions, every time. What this means is giving a fresh chance every time, and as they see success, progressively negativity in the attitude can go down.
Positive Attitude and optimism go hand in hand. People with Positive Attitude generally respond better to the environment and would be willing to cooperate and become good team players.
Proactive Attitude takes Positive Attitude one step further. It is taking responsibility. This attitude could well be the differentiator between failure and success. Proactive people are generally successful in life and could grow as leaders. One important quality from which this attitude of taking responsibility could come is “commitment”.
In Integrity, the facets I see are Financial Integrity, Professional Integrity and Personal Integrity.
I shall not touch a rupee that does not belong to me is Financial Integrity. All over the world, all pervasive corruption cases are due to lack of Financial Integrity. I have no recommendations for people with low Financial Integrity, except hoping that God would at some time bestow upon such people to have proper values in life.
We all belong to different Professions. Working according to the ethical standards of the Profession to which we belong is Professional Integrity. We have seen many instances of fraud in the business world, where people have compromised on Professional Integrity and got into trouble. When need becomes greed, this happens.
Personal Integrity is of greater value and once you have it, automatically, Financial and Professional Integrity are taken care. It is based on the belief that all human beings are children of God, equal in all respects and we need to be fair to them. Once you have this awareness, you will not hurt people or be unfair to anyone. I see compromise of Personal Integrity more frequently than the other two. Common among them is to quote your ideas to others and take credit for them. Boosting personal image is one of the possible reasons. I know people, who, in one to one meetings address me as “Sir”, and responding to my telephone call, if his wife is around, change addressing as “Mr”. Not that I wish to be addressed as “Sir”, but it is their ego that comes into play some times. Such instances tell me the extent to which such people could be trusted. One common quality displayed by great leaders is Personal Integrity.
I place Competence in three buckets. They are Technical Competence, Managerial Competence and Commercial Competence.
As you study and acquire any professional qualification, it is your Technical Competence that gets you a job.
As you grow in your career, you need to develop the skills of Management, namely Planning, Organizing, Coordinating and Controlling. This is Managerial Competence.
In today’s business world, one cannot ignore the impact of “bottom line”. As such actions and inactions that impact the bottom line are understood by Commercial Competence. Realizing the importance of Commercial Competence for a successful career, I have written a book that focuses on helping in development of Commercial Competence. It is “Translating Operations into Money – Cases in Business Management”. Details are on my website www.operationstomoney.com
This blog entry and my remaining 19 blog entries here are focused on Commercial Competence in some way or the other. Happy reading.
Tulasi S Sastri.
+919820522824.