This is Johanna Rothman’s January 2026 Create an Adaptable Life Newsletter. The unsubscribe link is at the bottom of this email.
Since I feel as if the entire world is off-balance, I’ve decided to focus on what I can do in my life, family, and various communities to make things better. But I can’t just react. Instead, I need to purposefully choose what I do and how I do it. Those purposeful actions require honor and integrity.
Let me offer a work example.
Many years ago, my employer promised specific product functionality to a client. But, they had not implemented that functionality. When I started at the company, as a middle manager, my boss told me it was my job to convince the client to not sue us.
I asked if we planned to implement the functionality.
Oh yes, my boss said. Any day now.
That was a lie, although I did not know it at the time. My boss did not act with honor or integrity. He wanted to shift the blame from himself to me. His actions lacked both honor and integrity.
Acting With Honor
To me, honor means that I act in ways that others will respect. They might not agree with me—and their agreement does not matter. Honor means I have explained myself in such a way that they can see my position and respect that.
That’s why I think honor is related to integrity, but not exactly the same.
Acting with Integrity
When we act with integrity, we choose to act according to our personal values, our own moral code. My version of integrity means we improve the situation for as many people as possible, not as few as possible. I see this as related to congruence.
However, much of the reason I feel off balance is that so many people in leadership positions are acting incongruently. They believe in zero-sum games where they choose to improve their outcomes, but not other people’s. (My boss lying to me was an example of this.)
They might still act with their form of personal integrity, but that form does not include honor.
A Lack of Honor and Integrity Can Impede Progress
Because my employer had acted without honor or integrity, the client did not even want to talk with me at first. They wanted to proceed with lawyers.
I’m persistent, so I nudged them to talk so I could learn what my employer had promised. (Which was way too much.)
And because of the lies, now on both sides, I was not sure the client even wanted our product any longer. However, I asked them to give us a chance, assuming I always explained reality and risks.
If you’re curious, I chose these actions to make progress on several fronts:
- Inside the organization, with management, to either commit to doing the work or not do the work, but to decide, one way or the other.
- With the client to regain their respect, regardless of our decisions.
- With the developers and testers, because they felt the whiplash of on-again, off-again decisions.
We did manage to finish that project, but it took months longer than if my employer had just done the work when they promised it. (That would have been the honorable and high-integrity thing to do.)
Honor and Integrity Allow Us to Make Progress
Reality will always win. Respect for others might make it easier to choose better actions. Even if the news is bad, congruence works better than incongruence.
Just because other people, including leaders, are off-balance, we do not need to be. We can choose to act with honor and integrity. That might even help us become the leaders we need right now. Actions with honor and integrity will help us make progress.
Read more in the Modern Management Made Easy books.
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Till next time,
Johanna
© 2026 Johanna Rothman