Leslie Pratch on Integrity and its Development

By Leslie Pratch

More and more, I think of integrity in terms of balance between self and other. It is this wholeness, a linking the different parts of self. Low integrity overdevelops the self and that makes the person a high risk for doing low integrity actions because such a person will put the self ahead of the business of others. Low integrity executives have a world view they can’t trust other people anyway, the world is vicious, so they do what they need to do. When, however, you hire a person with high integrity, they are not going to bend the rules if it violates a basic principle.

Narcissism is self-promotion. Commitment or attachment to other individuals is an interpersonal motive. Alfred Adler hypothesized that all human beings have a need for superiority, to develop the self to the maximum but he also posited a need for altruism, which is a social need to connect with and help others. For Adler, the healthy person has to find a right balance between the self promotion and altruism because if you over-develop one side you will become depressed because you are constantly banging your head against society. There is not enough self. If you over-develop the other side, the narcissism, you die alone. In optimal development, everything starts with the self: infants are narcissists. But reality chips away the basic self-centeredness and the narcissistic self centeredness develops into a more mature capacity for relations with others.

Healthy individuals are interested in both self development and in attachments to others. Healthy development is a way of blending the two. In the low integrity executives suffered from damaged relations with others early on. They were deprived the chance to develop good attachments to others. As a result, they developed a narcissistic emphasis. Some of them were needy for others; they craved attention. For the high integrity executives, both sides were fed and were able to put them together, to integrate them. Adler also argued that society plays a role in facilitating options to integrate the self with the altruistic side.

High integrity executives are themselves are the balance because they themselves are invested in other people. There are different strategies for how to achieve this balance and practically each person has to struggle with how to achieve this balance.

Both integrity and psychological autonomy are part of the active coping style. The theory of active coping I have put forth shows how the two are linked. Sociopaths lack the integrity and that identification with others. Some individuals appear very active but lacking the underlying integrity can get into trouble because they have little to no autonomy from the noisy demands of the self. When we can link integrity and autonomy we see how both are structural components of the self. The ideal executive is one who has both.

To be integral is to be whole. Integrity is part of the person. Only if it’s part of the person can one talk about the person demonstrating integrity across time. Moreover, integrity is part of how the individual integrates complexity. So integrity, autonomy, and integrative capacity are part of the overall active coping personality structure.

The risk factors for low integrity include the mistrust of authorities and others without any balance of caring for other people. Another risk factor could be limitations in abstract reasoning, a lesser ability to develop solutions to complex problems.

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Leslie Pratch, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist who trained at Northwestern Medical School with an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance and a B.A. in Religion from Williams College. She works with boards of directors and private equity investors to select and develop executives. She can be reached at (312) 464-7919 or email her at leslie@pratchco.com or visit www.pratchco.com.

Tags: Integrity and Moral Behavior