My very first day as a trainee, a senior officer gave me this advice, “No matter what you do, always be professional.” I had no idea what that meant. My long business career has been a process of determining my own sense of what it means to be a ‘professional.’ Here is what I think. Every day you are filling a reservoir of CREDIBILITY that derives from your choices, decisions, and significantly, your actions.
Your credibility as seen by others – are you reliable, dependable, authentic, etc. - is built on your INTEGRITY, which in turn is determined by adherence to your own personal values and beliefs. One sees all too often in life and the media that if you do something considered terribly inappropriate or even make a misguided comment, your hard-built credibility can be destroyed in a moment. Every interaction with bosses, peers, employees, clients, and suppliers feeds the depth and breadth of that CREDIBILITY reservoir. And one’s behaviors reflect your INTEGRITY. Formula 1 teams have many stakeholders, are incredibly detail oriented, and their time frames are counted in milliseconds. So, I offer this quote from Toto Wolff, Team Principal of the remarkably successful Mercedes Formula 1 team, “There’s just no millimeter of margin for a lack of integrity.”