Maintaining High Integrity in Business
If you are considering starting a franchise, you’ll want to also consider the best ways to maintain a high level of integrity. Your ability to exude trust and honesty and display a high level of integrity in business is going to be the foundation of your success. From CEO to employee to customer and client, a lack of integrity will harm everyone’s ability to influence each other to move the business forward.
With honest practices, employers can get employees to trust them, infusing employees with a confidence that what’s best for the business is best for everyone. If integrity is firmly in place, customers and clients will want to be associated with your business.
Integrity is affirming to all parties. It provides clear assurance that things will be done with competence and open communication. All individuals will move forward knowing they can depend on one another to do the right thing at all times.
Integrity is hard earned. It means doing the right thing regardless of the circumstances or consequences. In business, a lack of integrity can do horrific damage. Look at the way successful corporations can fall so easily when their integrity comes under suspicion. Building a franchise on integrity can take many years. Having integrity questioned can cost you everything. Business partnerships will collapse. Customers and clients will take their business elsewhere.
It’s unfortunate that the theory “the end justifies the means” has become such a standard practice in today’s business world. People are disregarding boundaries to achieve a goal. They’re promising services they know they can’t deliver. Candidates are filling their resumes with false information. Corporations exaggerate projected earnings and deflate losses to keep their jobs. It’s a downward spiral that’s causing mistrust across all business lines.
Integrity breeds loyalty. Loyalty has to be a major concern of a business owner. Loyalty means employees feel safe and want to help cultivate the business because its success is their success. With loyalty, clients and customers will want to maintain long time relationships with the business.
Acting without a strong sense of integrity will hurt the business in the long run. A contractor can look to more business by giving honest quotes about a project. This can lead to recommendations that generate more business, building the contractor’s reputation throughout the community and beyond. Or the contractor can inflate the price, suggesting work that doesn’t need to be performed, and get a nice fat paycheck now. A smart consumer will see through it, especially if they perform their due diligence. That contractor has now harmed their reputation and driven business to a competitor.
Instant gratification is the main reason for an act of dishonesty. Justifying a lack of integrity with the reasoning the business reached a satisfying and wanted conclusion. It may even be true. It may seem like there are plenty of people and businesses enjoying success with an obvious lack of integrity and no consequences. It could certainly give an aspiring entrepreneur the perception that there’s nothing wrong with following the same path.
Integrity starts with honesty and treating all individuals with respect. And it’s about maintaining honesty in all endeavors, building effective relationships and encouraging confidence. You want to be trusted, from the smallest matters to the most complex contracts. Only integrity will get you there.
If you are looking to start a business of your own and want to work with a company built on integrity, trust and saving companies money, view our webinar and see if the Blue Coast Savings Business Opportunity is right for you.
