By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to solidify your sense of integrity. Reading time: 2:38.

Watching a spider weave its web is a lesson in leadership execution and disciplined project management. So resourceful. So committed. So deliberate.

As I watched a spider create something from deep within itself, something that was meant ultimately to help sustain it (with food caught in its threads) and protect it (from prey), I thought how much a leader’s integrity is built and maintained much like the integrity of a spider’s web. From within.

Just like spiders build their webs thread by thread, leaders build their integrity, decision by decision, action by action- each previous action serving as a stepping stone to each subsequent decision, each subsequent action. All decisions -like all threads- connected, coordinated, and concentrated.

Indeed nothing happens until the spider – and the leader—initiate an action, an action that comes from deep within. Consider the spider’s initial action that spawns the dawn of a pending achievement-a full web woven in less than hour.

The spider quite literally spits a gooey substance from the glands deep in its abdomen (guts) that quickly turns to a thread –much like cotton candy turns from a liquid into a thread when air is blown into it. Then the spider carefully anchors the two ends of that thread. Then methodically — almost religiously -the spider deliberately frames the anchoring points. And then from those anchoring points, the spider builds radius threads-one by one over and over and over again — that will create the circular web.

Turning the Art of Work Into a Work of Art

Likewise, a leader spits out his or her vision -from deep within his or her gut -and then weaves together a coherent strategy to achieve their mission. In weaving its web, a spider turns the art of work into a work of art. With integrity. And that’s what leaders do too. They weave The Thread of Integrity into everything they do.

Indeed integrity is the crux of leadership. Integrity to a leader is what health is to a physician; what salvation is to a minister and what justice is to a lawyer- the essence of their professional identity, the purpose of their professional commitment and the anchor that keeps them on track. Purposefully. Professionally. Personally. From within. Deep in the gut.

Keep spinning your Thread of Integrity so that your followers will have some THING to hang onto and some THING to feed on and some THING that quite literally stays in touch with your surroundings to affirm safety and security and enhance the quality of life.

Today’s ImproveMINT

Conduct a regular gut check to keep your leadership thinking in mint condition.

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