The battle for our personal character is won or lost based on our integrity. This means that there can be no hypocrisy between what we say we believe is important and what we actually are doing on a daily basis. It is more than simply walking your talk becasue your talk is based on truth and core values that add value to others.
It is the keeping of promises and commitments to ourselves and then to others. When you have it people can trust you because they know you are genuine, real and authentic.
Integrity is demonstrated in personal relationships with other people in two critical ways. One is that we maintain confidentiality when dealing with others in matters where discretion is important. Instead of using other people’s failures to get what we want we help them to get what they need. In essence we never use their acknowledged weakness to hold it over them to get them to act in a certain way and we would never betray their trust by talking to other people.
We also make sure that we never fall into the trap of saying negative things about other people publicly that we have not first talked with them about privately. When people hear you saying bad things about people who are not in the room, they know one day they will not be in the room either. Being critical of other people in public never helps them and it creates a culture of positioning people in conflict with each other.
If something is not important enough to say to another person privately then it is certainly not important enough to criticize them openly in front of other people.