20/06/2021
Leadership Lessons I learned from My Father (Part 2)
To my father, a man's word is a contract.
No need to sign an agreement, no need even to shake hands. Your word is something you stand for.. for life.
Like most of the lessons I learned from him, he didn’t teach them to me by preaching them but by living them day in day out and he himself he learnt them from his own father.
My dad told me stories about my grandfather who was a man of strong character.
Once my grandfather wanted to fix his car at one of his neighbor’s garage who was a mechanician. The latter lied to him about what it takes to fix car. My grandfather faced him and told him that he will not talk to him for one year.
Exactly 365 days later, he went to that neighbor's garage, took with him two bottles of coke and told him: "Today it is has been a year, let’s open a new chapter working together based on honesty."
When my father and his brother started their own business of building and installing car exhausts at the age of 18, one of their first customers refused to pay the price they asked him for. My grandfather interfered. He asked my dad and uncle: "did you give him an offer and did he accept it before you started the work?" They answered: "No". He told them: "Then he is free to pay what he considers fair".
Later on, when my father and my uncle opened a gas station in a time where cheating in this business was the norm they had a scale in front of the fuel pumps so any customer can be certain that 10 liters are indeed 10. They refused to compromise the integrity of what they sell even by 0.01%. Customers appreciated this a lot which led to tremendous success in the business.
I still remember how they used to check every fuel tanker of leading global fuel distributors before it offloads by looking at Benzin in a transparent glass. Many times they returned the tankers back to distributor because of the bad quality as they never accepted to compromise the integrity of their product.
Is it easy to live by these high standards?
Of course not.
In my own life, I recall many situations when expecting others to live by their words led to disappointments and other situations when by standing by my words costed me a lot.
Yes, It is difficult but it is the right thing to do and for leaders (with or without titles), this become even more important.
Imagine how the workplace and even world will look like when integrity is the core principle we all live by.
