by Rev. Dr. Enson Lwesya

Although the concept of personal character is hard to define, it is easily noticed when it is absent. Character is a sum total of various behavioral virtues. These virtues give the leader the moral authority to influence, motivate, and lead others. While many observable virtues make up the character of a leader, you can use integrity as its exact representation. Integrity begins with self. It is a private matter—a habit cultivated in the secluded arena of one’s life. Integrity or the lack thereof is the building block of character; it is the essence of being and the entirety of life.

Individual integrity, a measure of the success of the inner man, is the basis of all societal integrity. Public life reflects private integrity. Lack of integrity in the community reveals the lack of collective integrity in the inner corridors of our lives. The sum total of all individual integrity in a community impacts that community. That is the reason why the leader’s and the followers’ character holds the key to the community’s transformation. Self-integrity leads to the community’s collective integrity.

Admittedly, moral strength is the basis of effective leadership. Integrity is the ability to have moral completeness necessary to all relationships within the leadership context. Integrity means an unbroken state, wholeness, and completeness in one’s morality. The paradigm of integrity ensures that the leadership structures do not just allow clever people to ascend to the leadership helm but rather those with genuine, honest, and truthful aspirations.

Integrity is a pattern of truth. It equally demands that the people who lead others must be people of truth. Leaders must sacrifice for and defend the truth. Unfortunately, the majority of the leaders on the continent of Africa subscribe to the doctrine of situational ethics, which changes and treats truth subjectively. In this philosophy, the end justifies the means of reaching the end. Hence we have leaders who have sacrificed the peace, prosperity, and the health of citizens in pursuit of gain and fame. Integrity relates to absolute truth—the truth of God. It means standing by the truth of the Word of God. It should also be qualified that all truth is God’s truth. Good leaders are leaders of the truth who stand by what is truth. They say no when it is no and yes when it is yes and they mean it.

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