Personal Integrity Self-Audit: Learn How to Increase Your Influence

Are You Vulnerable to Doubt from Others at Work?  Maybe It’s Time for a Personal Integrity Self-Audit
Just like your personal leadership brand, your ability to navigate workplace politics rises or falls on personal integrity. Strategic influence is not built on maneuvering or optics alone; it rests on whether others consistently experience you as credible, principled, and trustworthy.

Ethical organizational savvy begins with integrity — not the abstract kind, but the lived kind that shows up in decisions, conversations, and trade-offs when no one is watching. When integrity is strong, people give you the benefit of the doubt. When it is inconsistent or unclear, even strong ideas lose traction.

That is why an honest personal integrity self-audit matters. It forces you to examine where your actions, signals, or compromises might invite skepticism from peers, leaders, or stakeholders. Small gaps between intent and behavior — missed follow-through, selective transparency, or situational values — can quietly erode trust and, with it, your influence.

If others question your motives or reliability, your political capital shrinks fast. Influence depends less on formal authority and more on whether people believe you will act fairly, keep commitments, and stand for something under pressure. Without that confidence, your voice carries less weight in the moments that matter most.

In short, integrity is not just a moral asset; it is a strategic one. The clearer and more consistent it is, the harder it becomes for doubt to take hold — and the easier it is to lead, persuade, and navigate complexity with credibility intact.

Why Conducting a Personal Integrity Self-Audit Matters

Strong skills, deep expertise, and good intentions are not enough to protect leaders from organizational politics. Our leadership simulation assessments consistently show that many new managers — and more than a few seasoned ones — become casualties of behind-the-scenes dynamics they neither see nor fully understand. Hidden agendas, informal power networks, and unspoken expectations often shape decisions more than org charts ever do.

When leaders lack awareness of these forces, the costs are real. They struggle to build durable trust, fail to generate support for sound ideas, miss out on recognition for their contributions, and stall short of their career goals. In many cases, the issue is not capability; it is credibility.

A personal integrity self-audit closes this gap. It forces leaders to confront how clearly and consistently their standards show up in daily behavior — especially under pressure. Integrity that is vague, situational, or assumed rather than explicit creates space for doubt. That doubt is where political vulnerability takes root.

Leaders who are unflinchingly honest with themselves and transparent with others about their integrity standards earn tangible advantages:

• Increased strategic influence: people listen, support, and advocate when they trust your intent.
• Greater organizational impact: ideas gain traction because the messenger is credible.
• Higher levels of credibility: consistency between words and actions builds lasting confidence.

Especially in matrixed organizations, integrity is not just a virtue. It is a form of power. Leaders who regularly audit and reinforce it are far less likely to be undermined — and far more likely to shape outcomes that matter.

Conducting a Personal Integrity Self-Audit: Key Questions to Ask Yourself
Strategic influence is rooted in integrity — consistently prioritizing what is best for the organization while doing the ethically right thing, even when no one is watching. Conducting a personal integrity self-audit helps leaders identify blind spots and ensure their actions match their values. Consider these questions honestly:

1. Have you ever taken credit for work that was not fully yours or misrepresented your contributions?
2. Do you rationalize behavior differently depending on the person, team, or situation?
3. Are there conflicts of interest or temptations in your life that could compromise your integrity?
4. Have you ever covered up a mistake instead of owning it?
5. Have you ever unfairly blamed someone or damaged another’s reputation at work?
6. Do you consistently follow through on commitments and promises at work?
7. Are you fully accountable for your decisions and their outcomes?

Leaders with integrity act in alignment with their words — not selectively, not opportunistically, but consistently. This alignment builds trust, reinforces credibility, and amplifies influence. When integrity is intentional and visible, it becomes a force multiplier: enabling leaders to inspire their teams, earn stakeholder confidence, and drive organizational success in a way that is fully aligned with core values.

The Bottom Line
Answering “Yes” to any of these questions signals that your integrity — and with it, your influence — may need attention. Small lapses can quietly erode trust, allowing minor issues to grow into major obstacles. Address them proactively to prevent a pebble-sized integrity problem from snowballing into a boulder-sized one, and reinforce your credibility before it’s tested.

To learn more about increasing your strategic influence, please download Organizational Savvy — How to Better Understand Workplace Politics Strategies to Influence Others

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.