“…the character issues will affect the one or two things you do well, forgetting any need to do the rest.”

A thought by Henry Cloud, from his book, Integrity (p. 33). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

This is so important to understand.

Henry says, “Another way of saying this is that while you don’t need all the gifts that exist in the world, you do need all the aspects of character while you are putting your gifts to work.”

He goes on, “For example, we will see that one aspect of character is almost purely ‘relational’ in nature. And we could say that there are people who are ‘gifted in relational ways,’ and that they should focus in an area that uses those gifts. Put them in human resources or psychology or customer service. . . But, even the ones in the ‘people-oriented jobs’ will fail if they do not have other character abilities, such as the ability to be in touch with the truth of a situation and to see it clearly (another character dimension we will look at). If they lack that ability that is not so relational in nature, then their living out of their gifted area is going to suffer greatly. Character transcends gifts and the context of the expression of those gifts.”

He goes on, “So, the concept of integrity being about needing wholeness in all areas of character does not negate the reality that we are not gifted in all areas, nor the reality that we do best when we are working within our gifts. What it does say is that if we do not have integrity of character, wholeness of character functioning in the ways that we will describe it, then our ability to capitalize on our strengths will be severely affected. In the last chapter, there is no doubt that Rick was working in his area of giftedness, which was sales. But, a lack of wholeness in character integrity, not his gifted area, did him in. We need our gifts, but without wholeness of character—integrity as we are calling it—our gifts will become unusable or at least less fruitful. You can be the best designer in the world, but if no one will talk to you, or you can’t complete a proposal on time, you will be designing the inside of Dumpsters. You still have to be able to ‘deliver the goods’ no matter what your level of giftedness.”

And that is so true, isn’t it?

Yes, yes!

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