Ginny Wilson-Peters' Blog

Exerts from July 4th, 2009 column by Tim Dahlberg:  http://tinyurl.com/lcdfkw
“Woods is a killer, he will run over you…But as an individual for social change?  Terrible.  Terrible.  Because he can get away with teaching kids to play golf, and that’s his contribution.”  Former Football great Jim Brown

“What Brown doesn’t appreciate is that Tiger Woods doesn’t seem to be burdened by much of a social conscience.  He thinks Woods should be doing more—far more—than just playing golf and making money…

Indeed, with a person of mixed heritage much like himself running for president, Woods wouldn’t even publicly endorse Barack Obama.”  Tim Dahlberg, Associated Press

It struck a chord.  I read the opinion piece in last Sunday’s paper and immediately wanted to respond.  I carried the paper around for a week before sitting down to write.  Why did the attack on Tiger Woods and the comments about his perceived lack of commitment to social change bother me so much?

It comes back to the concept of integrity.  The word integrity often seems to bring up strong emotions for people. It also brings up a great deal of confusion and judgment.

During a meeting last week we were talking about attempts to measure integrity in people. Someone turned to me and said, “You called your company Integrity Integrated.  What does integrity mean to you?”  My response was not what they wanted to hear.  Angeles Arrien, an author and expert in cross-cultural communication and leadership, once said that integrity, from a cross-cultural standpoint, is the “alignment of our actions and communications with our values.”   In order to know if someone has integrity, we need to first know their values.

When most people say that someone else has integrity, what they are really saying is that the other person demonstrates values that are similar to the speaker.  In other words, the other person’s actions are in alignment with our OWN values.  Hence, we conclude they have integrity.

WRONG!  We cannot know if someone has integrity unless we know their values.  In fact, it is an act of arrogance to assume that we can claim integrity in another person without first knowing more about them.

My biggest lesson in this came during my trip to South Africa two years ago.  In a country dealing with post-apartheid issues, we heard about continued high incidence of AIDS and HIV, high poverty, and high crime rates. One of the South African leaders was talking about the difficult choices that some people have to make in order to feed their families.  She was speaking to a group of predominantly white women from the United States and she gently, but candidly said, “I ask you NOT to pass judgment on someone who is making a choice to steal in order to put food on the table.”

That was a tough one for me.  Stealing is wrong; pretty black and white for me for most of my life.  And yet, when I heard her plea, I found myself with a pit in my stomach.  There is no part of me that could personally relate to many of the experiences I heard about in South Africa—so how could I possibly impose my own set of values on others?

As for Tiger, who are we to pass judgment on the types of activities he chooses in order to give back to the world?   And suggesting that Tiger should have provided an endorsement to Barack Obama simply because they are both from mixed heritage is dangerous at worst, and a harsh judgment at best.  Mr Dahlberg and Mr Brown obviously have their ideas about what Tiger should be doing, but those ideas come from their own set of values.