In a recent Time Magazine, a small item at the bottom of a page caught my attention. Amongst a group of interesting statistics and tidbits was this information:

“28% - Percentage of Americans who say they would act immorally – including lying or backstabbing – to keep their jobs.”

No one understands the fear and anxiety of losing a job better than I do. I lost mine on January 9, 2009 as part of an acquisition by a larger company. I know what a powerful temptation it is to keep a job at any cost, especially now.

But let’s look at this piece of data in another way. I came from a company where leaders were measured by what they produced, and by how they produced it. We had a set of eight core values at that firm. They included labels such as Respect, Courage, Vision, Change, Results, Inspiration and Knowledge. The eighth one was Integrity. In our Leadership training, we taught that all of them were equals, yet if there was one that was chief among equals, it was Integrity.

The thought was without Integrity, there is no trust. And without trust as a leader, what do you really have? You have nothing.

If nearly one-third of Americans are willing to sacrifice Integrity to keep a job, then in my world, that is one-third less potential leaders in the pipeline for the future.

My leaders, the ones I choose to follow, cannot sacrifice values for expediency. Not even in today’s economic mess.

Because when you think about it, is it a large leap in logic to conclude that sacrificing values is what helped get us in this mess in the first place?

If you own a DVD of Ken Burn’s The War, you have seen a quote on the front cover that says “In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary lives”. What a wonderful summary of the essence of that documentary! Americans of that generation deserve their reputation as “the greatest generation”.

Now it is our turn. This is a leadership website, so I suggest that quote can now read “In extraordinary times, there are no ordinary leaders.” We can’t afford ordinary. The world has changed dramatically, with the people we lead being far different today than they were yesterday.

In a time where few are confident in their job security, personal net worth greatly eroded and house values keep falling, your employees are in a far different place than they were as recently as mid-2008. Whether they tell you or not, many of them are nervous about their lives, and their futures. Very few people have seen times like these. For the majority of us, this is a once in a lifetime retrenchment of the world economy with all of the political shifts that will occur still too early to see.

Trust in our institutions has been forever altered. Who trusts our government agencies, financial institutions or political representatives now? We may hope they come around, but it will be a long time for these parties to regain public trust.

The challenge for leaders in this time of fear and doubt, is to be something more than ordinary. It would serve us well to take the same approach those of the previous “greatest generation” did when faced with overwhelming issues and challenges. They simply did their jobs as best as they could, while believing in a cause worth fighting for.

Today’s leaders who can give their followers a reason to believe and hope that a more certain future lies just ahead, these will be the leaders who, in looking back, we say were extraordinary leaders for extraordinary times.