On Integrity （いいかげんな言行一致の代償と誠実な言行一致の報酬）

Jan. 19, 2022

I read an interesting section from a textbook on different social styles. According to the writer sometimes you must pay a high price as a result of being dishonest. Here is a situation that illustrate the point:

There was a sales person who sold encyclopedia. One day he asked his sales trainer:

"What should I say if a prospective asks about our competitors?"

The trainer says, "Show this chart to the prospect. It is a comparative chart of major dealers including ourselves with the number of volumes, illustrations, pages and so on. Tell the prospective that our company is in the top of the list, but you don't need to tell the prospective that the names of dealers are alphabetically listed."

The writer argues that if the prospective actually buys the product, it is not the customer who is a loser, but rather the sales person who wasn't sincere, because he compromised on his integrity by not giving the information that would help him make a fair judgment. 

When you compromise on integirity, your self-esteen plummets. When your self-esteen goes down, your ability to have a relation with others also diminishes. Wow! That's scary. The writer goes on to say that one cannot stand for very long a continuous deterioration of one's self image. To sum up, the price of insencerity is just too high. 

On the other hand, the writer continues, that the reward of integrity can be comparatively far greater. Here is a situation that illustrate the point:

One day a man called a sales person who sold shipping insurance. He asked the price of a insurance policy that satisfied so-and-so conditions. The sales person asked the prospective to send him a copy of his present insurance policy. A few days later, the sales person called the prospective, and recommended that the prospect should simply keep the present policy because his was cheaper than the one the sales person sold at his company for the same conditions.

Ordinarily, this would have ended their exchange. But it didn't stop there. Hearing the sales person's explanation, the prospective went to ask, " How much more does it cost if I replace mine with yours?" The sales person says, "Well, Mr. Prospect, the price is so-and-so dollars more than what you are paying now."  To this the prospective said, "Deal. I want our insurance taken care of by someone like you. You are honest to me. I trust you to remain so with our future deals also."

The implication of the customer's statement above is that there are people who are willing to pay more to people who walk their talk.