Here is a concrete way that you can help usher in a new era of personal, relationship and leadership integrity: sign the Integrity Pledge. Who can sign this Integrity Pledge? Absolutely anyone and hopefully everyone! Please read the pledge below and then click on the link beneath it to ‘sign’ your Pledge.

A story appeared today on Voice of America that shows how the issue of integrity has become so crucial today that U.S. presidential candidates are now using commercial marketing tactics in their campaigns to deliberately position themselves as being the candidate with the most integrity. Consider the following excerpt (I added the bold for emphasis):

As is so often the case, innovation comes from the next generation arriving in early adulthood. We've certainly seen this in the computer and internet industries, with teenagers sometimes even leading the way. The next generation's increasing emphasis on the Impact core drive I write about in The New IQ, along with our two other core drives for authenticity and connection), has resulted in the wiki movement on the internet (free information sharing, open source software, etc.)

Why do so few of us live in integrity with all three of our Three Core Drives (authenticity, connection and impact)? Why don't we fully express the high side of them in a coordinated and aligned way in our day-to-day lives? How do we start falling out of integrity in the first place?

1. We all have three core drives. They are:
   Authenticity -- personal wellbeing and being your true self
   Connection -- nourising and productive co-creation with others
   Impact -- making a positive difference in your world
   Understanding your three core drives turns integrity from a vague concept into a practical necessity.

I believe that one of the biggest reasons that both Obama and Huckabee did far better on SuperDuperTuesday than anyone thought they would even as little as two weeks ago is that both these folks are seen as being capable of bringing a far greater level of integrity to the presidency than there has been in many years.

I am very pleased to officially announce that Dr. Gruder's new book, The New IQ: How Integrity Intelligence Serves You, Your Relationships and Our World, is now in stock at www.Amazon.com,  www.BarnesandNoble.com and www.Borders.com websites, as well as an increasing number of other bookseller websites around the world.

There are definitely both pros and cons to having political parties and, more specifically, to a having two-party system. I suggest that in today's spin-dominated political climate, the cons now significantly outweigh the pros. Today's party-oriented system promotes polarization of complicated issues into dangerously oversimplified positioning that is frequently fanatical in tone.

Telling the truth lives at the heart of integrity. When spin passes truth we are all in trouble. When truth is embellished (or omitted) to support a position, this demonstrates lack of integrity.

Everyone intuitively already knows that our country is divided into three camps that are NOT defined by political party, no matter how much the dog fighting between liberals and conservatives is designed to divert us from this far bigger problem. Those three camps are: