Integrity training is development that helps people make commitments they can keep, keep them, and openly renegotiate them when circumstances change, so that what they say and what they do line up. Unlike compliance training, which teaches rules, integrity training builds the everyday habits that make people trustworthy.
Organizations usually seek it when trust is slipping: deadlines missed without warning, leaders who say one thing and do another, meetings full of agreements that nobody follows up on. Those are integrity problems, even when no rule was broken.
What integrity means in practice
DorWay defines integrity as being whole and complete: words, commitments, and actions fit together. That definition is deliberately practical. It moves integrity from a character trait people either have or lack to a set of behaviors people can see, measure, and improve.
It also explains why integrity is so closely tied to trust. In the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, only 62.9% of federal employees governmentwide agreed that their senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity, according to the NIH breakout of 2024 FEVS results. The Ethics and Compliance Initiative’s 2023 Global Business Ethics Survey uses trust that leaders and supervisors will keep their promises and commitments as one of four measures of culture strength. Integrity is visible to employees mainly through kept and broken commitments.
Integrity training vs ethics training vs ethical leadership training
| Type | Main goal | Typical content | Audience |
|---|---|---|---|
| Integrity training | Align words, commitments, and actions | Making clear commitments, keeping them, renegotiating openly, honest communication, repairing broken agreements | Leaders and teams |
| Ethics and compliance training | Know the rules and how to report concerns | Code of conduct, policies, legal risks, reporting channels | All employees, often annually |
| Ethical leadership training | Lead others ethically | Decision models, setting tone, responding to concerns, ethical culture | Managers and executives |
The three work best together. Compliance training sets the floor, covered in ethics training for employees. Ethical leadership training focuses on how leaders guide others. Integrity training addresses the daily layer underneath both.
What a good integrity training program covers
- Making commitments that can be kept. Most broken promises were never specific enough to keep. Participants practice turning “I will look into it” into a commitment with an owner, an outcome, and a date.
- Keeping track of commitments. Simple systems for tracking what you have promised, so nothing is silently dropped.
- Renegotiating openly. Saying early, and plainly, “I cannot deliver this as promised; here is what I can do.” This is the core of accountability: making, keeping, and openly renegotiating commitments.
- Repairing broken agreements. How to acknowledge a missed commitment, take responsibility, and rebuild trust.
- Team-level agreements. Making the shared expectations of a team explicit, so integrity is a team standard, not only an individual virtue. See team agreements.
- Speaking up. Raising a concern when a commitment, a target, or a decision does not fit stated values.
Behind this is DorWay’s view that organizations are Networks of Agreements™. Conflict, missed results, and low trust usually trace back to agreements that were never clear enough to keep. Integrity training works at that root.
How to choose an integrity training program
- Look for practice, not just principles. Programs should have participants work on their own real commitments between sessions.
- Check for reinforcement over time. One-day workshops rarely change habits. The 2024 LEADx benchmark estimated that only 40% of leadership training is applied on the job. Coaching, peer check-ins, or follow-up sessions close that gap.
- Ask how behavior change is measured. Useful measures include upward feedback on follow-through, commitment completion rates, and changes in team trust scores. The Kirkpatrick model‘s behavior level is the right target.
- Include leaders first. Teams notice when executives skip the training they assign to others.
- Connect it to how work is run. The habits stick when they are built into meetings, project reviews, and one-on-ones.
DorWay’s Leaders Edge Path™ is built around these practices, and the PACT™ Leadership Assessment gives a baseline for where a leader’s follow-through is strong or weak. For individual support, see decision integrity coaching.
FAQ
What is integrity training?
It is training that helps people align their words, commitments, and actions by making clear commitments, keeping them, and renegotiating openly when they cannot. It focuses on trustworthy daily behavior rather than rules.
Can integrity be taught?
The behaviors that make up integrity can be practiced and improved: making specific commitments, tracking them, communicating early when plans change, and repairing broken agreements. Values are personal, but these habits are learnable.
How is integrity training different from compliance training?
Compliance training teaches policies, laws, and how to report concerns. Integrity training develops the everyday follow-through and honesty that determine whether people trust each other, even where no rule applies.
How do you measure the results of integrity training?
Track behavior, not attendance: upward feedback on whether leaders keep commitments, the share of commitments completed or renegotiated on time, and changes in team trust or culture survey scores.