What Does it Really Mean to Lead with Integrity?
- 7 days ago
- 3 min read
By Kia Weatherspoon
Integrity ≠ perfection. Good leadership in real life requires authenticity, and that means the courage to stand up for what you believe in - and just as readily stand up and own your mistakes or admit what you don’t know. While it feels vulnerable - and it can be vulnerable - the power you uncover when you bring your whole self to leadership is transformative.
If you are a leader, whether in a company or in a community, you will be asked to take steps or make decisions that feel heavy, intimidating or uncertain. You can’t guarantee outcomes. What you can control is making decisions you believe in, even when there isn’t 100% assurance about what will happen.
For me, that moment came when I started my own interior design firm. I’d just left my job with no “backup plan,” just a conviction that I wanted to create a firm where everyone could show up fully and joyfully, and where the leadership looked like me (less than 2% of interior designers in the U.S. identify as Black). So, I built that firm, dedicated to elevating the standard of interior design for Black, brown and other marginalized communities. Thirteen years later, we’ve impacted over 6,500 families and helped a major metro housing authority rewrite their senior living standards. I’m so proud of what we have accomplished so far - and what I’ve learned about leadership along the way.
I stepped back too soon, before I’d built the infrastructure and expectations to truly delegate leadership. I was handing off day-to-day responsibilities while still being the engine of the firm’s revenue, business development and long-term direction. If you’re going to step back as a leader, you can’t just rely on trust and alignment. You need to empower people with clarity and systems - start with the intention, not the transition.
Leading through grief, I realized that clarity doesn’t always arrive as calmness. And we need to sit in those feelings. Discomfort doesn’t mean you’re going in the wrong direction. It can mean you’re getting close to identifying a deep truth before you can rationalize it.
Trust your own knowing.
Leadership doesn’t require shrinking yourself, or holding back your emotions. As women, we’re sometimes taught not to express our emotions or “be emotional.” As cliche as it sounds, I think women showing up to lead as their fully actualized and authentic selves is one of the most powerful ways we can wield our influence responsibly.
Integrity demands that we act on what we believe in - sometimes that means jumping in when we don’t have a playbook. Last year, one of our partners wanted us to not only design a health equity clinic but to help them reconnect with the heartbeat of the community. We launched Celebration Services (sm) a community engagement program that, over the course of months, brought Black and Latino leaders together and opened dialogues with residents to make sure the project included their voices and not just outside stakeholders.
Don’t pigeonhole your own impact. When I first met the team behind EMIR Healing Center, which has been helping those affected by gun violence in Philadelphia for over two decades, it was a lightbulb moment. They’re expanding into anew three thousand eight hundred square foot home in Germantown.
This space will hold family therapy, group care, movement, and community programming for families navigating unimaginable loss. We knew we needed to provide more than interior design, so we launched our first collaborative social impact fundraiser on their behalf.
Ultimately, taking care is one of the most important aspects of leading with integrity. Caring for yourself, the people around you, the issues you see - those are all vital.
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