When Moe Rock isn’t running the Los Angeles Tribune, he’s busy helping entrepreneurs build their communities, strengthen their leadership skills, and enhance their personal development. Believing that integrity matters, he publishes his debut book The Moral Compass: 28 Principles for Integrity-Based Leadership next month. “I think we’re not having enough conversations about integrity,” he says. “Without integrity we cannot have a functioning organization, we cannot have healthy relationships, we cannot have a thriving world. Everything starts with integrity, it is the fundamental component of all success and it is the fundamental component of all aspects of life.”
As organizations spend more on integrity training, maintaining a high level of integrity is not without its challenges. According to the EY Global Integrity Report 2022, 97% of respondents said integrity is important. But more than half said integrity standards had either stayed the same or deteriorated in the 18 months leading up to the report.
It’s stats like these that inspired Rock to write his book in the first place. To give leaders more opportunities to think about the role integrity plays in their lives and organizations, Rock’s book presents 28 Principles Leaders Can Teach. One of them is empathy. “When you practice empathy and create a culture of empathy and have that as a workplace value, it actually increases productivity and actually decreases the number of people who leave your company. There’s a practical reason for that.” You want to build empathy into your organization and culture. Let’s not forget what it’s like to be human, shall we?”
Rock says it’s easy to forget we’re human when working in a rapidly changing environment trying to keep up. While acknowledging that computers will replace many human tasks, he emphasizes that what binds us together is “our heart-centered choices, our integrity, our empathy, our ability to love.”
Rock sat down with me Jessica subscription to share more about his book, the role he thinks AI plays in journalism, and what it was like taking over an old brand.
