Integrity Alone Is Not Enough to Be Judged as Trustworthy
On the crystal clear evening of April 1, 2026, the Artemis II launched from Kennedy Space Center. Four astronauts; Victor Glover, Jeremy Hansen, Christina Koch and Reid Wiseman, traveled 700,000 miles around the moon, the first crewed lunar mission since 1972. The mission evoked a sense of pride and ownership that united the world. It was a historical and technical milestone, but more importantly, a test of trust.
The astronauts named their spacecraft Integrity. They chose this name because it described the ethos that embodied their training, their mission and their return to Earth. For them, integrity is consistently practiced, not a fixed trait. Prior to their mission, they participated in National Outdoor Leadership School training (NOLS), which focused on navigation and leadership in high-stress environments.
Upon landing safely back on Earth, Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman cited a lesson he had learned from a NOLS instructor about integrity: “Anyone can slip in or out of integrity and up in space, the pressure and the human experience can pull you out of the work. Thankfully, any one of my crew-mates would pull me back in if I slipped out of it.” That’s where trust lives: in mutual accountability.
Every element of the mission depended on trust. The crew trusted each other to act honestly and own mistakes. They trusted Mission Control, engineers and launch teams to do their part without fail. No one could succeed alone; everything required alignment.
But here’s the part most teams overlook:
Integrity alone is not enough to be judged as trustworthy.
In a perfectly fair world, we’d be trusted for telling the truth, acting honestly, meaning well and doing what we say we’ll do. And to be fair, most people believe they operate this way. We see ourselves as reliable, well-intentioned and honest people with integrity.
But trustworthiness isn’t a trait owned by us. It lives in someone else’s judgment.
And that judgment happens before we’ve had time to prove our honesty, demonstrate our intentions or deliver on our promises.
Which means our integrity, no matter how real, isn’t enough on its own.
High-performing teams, like the Artemis II crew, understand this. They don’t assume their integrity is obvious. They make it visible through clear communication, fast acknowledgment of mistakes and consistent follow-through from the very first interaction.
Christina Koch described a crew as people moving in sync toward a shared goal, holding each other accountable, understanding each other’s limits and showing up for one another every time. Integrity makes that possible, but trust is what makes it work.
After their splashdown, the Artemis II crew described the mission as an “epic journey of integrity” because they could rely on each other when things went well, and especially when they didn’t.
At Habits at Work, we believe integrity is foundational, and trust is what drives performance. And it’s the combination of both, working together, that becomes truly powerful.
Interested in learning how you can transform leaders and sellers into the most trustworthy, high performing professionals on the planet? Click here.