I recently attended a Navy leadership workshop that inspired a lot of good introspection. I’ll admit that originally, I wasn’t too excited to attend, and I thought it would probably be a waste of my time. I was already in a leadership position, and I thought I already had a pretty good understanding of what being a good leader entailed, so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually learned a few things from the course.

One of the subjects that we dissected as a class was the subject of honor. That wasn’t much of a surprise to me as honor is one of the Navy core values, however, I did gain a new insight as to what honor really is. The floor was opened to the class and whoever wanted to give their perspective on what honor was had time to share their insights with the group, and I decided to share my thoughts here.

What is honor? Most of us when we think of honor turn to the examples of the warrior, the samurai, the soldier or the leader of a group be it a nation or an organization. Why is that? Why is honor associated with positions of power or with positions of service? How do they relate and what does it mean to have honor?

Honor is equivalent to respect, but it is also intimately related to responsibility and accountability. We all have things or people that we are responsible for or that we are responsible to, and the degree to which we hold ourselves accountable to those responsibilities and fulfill our obligations to them is correlated to the degree of respect we earn from our peers and thus reflects how honorable we are.

When we call a man honorable, it is because we respect him due to the manner in which he shoulders responsibility and because he lives according to the principles he has agreed to observe. He holds himself accountable to the rules and principles he has agreed to follow. When that person requires no outside influence to hold them accountable to those principles, we call them honorable.

Take the example of the samurai. The samurai culture was obsessed with the concept of honor. When a samurai had a great deal of respect for the samurai way of life and held himself accountable for the rules that governed that way of life, he was considered a samurai of great honor. He was respected as a samurai because he respected the rules and the culture, and was thus respected by his peers.

The warrior is accountable to the duty he has to protect the nation and to obey the commands of those appointed over him. The ruler of a nation is accountable to the people of the nation, their safety, wellbeing and prosperity. When they fulfill their duty in a respectful manner, they earn honor.

You don’t have to hold others accountable when you respect the way that they conduct themselves and they have a respect for the responsibility they have to follow the rules they agreed to follow. Those we call dishonorable are those who fail to be accountable for the responsibility they have to conduct themselves in a respectful manner and fail to act in accordance with the way they are expected to.

When a fighter is without honor, it is because he fights dirty, doesn’t respect the rules and really doesn’t respect the man he is engaged in combat with. When a ruler is without honor, it is because they fail to uphold the laws they are obligated to follow, they lack respect for the people they are responsible for and conduct themselves in a way that does not earn respect.

When you think about honor, think about respect, think about responsibility and accountability. Do you wish to be an honorable person? If so, then have respect for others, have respect for the principles and rules you agreed to live by and hold yourself accountable for that responsibility and for the times you fell short of your obligations.