CEO Coaching: Absolute Loyalty Is for Cults and Golden Retrievers
Dogs are loyal. Painfully loyal. If you want to test just how loyal, try this (hypothetically!): lock your spouse and your dog in your trunk for an hour and see who licks your face when you let them out. (To be clear: I do not condone locking up spouses, dogs, or even cats—despite my personal reservations about felines.)
Even dogs, however, won’t stay loyal if you mistreat them—and nor should they.
In business, as in life, loyalty shouldn’t be a binary switch. It’s not a lifetime membership card. And it certainly shouldn’t be reserved for one person, one leader, or one organization. (I’ll leave religion out of this, lest lightning strike.)
Whether we’re talking about your CEO or the president, absolute loyalty is a bad idea. If you’re expected to violate your principles regularly, dance around the law, or compromise the Constitution, you’re not loyal. You’re either a sycophant, dangerously confused, or hypnotized. Possibly all three.
Mark Twain nailed it: “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.” The business version? Be loyal to the company—you chose to work there, after all—and be loyal to leadership when they’re ethical, legal, and mostly competent.
Nobody gets it right all the time. Leaders screw up. So do you. If you expect to agree with everything your boss does, start your own business and argue with yourself instead. At least then you’ll always win.
Leading a company requires tough decisions. It doesn’t involve holding a referendum on every issue or trying to make everyone happy. If you attempt that strategy, you’ll fail. Quickly and probably spectacularly. And following a leader requires some compromise. But only to a point. And that point differs for everyone.
Still, there are some universal no-gos. If an order violates your moral compass, ethics, or the law, you have a duty to push back—or walk out. Even a Marine private is expected to disobey an unlawful order. You’re not less capable of critical thinking than a 19-year-old with a buzz cut. At least I hope not.
So if you’re a senior leader, do you deserve loyalty from your team? Generally, yes. But don’t expect blind devotion if you act like a narcissist with a God complex. If you’re lining your own pockets at the company’s expense, don’t expect the troops to salute. And if you work for someone like that? You don’t owe them your soul—or your silence.
When in doubt, ask yourself: If this showed up on social media, what would my mom say? If her response would involve the word “disappointed,” that’s your sign.
Loyalty matters. But in the human realm, it’s earned—and never absolute.
coaches CEOs to higher levels of success. He is a former CEO and has led teams as large as 7,000 people. Todd is the author of, Never Kick a Cow Chip On A Hot Day: Real Lessons for Real CEOs and Those Who Want To Be (Morgan James Publishing).
Connect with Todd on LinkedIn, Twitter, call 303-527-0417 or email [email protected].
