The problem with loyalty

Valentine’s week seems like a good time to examine one of our most dearly held values: Loyalty. In our personal lives, loyalty manifests itself when we stand by our friends and family despite their flaws. If we’re lucky, we may experience a higher order of loyalty when someone risks friendship to tell us a painful truth that we need to hear.

All in all, we have good reason to exalt this virtue — which we do almost to excess in venues ranging from politics to country music. But loyalty is problematic. For one thing, we usually think of it as a reciprocal situation. That is, we think that when we’re loyal to someone, they will return the favor.

Unfortunately, when it come to business, and especially to the workplace, this is usually more than we can reasonably hope for. Although the idea of loyalty is popular in business, the implementation lags. Whether we’re the customer or an employee of a business, the problem is the same: What looks like our loyalty being returned to us is almost always just the business’ self-interest wearing a clever disguise.

As consumers, most of us understand that a business doesn’t exist to serve us so much as to profit from us. But somehow we lose track of that idea when we become employees of the same business. That’s when our loyalty button gets pushed and we start thinking in terms of “we” rather than “they.” At this stage, we start to assume that the company is being as loyal to us as we are to it.

For workers, this can translate into all kinds of painful things, mostly stemming from making decisions from the heart instead of the head. For example, a loyal worker might stay longer at a job than is wise, or might compromise personal goals, family time or even health in order to meet the demands of a company “that has always been good to me.”

Since I see this phenomenon a lot with career counseling clients, I’ve come to realize something surprising: Even though it’s obvious that the company isn’t being particularly loyal to the worker, it turns out that the worker’s actions aren’t always motivated by loyalty either. Loyalty is just the cover story they’re using to explain otherwise illogical decisions.

Much of the time, the cover story is so good, the worker believes it too. That’s one reason I’ve started using a mental checklist of the actual issues that unexamined loyalty might be camouflaging.

For example, it’s pretty common for a worker to justify tenure in a deteriorating job as an issue of loyalty when in fact they’re staying out of habit. This person is in a career rut.

Low self-esteem and fear of the unknown also appear on my checklist. If verbalized, this would sound like, “I don’t think I could get a better job, so I’ll stay loyal to this company.” Occasionally I’ll run into someone whose esteem issues head in the other direction, leading them to conclude they’re too valuable for the company to ever dismiss. In this case, the loyalty is expressed almost like a gift they’re giving to their employer.

In all these cases, the truly admirable virtue of loyalty is being ill-used as a shield against self-reflection or change. My solution is two-fold. First, of course, is to identify and resolve the real issue, whatever it might be. And second is to stop inserting the concept of loyalty where it doesn’t belong.

Businesses are not capable of loyalty, because — campaign contribution laws notwithstanding — they are not individuals. This means that the times you feel you’ve been treated with loyalty by a business are actually something else, with corporate self-interest the most likely answer.

And, while it’s reasonable to expect an individual manager or boss to treat you with respect and dignity, it’s not as logical to expect that treatment to translate to loyalty in terms of keeping you employed if that’s not in the company’s best interest.

Loyalty does have a place at work, but perhaps not in the way you’ve been used to thinking about it. If you stay loyal to your own values and career goals and use them to create positive outcomes for your boss, co-workers and clients, you’ll be doing well. It’s only when you expect more from others than they’re able to give that you set yourself up for disappointment.

These aren’t very upbeat ideas to be considering on a cheery Valentine’s week. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for honesty in any relationship — even the relationship between you and your job.