What Loyalty “is”:
Note: loyalty is frequently the first thing mentioned to me by most business owners when I ask them to define a great employee. (Initiative comes second.)
There are two kins of loyalty: the unquestioning salute under all conditions is one, and a public salute with deep, penetrating questions behind closed doors is the other.
Not many Generation X or Generation Y professionals that I interact with seem to have much patience for the former. We have no problem saluting… as long as we are engaged and have the ability to ask pertinent questions behind the scenes. (And if we don’t? G’bye… either we’re gone, or the organization’s toast.) We see the person behind the rank, and we have little patience for jacknuts abusing their power. To us—to me—blindly following a leader in all circumstances… and further redefining “right” and “wrong” to match the actions of the leader… is not loyalty. It’s a deficiency in critical thinking skills—specifically, an inability to tolerate ambiguity—and/or a lack of self-esteem, an overwhelming need for approval, or a painful need to simply be told what to think, but it is not, repeat not, loyalty.
What Loyalty is is the ability and willingness to see beyond a moment of pain in order to protect the long term relationship. When I got married, an older friend said to my wife and I: “Don’t expect a marriage to ever be 50/50. It is what it needs to be. Over the course of a lifetime, you hope that maybe you get close to 50/50.” In other words, extend trust, because when the going gets tough, both sides feel like they’re the ones being asked to take another bite out of the sh*t sandwich. Accepting that, understanding that, and trusting that everything is going to be OK despite the short term pain—that’s loyalty.
Watch as a surprise visit from Lenny helps me crystalize my thoughts about the two forms of loyalty:
Spotting Loyalty in others:
If you want to know if someone is loyal, look at their resume: a consistent run of 2 year stints suggests a lack of loyalty, while longer and even some shorter runs are OK: leaving a number of positions after 3-6 months may show poor judgment, but it also shows decisiveness and a clear idea about who you are. There are some issues here, but loyalty is not one of them. And if you stay for 3 years or more, then I know you faced down your first “put up or shut up”moment—which seems to happen around the two-year mark—with enough faith and trust built up that you were willing to look past the moment of pain and give the organization a shot.
But 2 years? I know instantly when I see a 2 year job that you hated your job after like 4 months and stuck around simply because you were worried how it would look on your resume. And if that’s true, then I know you put yourself above the company, and as hard as you may have worked, you always had one eye on the clock/on monster.com/on potential opportunities elsewhere, so you weren’t focused. You held yourself back and you held your company back. If you saw a problem, you complained, but didn’t invest the energy to solve it. You may think you did, but you didn’t. You couldn’t have: at 2 years, when you got tested (for some reason, something happens after 2 years on the job that tests you), you didn’t have enough personal investment to see things through. You had no roots. You were not committed to the solution; it was easier to say good-bye. Two years is no man’s land. Once, OK. More than once: lack of loyalty.
Other ways to spot loyalty: ask about friends, and specifically if the person still has any friends from school. And if not, why not. Or, pay attention to how the person approaches interpersonal relationships. Is s/he self-centered, treating others as his/her personal audience? Or does s/he show genuine empathy? Are “romantic” relationships conquests or partnerships? Does the person keep any traditions? There are scores of clues about a person’s sense of loyalty if you open your eyes to the world beyond work!
Developing your own Loyalty:
Can you develop your loyalty? I don’t know if you can. I think you can decide to commit to a person, project, or organization. I think you can invest daily in your world. And I do think loyalty grows from those commitments. But I don’t think you can develop loyalty directly any more than you can force yourself to love someone or pull an oak tree from an acorn.
It has to grow on its own accord; all you can do is decide to help it along or not.
Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.
I'm the CEO of Ajax Social Media. We're helping 1 million people shine by making their online stories better. 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi –
I thought this was an interesting article and you made many good points, but I thought it was a bit one sided. I found myself asking “What about the loyalty of a company to its employees?”
I get tired of hearing corporate types disparage the lack of loyalty among workers today while they themselves can layoff people with no notice whenever they like.
I took a new job this summer that required me to move across the country. I spent thousands of my own money to do so. At the time I was hired, I was told the prospects for work in that area were very good. However, a month or two after moving, the whole economy just busted. My husband never was able to find a job here. A few days ago I was informed I was laid off. I had only been working there for 5 months. the layoff was effective immediately and I only received 1 week severance pay. In the meantime, we are both stranded in a town with no prospects of us finding new jobs so we are scrambling to find jobs and will probably have to move again.
I have stayed at my previous jobs for 3-4 years in the past.
I understand sometimes it’s just tough luck, but it seems unfair that as an employee I am expected to give two weeks notice if I want to quit, stay with a company in spite of tough circumstances, etc. Yet, they don’t return the same courtesy to their employees who – let’s admit it – are the real assets of the company.
I enjoy your piece but I will be glad if you co uld talk about types loyalty and the causes of disloyalty among empoyees. I most employees have a reason of disloyalty