The Loyalty Liability

“Tell peo­ple what you real­ly expect and hold them to it, with­out apol­o­gy.” — Kevin Lawrence, Your Oxy­gen Mast First

In a recent media inter­view, the host and I had a con­ver­sa­tion about why so many entre­pre­neurs and CEOS don’t build the amaz­ing team that they would like to have. One of the rea­sons is what I call the ​‘loy­al­ty liability’.

I’ve seen two ends of the spec­trum: loy­al­ty to peo­ple and loy­al­ty to performance.

Many found­ing entre­pre­neurs — whether a small start­up of a cou­ple of mil­lion or those more estab­lished with a few bil­lion in rev­enue — are more like­ly to be loy­al to the peo­ple who have helped them to grow.

Hired CEOs are like­ly to be at the oth­er end of spec­trum with loy­al­ty to performance.

“Peo­ple want real feed­back. They want to do the best job they pos­si­bly can but need to know where the bar is set.”

Loy­al­ty is an amaz­ing trait. Peo­ple want to give their best to you but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, it often comes at a mas­sive price when those peo­ple are no longer as effec­tive in their role as they need to be — when a CEO cares so much about some­one that they allow or accept mediocre performance.

Many CEOs I work with aren’t nat­u­ral­ly com­fort­able with feed­back, and have built won­der­ful, car­ing orga­ni­za­tions. But a leader must give feed­back so that a team mem­ber can stretch and grow, or mod­i­fy their role when they’ve out­grown their capa­bil­i­ty. Now, no-one is per­fect, but when the CEO turns a blind eye to too many things, it’s no won­der the per­son doesn’t per­form as well. And then the CEO won­ders why the busi­ness isn’t per­form­ing as well as it should, and why they are car­ry­ing more of the load and stress.

If a leader or man­ag­er real­ly cares for a per­son, they would nev­er, ever, nev­er, ever, ever, ever, ever let them sit in a role and suf­fer as a mediocre, low per­former. It’s one of the most dis­re­spect­ful things to do, when you know and they know, that they cre­ate no val­ue. Take your heart for those peo­ple to train and devel­op them, move them to a dif­fer­ent role or help them to move on.

Many of these low per­form­ers need their jobs and aren’t in a posi­tion to move. It’s too scary. So, you need to help them to do it with extra time or sup­port to make the move.

As a leader, you have to under­stand the lim­i­ta­tions of your own mind­set. If you want to achieve your aspi­ra­tions, it will only hap­pen with a great team and a loy­al­ty to per­for­mance, as the ulti­mate measure.

The Chal­lenge

• In your busi­ness, where is your loy­al­ty a lia­bil­i­ty – with cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers or peo­ple on your team?
• How can you shift one of those rela­tion­ships to become more loy­al to per­for­mance ver­sus blind loyalty?