05/08/2018

The Loyalty Trap

Loyalty can be a leadership trap if we’re not deliberate about how we apply it

Loyalty is a leadership trap. Or it can be if we’re not very deliberate about how we define and apply it.

Loyalty is almost always listed as a top virtue, like honesty and trustworthiness, including in the workplace. It just makes sense to our inner good person, our conscience. After all, what leader doesn’t want to know that the team they lead is going to follow their lead in all things? What team doesn’t want to know their leader has their back or will defend them up the chain and from rival organizations? As I was promoted within NASA, it was common for managers to see their job as “Circling the wagons to defend my people and my area of responsibility.”

But something nagged at me from time to time when my boss beat the loyalty drum, and as an executive I was never comfortable asking for – or even expecting – personal loyalty. The reason why became vividly clear to me during a time of crisis, as we were reeling with the combination of the end of the Space Shuttle Program and the cancellation of the Constellation Program (the Moon and Mars program).

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