There is an old expression that says “To have a good friend you have to be a good friend.”  I believe that loyalty follows the same paradigm. As a manager, if you want your team to be loyal to you, then you have to be loyal to them. Furthermore, because you are the manager, your actions and attitudes will be the primary determining factor as to the cohesiveness and loyalty of your team members toward each other and toward you.

That said, the following items will help you build a loyal organization.

  • Let your team members take credit for their accomplishments
  • Protect them when problems and/or bad politics arise
  • Go to bat for them when they need it
  • You have to be a good mentor, good teacher and good listener
  • Trust their judgment within the bounds of their authority
  • Reward teamwork among your team members
  • Help your team members move toward their personal and professional goals

There are also things that you should not do because it can dramatically undermine your efforts toward building loyalty. They are:

  • Don’t assume that your team will be loyal to you just because you are the manager, you must earn their loyalty through your attitudes and actions
  • Don’t take your teams loyalty for granted, continue to foster it
  • Don’t take advantage of your team’s loyalty for your personal gain, once found out, their feelings toward you will be substantially diminished

People’s loyalty is hard to achieve and once lost, very hard to reestablish. To illustrate this concept, consider the following story.  In Boston there are two main train stations, South Station and North Station. Joe lives south of Boston and commutes to his Boston-based job via South Station. Bill lives north of the city and takes the morning train into North Station. Each morning, for years, Joe and Bill walk past each other on their way to their respective offices. As time passes, they begin to recognize each other and start saying hello as they pass. They even stopped once and had coffee together. Then, one morning Joe was in a very bad mood and when Bill said hello to Joe, Joe reacted by yelling at Bill and said, “Leave me the #### alone!” Joe felt terrible about it, and apologized again and again. Bill forgave Joe, but never quite looked at him the same way again and was always a little more guarded when he and Joe passed.

As you would expect, the moral of this story is that as the manager you can’t choose when to be loyal to your staff and when not to be. Building and maintaining a loyalty-based work environment, not only requires specific intention, but also requires ongoing consistency.