FanStory.com - Loyalty JJ DID TIE BUCKLEby Bill Schott

Leadership Traits:
Justice, Judgement, Dependability, Initiative, Decisiveness, Tact, Integrity, Endurance, Bearing, Unselfishness, Courage, Knowledge (previously addressed), Loyalty, and Enthusiasm.

Loyalty is often regarded as the truest measure of a good leader. It is one that has been tested time and again both directly and subtly after entities have moved on. How a supervisor speaks about a former employee and how that person speaks of his/her supervisor speaks volumes about the relationship and the values of each person.

Having loyalty in regular jobs is difficult to achieve unless there is a personal connection between supervisors and employees. Workers can be hot or cold with how they talk about their bosses whether currently working with them or afterward.

Once, while listening to a recording of rejected applicants from job interviews, it became obvious that those who spoke negatively about their former employers were rarely hired. One can assume in that scenario, loyalty was not a quality found. Sure, the former employer may have been the worst, but the new potential employers don't like picturing themselves cast that way when this employee is dismissed in the future.

My son-in-law, bless his heart, took his first professional job as a computer programmer with a small business that wrote collaborative coding to integrate independent programs to be centrally controlled. His boss was described as a borderline kook, who treated clients poorly, insulted employees daily, but rewarded everyone well. I heard stories of being berated to the point of expecting to be fired, only to be followed up with bonuses and promotions.

I suggested to my son-in-law, that while others around him quit and sought work elsewhere, his showing up and doing his job conscientiously, in spite of the boss's neurotic demeanor, was such a display of loyalty, it stood out compared to the typical employee who would expect congeniality in the workplace.

The fact is, his loyalty to his employer, despite that man's inability to speak professionally to others, kept him in a good-paying job, learning more about how real companies work in the trenches, and securing his next job with AutoDesk, one of the largest programming companies in the world.

Leadershipwise, the loyalty may skip a generation, but the following one may understand the positives of it and carry that forward.