Any healthy organization rightly expects that its members will be completely loyal to the mission. Far more important than blind devotion to any individual or a tribal fanaticism, mission-driven loyalty actually has the capacity to create cohesive organizational cultures where innovation happens, ideas move toward execution, and people flourish. Ironically, mission-driven loyalty creates space for all sorts of personality differences and healthy outlets for conflict within a team.
Few things hurt more than a betrayal of loyalty. When it happens, it usually seems to catch us by surprise. And it can be painful and destabilizing, both for individuals and for organizations.
That’s because loyalty is inextricably linked to trust. And, as I’ve suggested elsewhere, trust is at the very heart of healthy leadership and healthy organizations.
At the same time, we regularly see counterfeit forms of loyalty. How many organizational cultures are plagued by a false standard of loyalty, one that enables all sorts of misconduct and incompetence? How many personal relationships are characterized by sinful patterns of manipulation and even abuse, but propped up by a distorted definition of loyalty?
In our day, defining and understanding loyalty can seem to be especially challenging. It’s sometimes difficult to identify, but we certainly know when it’s broken.
Blind Loyalty Is Destructive
Unfortunately, far too many organizations cloak all sorts of dysfunctional dynamics under the guise of loyalty, demanding that stakeholders turn a blind eye to reality. Sometimes this is induced by a cult of personality, an organizational culture that so idolizes the senior leader that no one is permitted to actually question things. In these organizations, propaganda and legend are exchanged for the truth. Anyone who dares criticize the actions or decisions of the most senior leader is quickly ostracized for “disloyalty” or even driven out of the organization. This can certainly happen in the corporate world, but churches and nonprofit organizations are not immune. In some ways, they may be especially susceptible to it. And let’s be clear, this tendency is not confined to any singular theological tribe. But in most of the ministry implosions we have witnessed in the past decade, there developed a tacit understanding that the senior leader–whether a pastor, ministry founder/CEO, institutional president, etc.–was never to be questioned. So sycophants and obsequious “hangers-on” surround the leader and become the watchdog enforcers of this sort of loyalty.
The same is true in our personal relationships. Friendships won’t make it without loyalty. But blind loyalty is no true loyalty at all. In fact, a friend who offers up blind loyalty is not offering a gift, but a poison pill. We all need friends who will stand with us, especially when the chips are down and few others will. But those true friends never cease to tell us the truth, even when it stings. And they tell it to our face, not behind our backs. That’s because loyalty is all about trust and, just as importantly, it means that one person has so committed themselves to our wellbeing and flourishing that they will do whatever it takes to advance our good.
That’s a big reason why a betrayal of loyalty is so painful. When team members are sacrificed for political expediency, public relations damage control, or an aversion to conflict, it is deeply traumatic. Such betrayals not only injure the persons involved but leave a dent on the entire organization. Loyalty requires trust as its currency. When loyalty is betrayed, trust disappears with it.
Dysfunctional organizations traffic in counterfeit loyalty, demanding that stakeholders look the other way or suppress accountability. Some of the most egregious examples of this happen in the corporate world, when companies try to skirt compliance with legal regulations or ethical standards and then bully employees into silence, all in the name of “loyalty.” Regrettably, these dynamics also show up in churches and ministries. Whether in covering up abusive behavior by a key leader or in suppressing accountability in financial matters, there can be real pressure to enable the status quo by appealing to loyalty. But loyalty that is detached from truth is no loyalty at all. And mark my words, the leaders who demand this kind of false loyalty are always the first ones to throw their own employees under the proverbial bus if it is in their own interest. In contrast, true loyalty goes both ways.
Ordered Loyalty is Essential
Organizations cannot flourish without genuine loyalty, but neither can personal relationships. This demands what we might call an ordered loyalty. Most of our breakdowns and distortions of loyalty come from disordered loyalty.
In a general sense, loyalty is only genuine when it is truly virtuous. If untethered from the good, the true, and the beautiful, it ceases to be true loyalty and becomes something altogether different. But in a distinctly Christian sense, we understand that our loyalty to one another is dependent upon our supreme loyalty to the one true and living God.
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