A short interview between Speaker A and Peter Natra about building loyalty within organizations. Natra defines loyalty as staying with and supporting an organization even without full knowledge of higher-level decisions, describes loyalty as an internal character trait and ambassadorial role, and argues that loyalty is reciprocal ("loyalty breeds loyalty"). The discussion covers how loyalty can be tested, how it weakens (one-sided relationships, lack of reciprocity), risks when loyalty erodes (loss of key people, insider risk, domino effect), and the whistleblower tension where loyalty may shift toward customers or the public.
Chapters
Hello, everyone, and welcome back. Today's video is about how to build loyalty within your own people. And I'm really glad to have Peter Natra with us again. Welcome back.
Thank you.
Excellent. So let's define what is loyalty?
Loyalty is the ability to stay with a person, place or thing or organization and expect to be able to appreciate what they're doing, not always knowing what they're doing. So that loyalty in a nutshell, being able to stay with the organization and stick to the organization's principles, not always knowing what's going on in the higher realms of things.
Okay, so what are the key characteristics of loyalty? If you had to describe it, loyalty.
Is almost like a character point from the inside. Where your intentions are as a loyal person is to be all that you can be for the organization, to uphold its internal and external virtues and to live those virtues as if they were your own, essentially.
Yeah. And so why is it. It's so important?
Because it becomes part. You become a representative of whatever organization you're with, whether you're out with friends or whether you're in a. In an official capacity. Your ability to translate what it is that you're representing is of great importance. You are essentially the ambassador for that organisation.
Side question just popped into my mind. Is there a sort of situation or do organisations just take it for granted?
I believe that it is a valid assumption to make. When somebody signs on with your organisation. I think there is an expectation, an unwritten expectation that you are loyal, which is not out of the bounds of reason. I think you can say that if you sign on with the organization. Yeah. You're also signing on to loyalty with that organization.
Okay. And so can employees or that organization be loyal and yet disagree with the ideas or thoughts or actions that are being pushed from above?
Absolutely, in any organization. So let's take a team sport, for instance. You may not always agree with whatever the coach or the team leader is saying, but at the end of the day, the play is the team's play. Just as in an organization, you may not always agree with what's going on, but it is going to be the organizational play. And then it becomes the organization pulling together as a cohesive unit and going forward with the way that they've charted.
Okay, so my next question is, so how do employees show loyalty? Because it's pretty hard. I mean, how does someone show loyalty?
Yeah, it's one of those questions. You can sometimes only see it when it's absent.
Yeah, actually that's a good point.
So, and I guess that gets Back to your question. You know, what is the expectation? There is an assumption that everybody's loyal until they're not. But there are certain things obviously that progress along that pathway before people become disloyal.
Yeah. And is there a way that, for example, a manager or a supervisor or even the executive, can they test it?
Oh, absolutely, they can test. I mean there are many organisations that put regular tests, for want of a better word, into play. And most astute people within that organization will either recognize it or they will operate as if this wasn't a test and this was a for real scenario.
Yeah, yeah. And I know the idea that, you know, once you join an organization you show loyalty to that organization, but how does it work from the other way around? Do the employers need to show loyalty to their employees?
Absolutely, absolutely. I can see loyalty as a commodity essentially. And as an employee expends loyalty in terms of a commodity, the expectation is that that will then be shown in whatever way is important to that employee in return.
Yeah. And you know, we sort of discussed before in terms of a situation where it's sort of a one way transaction. So for example, the employee is loyal to the organization, but the organization is not loyal to the employee. It's more of like a self sacrifice.
Yeah.
And we sit in, for example sports like basketball, where you could have the key player and the teammates have to be loyal to that person and so forth without that sort of expectation. But doesn't that degrade because this is not a sporting environment. We're talking about a work environment.
Correct.
But you could have, for example, a super salesperson. So should his or her colleagues be sort of loyal to this salesperson because they're generating 80% of their revenue, for example?
Yeah. And in truth, yes. But there are other factors that need to, there needs to be some return out of that as well too. And the return doesn't have to be big. Sometimes it just has to be as simple as, hey, thank you for that, really appreciate that. I know you're not going to get any kudos for that, but really, thank you.
Yeah. So the big question, how does loyalty weaken within an organization?
The same as in any relationship. I mean, if you've got an organization, you have a bunch of people in relationship, business relationship with each other. If it becomes very one sided at one point in time, the person who's doing all the giving is going to say, well, you know, this is not working for me anymore. And this is where loyalty can become eroded. The people with character will stick their hand up and say, I can't do this anymore. But then you also have other people who get a little underhanded about things.
Yes, that's true. And what are the potential risks then or that followed when loyalty starts to diminish?
If you start losing people who have the utmost loyalty, even if they just stick their hand up and say, I'm out, you are losing one of your most valuable assets. And you can say the function of that person is valuable, but also the loyalty of that person is valuable. It's very hard to find people who've got enough character to say, you know what? This is it. I'm calling it. And that has to be respected. I think it needs to be addressed before it gets to that point. The second side of that is that you can get people who can become quite jaded by the experience and decide that they're going to receive some of that remuneration they didn't receive in the normal ways, in another way, which is an insider risk.
Yeah. And I was thinking also that if you have a weakening of loyalty, let's say it's coming from one of the top performers, then you could potentially creating a domino effect.
Correct? Exactly. Exactly. Usually you'll find that the performers have a huge influence on the people that support them. And I have seen it where super salespeople, let's put it as salespeople, have taken the whole support team with them lock, stock and barrel, moved out, created a competitive company, and absolutely aced it from that. Yeah.
All right. And now, so another one of my last questions is basically around a conflict of interest. So in any instance, let's say the person decides or they see something that is against their conscience or morality or whatever, and they decide to blow the whistle. So one side they want to be, or can they be loyal to the organization? What do you think is going through the mind in terms of this? Is this seen as a conflict of interest?
Yes. And also, no. The person who is a whistleblower has decided that their loyalty now lies with the recipients of the information. Most of the time, the customers or the recipients of a service or to the general public, they believe that now their loyalty has to be with the people that they service. And that's something that needs to be addressed a little bit further upstream from there. Yeah.
Okay, so what is the key takeaway message for this discussion that we've had?
It's very simple. And I think the beginning of the video we said, you know, how do you create a loyalty inside? Loyalty breeds loyalty. If you have somebody who is ultra loyal with you then and be loyal back to them. It's very simple. And you'll find that your level of intensity of loyalty for whatever will go through the roof, acknowledge and it doesn't cost anything to Acknowledge, and it doesn't cost anything to be loyal.
Yes. Such a great impact and simplicity, I think, is the key. So, you know, as you said, loyalty begets loyalty. So. So there you have it and many thanks. I enjoy this discussion and look forward to the upcoming discussions. Thank you. Thank you very much.
