The Loyalty Double Standard

I was on a call with one of my clients yesterday. He’s a VP at a Global 100. Big company. You know them.

He had just talked with one of his top employees who, let’s call Lisa.

Lisa’s great at her job. He knows it. I know it, and I’ve never even met the woman. She’s that good.

My client had been proactively making changes to better support Lisa and make sure she really understood how valued she was at the company. He was getting her more staff, more resources, and really defining a clearer path of growth for her.

But then Lisa quit. Completely out of the blue.

My client told me that he can’t believe she did that. He said, “I put my neck on the line to get her the team structure she wanted. I thought she’d be more loyal.”

Meanwhile, four months earlier, the company laid off 7% of its workforce, including four people on Lisa’s team, and my client was the one who informed the people that they were being laid off.

During one of the meetings he had with the people he was laying off, the person said to him, “I thought this company wasn’t gonna do layoffs. I thought you said you’d stay loyal to us.”

So this seems like a pretty good time for you and I to have a conversation about loyalty, don’t you think?

So let’s have it.