‘Be true to yourself. Be true to those you lead.’ John Wooden In my previous post in this John Wooden Pyramid of Success series, I wrote about loyalty from a personal perspective. The premise being that in order to be loyal to others you need to start with being loyal to who you are first. Being loyal to yourself with respect to how you train your brain, how you prepare your body and how you tend to your spiritual life are all very important components to being able to show loyalty to others in your life. If this is the first blog post you have read by me you can find part one of this blog post here. So why does loyalty to others matter at home, in sports, in our personal relationships and in work? Well, as the title suggests loyalty can act like a currency and be the platform for positive business decisions, growth of a friendship, winning or losing in a sports setting and a happy relationship with your loved one and family. Like finances you need to trade in loyalty carefully because it can take a long time to build up a solid loyalty reserve, but once you spend it, it is gone and is very hard to get back. You need to be careful with how you use it, you need to show it your respect and you need to use it wisely, or else you will find yourself out in the cold looking in. However, I am not talking about loyalty in the way that Trump views it. It has been alledged that Trump has repeatedly asked for loyalty from people like Comey, the former FBI Director. The press has been awash with Comey’s public testimoney that Trump repeatedly asked for his loyalty in their now famous private dinner. As Comey tried to explain to the President he would be honest with him, not personally loyal. What Trump was asking for here was loyalty to him personally, loyalty to his needs. Not loyalty to the American people. This type of loyalty is wrong, it is incorrect, it is perverted and it does not build an open and honest working relationship that would not allow Comey, in his role as the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to carry out his role impartially. If Trump were any sort of leader he would have understood that Comey stating he would be honest with him was Comey showing loyalty not only to the American people, but also to the office that Trump not inhabits. Loyalty is not getting your own way from others to the detriment of others. It is not something you should, or can command from someone. It is something earned. When looking at loyalty in a more personal environment the most obvious form of loyalty (or at least the type of loyalty that is in the public domain most often) is not cheating on your partner. However loyalty runs much deeper than this in a personal relationship. Loyalty is pulling your weight, it is doing what you say you are going to do, it is putting family first, it is helping each member of your household to be happy and successful, it is about being consistent in all that you do. Loyalty in the home is very much about the small details. When I have conversations with other people at the school gates a lot of the conversations are based on when things don’t go right in the home. ‘He did not get up with the baby last night….she did not wash my work clothes so I am going to work in this….she did not buy the right coffee and now I haven’t had my caffeine hit…..he was out late last night with his pals again…..’. The list is endless, however each of these scenarios all have the same underlying issue, a specific routine or function has not been carried out to someone’s satisfaction. Ok, so this can happen from time to time, especially with babies and young children in the household. However, where has the loyalty been broken? For me it is the loyalty of the relationship itself. When we commit to one another we are committing to building a shared life that is better that the one either party could or would have on their own. At least that where we start. When we get a few years down the line and kids come along, and job promotions happen and we get a nice big house and people carriers we can lose sight of what we started in the first place. This ideal image of familial bliss has been eradicated and replaced with this messy, tiring, noisy tantrum filled, money draining reality that we were not prepared for. In this instance it is all too easy to take our focus off the dream of family bliss and focus on each and every small annoyance that happens in family life. The small things become the big things and all of a sudden we are being and thinking negatively about our families, our partners and the life we are trying to build. We have broken the loyalty of the family unit, the trust that we have built up with our wives and children because we are so focused on somewhere in the future when our children behave impeccably, our wives always wash our favorite pants first and our house is always tidy. By focusing on happiness being somewhere out there, in the future, we lose sight of the fact that happiness is a process. Happiness is in the detail. Happiness is right here and right now, not somewhere in the future. Once we understand that we can be loyal to our partners, our kids and our family unit and in that loyalty is where we find joy. So what about when we have a fight with a friend or partner? How can we be loyal to someone when we are in the thick of it arguing with them? Chade-Meng Tan, a former google employee and now a world leader in emotional intelligence shared in his 2012 book ‘Search inside Yourself’ how he deals with arguments in work and in the home. ‘Whenever I have a fight with my wife or a co-worker, I go to another room to calm down and after a few minutes of calming down, I do this exercise in stealth. I visualize the other person in the next room. I remind myself that this person is just like me, wants to be free from suffering just like me, wants to be happy just like me, and so on. And then I wish that person wellness, happiness, freedom from suffering, and so on. After just a few minutes of doing this, I feel much better about myself, about the other person, and about the whole situation. A large part of my anger dissipates immediately.’ He shows loyalty and respect to those in his life by removing himself briefly and going through a practiced routine that allows him to understand that the other person has the same wants and needs to be loved and happy and free from suffering. In the sports arena we have just seen the Golden State Warriors win their second championship in 3 years. This is a special group of basketball players, coaches and managers who have created a winning competitive environment that is built on care, compassion, joy and trust. I have written a previous article on this team, which you can find here. What is clear from player interviews after the final is the value all involved with the club place on loyalty. It was repeated by everyone interviewed that each player shows loyalty to each other and to the process of winning by how they turn up to train each day. They don’t skip any parts of the process and they spend time on the details. They sacrifice personal, individual glory for the wider team glory and they each do this in their own unique way. This team wins because of the collective strength they have, which is formed and solidified through a strong sense of loyalty to one another. In my time as a player and a coach I have been fortunate enough to have been on amazing teams, and have experienced the feeling of invincibility of being with a group of guys that I trusted 100%. It pulled us through in tough games, it helped us forgive when people made mistakes, it helped us play for each other and not against each other. The loyalty of those teams was often built up off the court, through social interactions, showing a care for each other and spending time getting to know one another. I have also been on teams that were filled with selfish, me first players. These teams always fell short and I could not wait to get out. Practice was not fun, there was no sense of enjoyment and motivation was low. As a coach I spend a large proportion of my time speaking to the players about sacrificing for the team, giving up their ego and instead feed into the team ego. A collective force that will help propel the players to a better place. However, working with young testosterone fuelled men can often mean that the team ego can very often be destroyed by something as simple as a bad pass or a miss timed shot. It is obvious that the loyalty capital has not been built up and will need some time to develop. So in your lives, as you move from home life to personal life to your hobbies be careful of how you are treating those around you. Work hard and diligently to build up a reserve of loyalty from friends and family that add value to your life. The currency of Loyalty will buy you happiness, self worth and joy, however it is in the act of loyalty that you will discover this.
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AuthorMy name is Andy Smyth, I have spent the last decade working in the field of Sports Development, where I have had the pleasure of working to grow leaders within local community sports clubs in Scotland. Archives
August 2017
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