Loyalty Is Not A Switch

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Dear listeners, we know like we talk about loyalty, like it's a switch that you flip on or off, but what if it's actually something more complicated? Something that changes as we change, shaped by what we have been through and uh what we are learning about ourselves right now. So today we are looking at loyalty, not as a fixed promise, but as a thing, something which is alive, something that deserves a closure look. So, hey dear listeners, welcome back to another PowerPoint episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life. I'm your host, Davik, and I'm really glad that all of you are here today. So, this is the podcast where we talk about mental health and well-being in ways that actually fit into real life without the jargon, without the pressure, just honest conversations about what it takes to feel a little more grounded. And joining me today is a very lovely guest. Please welcome Elliot Sawyer. So, welcome to the show. Hey, Ava, great to be with you. Thanks for having me. Amazing, amazing. So, Elliot, like, I mean, uh, it's really great uh to have you here today. And before we start, I mean, I'll just suggest if you can just uh tell us something about you, your journey, so it'll really be great for the listeners.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Yeah, thank you. First, I am a husband of 15 years, I'm a I'm a dad of two. I've got a seven-year-old and a 10-year-old. Uh, let's see, I live in Denver, Colorado. Uh, I've been spent a lot of my time in a few different arenas, sales, business development, and then also a pastor of a church. Uh, given over 1,500 talks. I've spent over 10,000 hours guiding professionals and spent a lot of time with entrepreneurs and um senior leaders and foreign leaders and executives, and spent a lot of time coaching and guiding, um, and then have also influenced over 100 million in revenue uh throughout my career. And so all that now is coming together as I am a keynote speaker, author, and consultant for organizations.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Amazing. That's really, really amazing. And thanks so much for being here.

Service Over Self-Interest

SPEAKER_01 2:25

And like um, I want to I want to ask, like, uh suppose when people hear the word loyalty, they often think that it means sticking with someone or something no matter what. But that can get complicated fast. So what do you think? I mean, what's the one common misunderstanding about loyalty that you think gets people into trouble?

SPEAKER_00 2:54

One thing that I think that gets people in trouble when it comes to loyalty is when they they think and they focus all of their attention and their efforts on what they're doing rather than how they can serve the other person. Um, we talk about this at nauseum, is that self-interest is the root of disengagement. It's the root cause of why people disengage from you. Psychology shows over and over again that people who have selfless motives actually draw people towards them and they build loyalty. People who lead and live with self-interest motives, it actually repels people from you and it causes disloyalty and disengagement. And so I think the the way to articulate this is if you really want to create lasting loyalty, is you have to figure out how can I make my life and my intentions and my efforts and my actions benefit those around me rather than rather than just extracting benefit from them.

unknown 3:50

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

Sure. Exactly. Uh so when someone realizes that they have been holding on to that old idea of loyalty, then what's usually the first shift they need to make in how they think about?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

Yeah, the first shift in actually creating loyalty, and this is for an individual, a leader, an organization, a team. It really is universal across the board, no matter the entity. The first shift that you've got to make, and then we say this all the time, is that motives start in the mirror. You've got to start looking at yourself. You've got to look at see what drives you. You've got to look and see what am I trying to gain from this? What am I trying to take from this? Rather, what am I trying to give to this and how am I trying to serve this? And so shifting motives is the first place to start. If you're really going to have a loyalty or a people are fond of you, or people favor of you, or people really love you. That's the name of my keynote in my book. It's called The Company People Love. If you really want to build this, then you have to start by looking in the mirror and say, Am I in, am I doing what I'm doing for myself or am I doing it for others?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

So yeah, I mean, that's really very important. Um is not about ignoring our uh own needs or pretending everything is fine, which is when it's not, I mean, it's it's more about being honest, even when honesty is kind of uh say like uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 5:25

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, I save us. I tell people this all the time that building loyalty is actually really, really, really simple uh but hard to do. And the the one line that I say to people all the time, if you really want to build loyalty, it's again it's simple but hard to do, is you put others above yourself. And and and living that way consistently, not perfectly, but consistently will build loyalty. Uh, if you can, and the one-word answer is if you can honor people, if you can honor people with your time, energy, resources, attention, if you can honor people, then it's the it's the fastest and surest way to build and sustain loyalty.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

I agree. I totally agree.

Childhood, Trauma, And Guarded Loyalty

SPEAKER_01 6:11

And um, okay, and and like a lot of us learned that loyalty means from our families or uh uh uh kind of early friendships. So sometimes those lessons uh kind of serve us well and sometimes they don't. So what do you think? I mean, uh what do you think shapes someone's core belief about loyalty? And uh at the same time, it's like why do beliefs sometimes work against us later on? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons why people have experienced uh low loyalty or high levels of disengagement. Um I think that people's personal experiences, what they've been through, often shapes their inner world, what they're looking for. Um, if they've if they've never really truly been appreciated or if they've been neglected or abused, then they tend to be a defensive person, they tend to be a guarded person, they tend to be a person that isn't going to look to serve other people or to be generous. But as you grow older in life, I think if you want to have loyalty and people really fond of you, you you've got it, you've got to break through those barriers. Even if some some trauma or pain has been experienced early in life, yeah, then you you you've gotta you've gotta face that stuff at some point, get healing, get healthy. Um, we're talking about healthy mind, healthy life here. You've got to get healthy in those areas. And then as you do, you can actually shift from being guarded and just trying to get what you need out of life to shifting to how can I be more open? How can I be more giving? How can I be more of service to other people? And then you extrapolate that on a larger scale with organizations. Organizations uh are the majorly um are majorly infected with the the the sickness that I call self-interest. There's so many organizations that are in business or in whatever line of work they're in for their own interest. And the organizations that are the strongest and have the deepest loyalty are the ones that know how to honor their people, honor their customers, honor their stakeholders. And they realize, hey, whatever we're building, whatever service or product that we've created, it's actually not for us. It's for the people that we've created it for and those who help build it. And then we can create loyalty because people are realizing, again, we're here to be of service. We're here to be of value, not just to make money off of people or to leverage or uh uh take advantage or get what we need from people. So again, that self-interest is is is the seed that's in the human, but the the human individual, but it also takes root in organizations and large enterprise companies and and and I would even argue in leaders and nations and countries. But when you when when you make it about what you can get from people rather than what you can give to people, it's the shift. And and again, people have had many reasons why they they have self-interest. Again, it's usually associated with some sort of pain or some sort of defense or some sort of thing that they've been through that they don't want to experience again. So they have a they have a they have a guard up. And I would say again, when you can work through those things on a on a individual level and a corporate level, you can start to see real breakthrough.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

And and you know, it definitely makes sense that loyalty can feel like an obligations that we never question. But it's uh built on fear or guilt connection. It's it's worth it's worth rethinking like what we are actually uh holding on to and why that's my part. I mean, maybe I'm wrong also, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah, yeah. What has been your experience, Avik, with loyalty? How have you seen it manifest?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Um so loyalty for me, it's something it's a combination, I'd say for me. For me, it is something which you feel from inside, it's uh from the childhood, what you see, what you uh been through. Uh so that is something for me, and I feel it until and unless you feel that from your loved ones, from uh from inside, uh I mean that is my feeling. Yeah, so it is it is all about the feelings, like what we uh tend to bring from our childhood, what we see, what uh uh we feel from our uh families, generally about uh friends, the friendship, brands. Uh uh if you're working in office, then the teams we we wear the same badge, we are accessing the same uh logins. But if uh if I am sitting with the if I'm sitting with it like quietly for a moment and ask like what does it mean, then it is very complicated first because uh not always that sometimes uh the most loyal thing uh I mean what I can do is to just leave the situation that was uh slowly breaking someone whom I love, right? For me, it's sometimes silence as well, like just being silent or uh I I think loyalty is it's it's a kind of commitment also, someone's truth as well. Like again, again, it's it's all the feelings and the beliefs that we carry from childhood to yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

And then would you even say to my point that this this can play out in organizations as well? Yeah, yeah. That there there there is a thing that can be extrapolated on a on a micro level to a macro level with an organization, a team, a country, a nation. You know, there's there's so many ways to to um apply this.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

You know, one of the things you when that you said kind of struck a thought for me is when it comes to using your life to the benefit of other people, yeah. It takes a great deal of healing and freedom to get to that point. You know, it actually takes being a healthy individual, yeah, free from all of the insecurities that are in your life to be of service to someone else. Um, and so I think that's why it's a little bit of a process. I don't think that we have to, it's an excuse to wait till build loyalty, but I think if we're gonna look at it on an individual level, yeah, that the the the healthiest people and the strongest people are the ones who actually use their life to be generous to others, to be of service and to be of value to other people, not using it for their own needs and desires. And you know, the the I think the weakest, unhealthy people are the most selfish people.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yep, yep, exactly. Selfish people that definitely is. I mean, there is a long story, but I don't

Transactional Loyalty At Work

SPEAKER_01 13:40

want to mention here. But if you talk about that everyday part, everyday life of ours, uh uh so how loyalty, or maybe uh how does loyalty or uh kind of misplaced loyalty uh show up in a ways that people might not even notice at first? I mean, sometimes what happens, right? We we see that, but sometimes we ignore, okay, it's fine. Yeah, okay. But we uh we not even notice at first, also. So so life at work and friendship, what do you say? I mean, how we treat ourselves.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, I think there's a couple of ways that loyalty is misplaced or displaced. Um, I think that when we live transactionally, whether again it's an individual, a leader, or an organization, when you carry yourself with a transactional mindset, meaning what can I do to get what I want from this person or from this other organization, that is going to break down over and over again. Maybe not in the short term, but eventually that will break down is living or operating from a transactional mindset. The second I would say is exploiting. When you say I'm going to exploit someone for their for their gifts, abilities, resources, or relationships for my own gain, that is one of the quickest ways to break down loyalty. And we see that over and over again. People are notoriously exploiting one another. We use people, we take advantage of people, we use syrup power, we, we, we, we, we, we work our we work angles, we use tactics, we manipulate, we leverage, we do these things. And it's sometimes in the business world, it's it's the mechanisms and methods that we're taught and just say, this is the cost of doing business, this is what it takes. But it's never going to form loyalty. It doesn't create loyalty when you exploit somebody or exploit another entity. And I think the the last one that comes to mind is having a taking mentality. What can I take from you? What can what can I extract from your life, your finances, your your your well-being? What can I take from you that will again benefit me? And I think when you when you have a combination of those things, whether it's transacting, exploiting, or taking, those, those type of behaviors will break down loyalty over and over again. People people don't trust you. People don't want to engage with you, people don't want to do business with you if you operate from those places.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

What's a what's a sign that someone might be confusing loyalty with something uh which is not healthy or like people pleasing, we we often see, right? Or a fear of change as well. And we might not mind, I mean, we often see this uh in in office culture or the organizations. So I mean, buddy, but what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Yeah, I think one of the ways that people might misrepresent or miscalculate loyalty is if this is gonna sound interesting, but or maybe a little odd, but I think that people would oftentimes measure success or results and think that they're doing well, but they're not actually building loyalty because you can have temporary success without having long-term loyal loyalty. So you could be experiencing some sort of success, whether it's personally or corporately, but that may be seasonal. It may not last, it may run out because people may need what you have for a moment, but they don't continue to come back to you because maybe they were mistreated or they didn't like the experience, or maybe they realize, hey, this this company is just trying to take from me, or they're not, they're not actually serving what I'm looking for. And so success and results can often be uh a misguided measurement for loyalty. I'm not saying it now now I will argue the other point, which is organizations and companies that do have loyalty will have greater long-term success. They will be the ones that outlast and outpace the market. Maybe not in a short term, maybe not in a season, but over a long period of time, they will win out. And that's why companies, organizations invest billions of dollars to create loyalty because they know that loyalty is something that they have to have. And they know that it's not just short-term, but again, they can be blinded by short-term success or near results. So there's a there's a fine line between, hey, what we're doing right now might be working, but is it going to be building long-term success? And the same is true for a leader. A leader might get results, a leader may move people, a leader may make things happen without actually building loyalty.

SPEAKER_01 18:32

So I I I want to ask you one more thing is like we we are talking about uh loyalty in I mean everywhere.

Sustaining Loyalty With Honest Repair

SPEAKER_01 18:42

We we talked about the office part as well. But um change is really kind of it's a very straight line. I mean, it's really a straight line. So someone might commit a healthier loyalty, but then it is quite possible that again the old patterns come back and uh the relationships uh uh also kind of start testing. So, how do people sustain this shift over time? Like, especially when it gets harder for them to manage?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think consistency is something that we have to learn how to accomplish. I think that that when you're trying to build loyalty um and and and you may not feel confident that you can sustain it over a long period of time, um, I think that consistency is something that has to play in now. One of the best ways to continue that ongoing loyalty is is through honesty. You know, I think that sometimes, whether it's an individual or an organization, if if they're if they're leading with honesty and transparency, that people will be more understanding than they think. What I mean by that is sometimes people think when they make mistakes that that they're gonna lose everything. Now, we all make mistakes, we all make bad decisions, we all make poor choices, but transparency, when we can when we can have humility to say, hey, this was a mistake, or we did this wrong. I love doing studies on companies that have made mistakes and then they they're we always teach our teams do the next right thing. And they would do the next right thing. And honestly, the those moments where it seemed to be a big problem actually became a major opportunity. I'll I'll share one with you. This is um in the United States, uh an org a company called Johnson ⁇ Johnson. In the 1980s, Johnson ⁇ Johnson had a major issue with their medicine Tylenol. Tylenol is a uh prevalent, it's probably you probably have it in your country, but Tylenol is a prevalent medication or or um medicine that you use for a headache or pain, or you know, it's a pain-relief medicine. Well, in the 1980s, there were uh in Chicago, there were eight people that had died when they had taken Tylenol. Now it was found out that those particular bottles had been poisoned. Someone had put arsenic in those bottles. It it was it they did not come to the store with the arsenic in it. It happened after they had been shelved. Well, even though that that was the case, Tylenol pulled some 36 million bottles of Tylenol, they recalled across the country. And uh they lost a hundred million dollars over this, and it wasn't even their problem, it wasn't their fault. It was something someone else had contaminated this particular medicine. But Tylenol knew that we need to have the right reputation with our people, and so they pulled all this medication, costing them a hundred million dollars. Now, you would think a decision like that would be costly and devastating and they could never recover. However, People found out the news spread that Townall had done this, even though they weren't at fault. And the result of that was they grew like five, 10, 20x because of this, because people said, oh, they are trustworthy. They actually look out for us even when it costs them. That level of sacrifice is something that actually benefited them, not in the short term, but in the long term. And Tolanol is still a household brand here in the United States. Because Johnson and Johnson decide, we're going to sacrifice this short-term issue, the short-term problem for a long-term reputational thing. We're going to do the next right thing. And so I think when you look at a story like that, we can apply that on a personal level, which is when we make mistakes, can we own it? Can we can we be authentically transparent? Can we be honest? Um, even if we didn't, even if we weren't at fault, if we were if if if it was under our umbrella, like uh Johnson and Johnson, even if we're a leader or we're an organization and there's something that has gone wrong, can we can we honor people and put their needs above ours? And when you make decisions like that consistently and over time, Avic, you have loyalty. You don't have to work for it, it's given to you. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

That's really amazing, I have to say. So uh I mean if you have to give one advice today to the listeners, uh, what do we do give?

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah, I would say if you really want to build loyalty, you you've got to you've got to put others above yourself. That's my that's my thread through my keynote, my book, everything. But if you really want to build loyalty and you want to be a person or a company that people love, put others above yourself. The people that are most endeared and the most cherished and the most treasured are the ones who utilize their life, their abilities, their talents, their resources for the benefit of other people, the ones who are generous, the ones who add value, the ones who have service. Those, those type of organizations or people or leaders are are so well loved, are so well respected, are so endeared and cared about because people know I can trust this person. This person looks out for me. This person lives their life or does their business in a way that benefits other people. So again, to just reiterate that if you really want to create loyalty, find how to honor people. Find out how you can honor those around you.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Okay.

Trust Audit, Self-Loyalty, Closing

SPEAKER_01 24:36

And uh if listeners wants to connect with you, how they can connect.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Yeah, you can go to elliottsawyer.com. Uh, I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, uh, just Elliot Sawyer. Um, I've even got on my website, if you go to Elliotsawyer.com slash trustaudit, I have an assessment there that allows individuals and organizations to understand what level of trust they have, whether it's internally or externally with customers. And so that's a great assessment. Um, if people just want something in free resource, they can go to elliotsawyer.com slash trustaudit.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

That's amazing. Amazing. So sometimes what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for you easy to print. And uh I'll just say like um real royalty is not kind of uh blind thing, it's intentional, honest, kind. Yeah. Even when uh that means letting go. Right. So I definitely thank Elliot. Thank you so much for uh being here and sharing this uh perspective of yours into this conversation. It's definitely gonna help people, I believe. And uh for all the listeners, I mean, thank you so much for being here today. And uh uh loyalty is not something that we figured out once and then forget about it, but it's something that we keep learning. Uh uh it could be from any any uh age of yours. It's there is no restriction. So it's something that we keep learning, adjusting, choosing as we grow. And I hope like this conversation gave you something to think about it, maybe something to try. And but I find that that being loyal to yourself is self-est thing. It's necessary. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Well, thank you, Avic, for having me. I hope this I hope this really encourages and blesses your audience.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

Definitely, definitely. I say, and uh I'll just request your listeners like um just take care of your mind, take care of your life, and uh this is your host, Avik, and this is Healthy Mind, Helly Life. I'll see you in the next one. Thank you so much.