As a leader, you have the opportunities to manage your team in the way that works for you and your organization. Within those opportunities, you get to make some choices that can create success for you and your team. Within those choices, you should consider the matter of team loyalty.

Should you be concerned about team loyalty? It depends on where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish.

Normally the question should be answered with a “yes.” In most cases, that’s the case. You want to keep your team together and to accomplish great things. Here are some areas where you want to increase team loyalty:

You have a team that believes in the organization’s mission and vision, and also believes in the team’s mission and vision.

When you have a team that knows what is important and can align itself well to the organization’s mission and vision, you want to be committed to increasing their loyalty to the organization and to the team.

You have a team that wants to work together.

Developing and encouraging loyalty within a team that is committed to its members is highly important. Find opportunities for success and recognize those people who are actively building up the team.  It especially works when the glory and the credit is deferred away from that individual and towards the team.

You have a team that trusts you and wants to trust you even more.

When you have a team that shows it trusts you, that is a great opportunity for success. When they show they want to trust you even more, you have a unique opportunity to achieve greatness. In return, you want to show that you are trustworthy. Find opportunities where your team has even more reasons to see that you are committed to them and exploit them.

You have a team that you want to stay together.

Many teams are generally bound together by the simple reason that the organization put them together. If you have a team that you really trust and want to stay together, you need to do whatever you can to keep them with you. That means that you should be actively encouraging them and promoting their successes in a genuine, sincere way.

You have a team that you want to lead towards excellence.

When you have a team that is able to achieve high levels of performance and success, and you are able to connect and work with them, you want to accomplish even better results. With that in mind, staying with this team as a leader is important.

Now that we’ve covered when we want to be concerned about team loyalty, let’s cover when team loyalty may not be as important.

You have a team which doesn’t want to work together.

If you have a team that is all about individual results, you may not want to even think about developing team loyalty. This attitude could be a result of organizational culture, so you will need to think about adjusting your strategies. If you inherited this attitude, you should think about earning the loyalty of each team member with the goal of bringing the team together with a unified mission and vision.

You have a team that you don’t trust.

Don’t make the mistake that you have the team members’ loyalty if you don’t trust the team. In many cases, the team members are looking to advance their own personal agendas. This is a high cost to you and your team. Don’t look at this situation as a battle that someone has to lose. Instead, you need to see the situation as an opportunity where you determine if and how each member can be trustworthy.

You have a team that needs to make some significant changes in members.

Some team members are not good for the team. When you are sure that this is the case, you need to make changes. First, look at the situation and see if there are opportunities for a change in assignments or roles. If these are not viable options, make a decision to dismiss these members with a tactful, respectful and helpful approach.

You have a non-committed team.

There are many teams without commitment. When you have a team that doesn’t care about the organization, you don’t have a loyal team. In this situation, keep in mind that it may be extremely difficult or impossible to align the team to be loyal. Regardless of the reasons of the lack of loyalty from the team, you need to be careful about putting trust in the team. Focus on how you can eliminate barriers for the team to trust the organization and work to gain alignment with the organization’s mission and vision.

You have a team that just doesn’t care.

In these situations, the team has experienced disappointments with the organization’s leadership. Trust reduces to nothing. As a result, the team doesn’t care what happens. The members only commit to picking up a paycheck. Regardless of what the cause for this apathy to exist, be cautious. Don’t put a whole lot of effort in earning loyalty right away. Work to eliminate the roadblocks that keep the team from trusting the organization.

Conclusion about Team Loyalty

Depending your situation, commit to grow loyalty from your team by positioning for success. Monitor that loyalty. With roadblocks in the way, loyalty is hard to earn and maintain. If you try to monitor it, you may have outside forces that keep you from seeing the accurate picture. Eliminate those negative forces that block trust and camaraderie on your team.