Ep. 129: Courage Casts - Loyalty

Loyalty is often talked about, but rarely defined the right way. In this episode, Josh breaks down what true loyalty looks like in leadership, business, and relationships, not blind agreement, but trust, accountability, and the willingness to speak up when it matters. He also explores where loyalty can go wrong and how to recognize the difference between genuine loyalty and surface-level support. 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Courage of the Podcast. My name is Josh Pitzko, and I'm a retired police captain with 24 years of experience out of Las Vegas. In today's short podcast, I'm going to talk about basically overall loyalty and what that looks like in business and leadership and relationships. So it was always a value of mine. And what does loyalty mean to you? What it means to me is somebody that will, you know, defend me in a room that I'm not in. And I found that true loyalty is, as I've gotten older, is more rare and rare uh to find. So I have a couple of friends that I just I know are loyal. And it that comes down to an earlier podcast I did talking about shrinking your inner circle and what that looks like to you. Because, you know, I when I have people working for me, working around me, you know, I want to be able to trust them because that loyalty is connected to other things. Like if I'm loyal to my leader, I'm going to work harder for them. It's not just about defending them, especially if they're, you know, not right, if they're doing something incorrect, they're doing something wrong, doing something morally wrong. Because I'm loyal to you, I'll say something in those moments. But and those are the people that I wanted. Everyone I that I ever had working for me, I told them, I prefer you to call me out if I'm wrong, if I'm doing something wrong, if I'm gonna make a mistake, please let's say something. I mean, you can do that in a respectful way. But ultimately, loyalty is such an important value to me because it's who I can trust. And it carries over to trust with, again, with tasks, with um, you know, knowing that they're going to do the right thing. Uh, because I think that loyalty is intrinsically related to other values as well. Where I think loyalty can go awry is, and I've seen this before too, leaders, you know, promoting or helping out people solely because they're loyal to them, not because they're the best person for the job, not because they um, you know, have a great work ethic, but because they're loyal. And I've also seen that where people are um, you know, willing to help out like subordinates that are loyal to them, and that subordinate isn't truly loyal, they're just really good at like brown nosing and you know pretending that they are. But the most loyal people in my life will obviously call me out on my BS when I'm going down the wrong path. That's really what I expect. So I appreciate you listening today. Uh, if you like the podcast, please share it with a friend, subscribe, leave a review, and I appreciate you spending time with me today.