My friends have a lot of time on their hands at work so sometimes we all exchange e-mails about various sports subjects and topics. Usually, a few tangents are taken and this was the case when many of us spoke about baseball this week.
Eventually the focus turned to a column published by Yahoo Sports where the writer asked whether the New York Yankees were making the right decision to stick with their aging veterans. These are players and people who have played for the team for more than 15 years and reached the highest levels of the game on multiple occasions.
Instantly, after reading Les Carpenter’s column, I thought of loyalty and what it is in a sports and business sense. The search for an answer was an unfulfilling one, so I am asking my family and friends for their interpretation in the hope it will catch on.
We are so quick to vilify an athlete for spending their formative years in a city then bolting for more money in another city. It does not matter whether the person might be reunited with family and friends, or they may prefer their new city, or more money is offered fans feel wronged that their “hometown hero” left for supposedly greener pastures.
The same fans who spend their discretionary dollars going to games fail to realize that if another employer offered them a 30 percent increase with some additional perks they would nearly forget to submit a two-week notice to their former employer.
It is not a crime to switch jobs, or to do so with little to no notice to your employer. Yet it may not be the most loyal thing for someone to do that. The refrain is usually “I had to look out for myself and my family.”
In the same notion, employers have long shown a similar zest over the past four decades to terminate an employee or eliminate a position nearly regardless of that person’s performance, evaluations or other metrics. They say “it’s not personal, just business.”
Even the dictionary cannot define “loyal” or “loyalty” without mentioning the word loyal. This week I was telling my girlfriend that what one person may consider loyal could be the exact opposite to someone else.
So what is loyalty, especially in a business and sporting sense? In search of an answer I sought out a friend who like me is looking for work.
Someone who is not loyal has “been burned in the past and they see what other people have done to get ahead. Maybe in their head they think it’s wrong, but they think this is the way it is and they have become complacent with that. No one wants to stand up, because if you do you are the scapegoat and you are made an example of.”
Essentially, her sentiments were aligned with mine. However, the answer sat with me like an appetizer, it was great, but not completely fulfilling.
In all the business books I have read have covertly mentioned that someone must look out for themselves at all times, regardless of how it might impact the team. Hopefully Tavis Smiley’s “Fail Up: 20 Lessons on Building Success from Failure”, which I recently purchased for obvious reasons, will break the uninspiring trend. One, which chances my luck in the business world, could certainly be better.
Laughs and liveliness
-Wb
