‘Toxic Loyalty’: “Blind loyalty to bad leaders and protected employees irrationally serves the ego—and has disastrous implications on company culture and the bottom line.”1
History will likely judge today’s US general officers poorly. With the resources, education, and technology available to them, they are faring poorly against much less resourced enemies when conflicts are not won quickly and decisively. Our enemies’ generals run circles around our generals when war is prolonged. Few, if any, US generals have been held accountable for the loss and lack of integrity in Afghanistan and missteps in garrison (COVID, DEI, financial mismanagement, etc). Worse, they continue to be promoted (and hence rewarded) despite the lack of performance. This begs the obvious question why US generals continue to be promoted in the current paradigm. They also enjoy fairly widespread support when their recent record and ethical performances are questioned. One answer could be Toxic Loyalty driving their supporters and defenders.
Toxic Loyalty, according to Fastcompany.com, has 3 general facets that can drive others to support generals irrationally:
1. Individuals who have been with the organization for a long time
2. Individuals who played a key part in the organization’s success at some point
3. Individuals who are close friends or family members2
This article will focus on longevity/tenure as a basis for supporting promotion of modern generals.
Rightfully, the military should be a meritocracy. Intuitively, this should mean merit based on performance and achievement. To some, tenure is a merit all its own and such disciples of longevity expect reward and promotion simply for being in an organization for a longer period of time. This is not unique to the military. Many civilian organizations reward tenure with promotion and higher pay independent of performance. While this can give a sense of job security which theoretically should encourage loyalty to the organization it can easily morph into arrogance at being ‘untouchable’ and relying on promotion simply for years served in the organization. Longevity also can suppress courage and risk taking as there is benefit in just being one of the mindless herd moving up the ranks.
In the military, this is particularly dangerous. The Civil War and both World Wars were great examples where the tradition of selecting senior military officers for commands and promotion based simply on longevity was overturned in favor of promotion. US Grant began the war as a private and finished as the commander of the union armies in merely 4 years as the President looked for proven commanders that actually won battles. He skipped over many senior officers due to merit, not longevity. Similarly, General George Marshall kept a ‘Little Black Book’ of impressive young officers that he drew upon often to rapidly promote younger more capable officers through the general officer ranks to help win World War II regardless of tenure and pre-war rank.
The US finds itself in a position, at least in the Army, where several generations of general officers now have been discouraged from taking risks and showing personal courage and instead been inspired to simply ‘bide their time’ and wait for their turn to slowly but surely move up the ranks to achieve promotion, command, and, after active service, lucrative jobs in the military industrial complex.
By upending a promotion system based on longevity, the US won in the Civil War and both World Wars. Our current system of encouraging obedience and longevity as the reasons for promotion have failed in numerous circumstances and should be ended.
The military and the country owe generals nothing for just hanging around for several decades. The general officer corps is not a jobs program. The military is not the boy scouts where longevity pins for years are worn on uniforms. It is essential that senior officers are encouraged to be risk takers, to be candid and honest about the state of the military and/or wars, and to be courageous to take a stand against bad policy. These traits may unfairly risk longevity but the good of the nation and the military must always supersede the longevity of a general’s career.
Supporters of today’s generals frequently criticize those that critique their favorite generals and are somehow depriving them of what they believe is rightfully theirs for merely serving for x number of years in the military. Somehow, they equate simply breathing and collecting a paycheck for a specified period of time with greatness and merit. Simply going through the ranks and commanding at various levels does not imply excellence by itself. Many generals commanded at the division, corps, and higher levels in Iraq and Afghanistan and had no demonstrations of stand out courageous and effective leadership that contributed to some strategic win. We lost. Badly.
Recently, the promotion of now GEN Christopher Donahue was stalled due to his ties to the events in Kabul 2021. Supporters decried the halting of promotions for many other generals as well. Nowhere in their argument was promoting the generals for proven, winning, courageous leadership. Moreover, it revolved around supporting the cohort of generals who at best has been mundane and at worst has been detrimental to recent US military performance in war.
In 2023, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro unwittingly put the concept of toxic loyalty for longevity into words when he was quoted in a story on PBS.
“In a CNN interview, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro accused Tuberville of “playing Russian roulette with the very lives of our servicemembers by denying them the opportunity to actually have the most experienced combat leaders in those positions to lead them in times of peace and in times of combat.”3
He failed to qualify the term “experienced” as the generals he lauded were only “experienced” in leading a military to a loss. Merely commanding in combat does not make a general worthy or “experienced” in a good way. Multitudes of generals before Afghanistan have been sacked while commending and becoming “experienced” if they lost and/or proved untrustworthy in combat. NFL coaches who never have winning seasons are fired despite years of “experience” losing. CEOs are fired from companies despite years of “experience” losing money for the shareholders. “Experience” aka longevity pins are not a basis for promotion. It must be qualified as winning, ethical, and courageous “experience,” which is sadly lacking in today’s generation of generals. The solution could be to fire the current crop of generals and radically promote the senior field grades officers to give a new generation a chance to break the losing tradition and actually lead effectively and honorably. This would restore merit, not longevity, as the sole basis for promotion.
Putting longevity on the same pedestal of achievement as personal courage and winning wars is truly Toxic Loyalty to a class of generals that in aggregate has not lived up to the winning and honorable traditions of cohorts of generals from the past.
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90908438/how-toxic-loyalty-can-tank-your-company
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90908438/how-toxic-loyalty-can-tank-your-company
- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/hundreds-of-military-promotions-are-stalled-as-a-republican-senator-demands-end-to-abortion-policy
