‘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.”
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 members1
This article will focus on the past military heroics of today’s generals that is a likely basis for irrational support despite their current lack of adequate performance.
West Point’s Superintendent, LTC Steven Gilland, is not unlike many other current general officers. He has a chest full of medals from combat deployments. His regimental affiliation pin denotes the 75th Ranger Regiment, showing his ties and extensive history to special operations command. It would be hard to say that he was not loyal and fought hard as a young officer. The author has heard of others that served with Gilland in his youth that speak highly of him.
Heroism on the battlefield is to be revered. It does not, however, indicate that a warrior is automatically going to be a good general. If this were the case, every servicemember who has won a service cross and/or the Medal of Honor would have been earmarked for automatic promotion to general officer, obviating the need to attend professional schooling and perform well at interim jobs along the way. In no way is the author denigrating anything Gilland has done in his past for which he was recognized as a junior officer and warrior serving his country.
The military is in many ways similar to professional sports. An elite athlete who wins professional league MVP awards or wins major league championships deserves respect and admiration for what they have accomplished at that level – a player. Being a star quarterback in the NFL does not in any way imply that this same athlete is automatically going to be an elite coach or manager of a sports team.
Toxic loyalty is when an athlete that has won awards and achieved excellence as a player tries to transition to management and is a failure at the executive level. Close friends and fans may try to defend their “guy” in the public light, reminding everyone how many touchdowns they scored as a player or how many home runs they hit as a youngster. After a few losing seasons, the coach would likely lose support and be fired as a coach.
The military, tragically, has been different. Ironically, the stakes are much higher. Young officers who win war medals advance up the ranks and join the elite group of generals that lead our military. When this same group of generals loses wars, lies to the American people about the progress of wars, inflict damaging COVID and DEI mandates on the military, and other behaviors they seem to get a pass. Their loyal supporters, many of whom served with them in the distant past, shame others into respecting “their guy” now that their friend is a general officer.
While Gilland may have been a good leader in special operations, he has racked up a string of disasters at West Point. To be fair, Gilland inherited a mess from his predecessor who oversaw the largest cheating scandal in decades, cocaine drug scandals, etc. Running West Point is easy – the guide book is over 200 years old. Gilland has made it quite tough. Scandal after scandal has caused him to have to speak in front of Congress again and again to explain his poor judgement.
The Long Gray Line and Gilland’s non-graduate supporters need to judge him on his merits as a general, not on their friendship for him in a bygone era. The medals on his uniform have no bearing on how he is performing, or not performing as a general officer.
Even now, he faces FOIA requests and congressional inquiries into his ravenous support for DEI and the recent scandal where a long-time West Point senior employee may have tried to negatively influence the appointment of the next SECDEF.
LTG Gilland may have been a great hero and warrior and a youngster, but he is lacking as a general officer and is hiding behind the toxic loyalty of his friends and far too many West Point graduates.
- https://www.fastcompany.com/90908438/how-toxic-loyalty-can-tank-your-company
