Reward demonstrations of loyalty

We hear a lot today about managing for loyalty. Managers are supposed to look for employees who will be committed to an organization’s beliefs and who will selflessly go above and beyond the call of duty to achieve the organization’s ends.

Think of organizational Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts who don’t even want a merit badge for helping your distressed customer across a raging information highway. Sounds good, but is this realistic?

We recently traveled on business on airline tickets that got screwed up going and coming, and we ended up with a lot of time to talk with two of…