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Description
Editor's note: Beginning with this issue, Leader's Edge will be written by Ivey Professor Professor Jeffrey Gandz. It will appear regularly in the Ivey Business Journal.
Leaders expect their followers to be loyal and to be able to depend on their loyalty. This is why we have such a visceral reaction when a David Radler turns on a Conrad Black or an Andrew Fastow cooperates with the prosecution to give evidence against his superiors at Enron. Emotive phrases like "ratting" or "biting the hand that has fed you" find their way into otherwise sober commentary. They conjure up childhood prohibitions on snitching and sneaking.
Leaders themselves have been known to go into paroxysms of rage followed by periods of deep hurt and even depression when they find that support on which they had counted is no longer there. And individuals have paid a steep price when their leaders conclude that they are no longer loyal and cannot be trusted to do their bidding, and so find themselves marginalized in decision-making and personally shunned.
Good leaders understand that there is a difference between real loyalty and a related but different concept--fealty.
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