Team Member for Life: How to Build Team Loyalty

If you’ve travelled to Shibuya, Japan, you may be familiar with the story of Hachiko, the faithful and loyal Akita dog. For years, Hachiko accompanied his master Professor Elizaburo Ueno each day to Shibuya Station. On Professor Ueno’s return from Tokyo’s Imperial University each afternoon, Hachiko would be waiting to greet him.

One afternoon, Professor Ueno did not return, as he had died while at work. For the next ten years, Hachiko continued to walk to Shibuya Station, to loyally wait for Professor Ueno, until his own death.

Mark and I recently travelled to Tokyo and were able to see the statue of Hachiko at the Shibuya Station.

While thinking of his story, I was reminded of the value of loyalty in a broader sense – as well as within our own practices and businesses. In fact, loyalty is becoming increasingly important, particularly in today’s age of quiet quitting.

So how do you build team loyalty and grow an exceptional team? And what does it mean for you as a leader? Let’s find out more.

How to build team loyalty

To understand how to build team loyalty, we first need to understand why it matters. Quiet quitting gives us some insight.

Quiet quitting

According to McCrindle's research, the average tenure in a job in Australia is 3 years and 4 months. But there are many other employees that aren’t actually leaving their roles, but are simply ‘quiet quitting’.

In fact, quiet quitting has become a global phenomenon. It’s where ‘unmotivated, disinterested, checked-out employees’ determine that rather than leaving a role where they’re unhappy or feel undervalued, they’ll simply do the bare minimum or even underperform at work.

As a leader in your practice, managing this kind of disengagement in your team while trying to focus on growth seems like an impossible task. But engaging, inspiring and motivating your team to build loyalty to you long-term, while also helping them to achieve their potential, is possible. The answer lies in your employees’ happiness at work.

The Science of Happiness at Work

Jessica Pryce-Jones’ four years of research into what happiness means in a work context – and why it matters in human and financial terms – led to her book, Happiness at Work: Maximizing Your Psychological Capital for Success. Jessica found that happiness at work is a mindset. It enables leaders, consultants, and employees alike to act to maximise their performance and achieve their potential. In a nutshell then, what makes employees happy at work is achieving their potential.

Are your team members achieving their potential?

This leads to the question – are your team members achieving their potential? What’s important to me as a team leader, is to provide professional and personal growth, challenge, purpose, belonging and meaningful opportunities. This helps them to achieve their goals both at work and in other areas of their life. To become better every day. Their role is to help take the load off my plate so that my life gets easier every day. Thank you Matt Church.

Look for growth opportunities

Looking for growth opportunities is another way to build team loyalty. Be honest too, if you realise a person is no longer a good fit for your team. The thing that could ‘make their life better’ is helping them to move on to a new role. This is where it’s about more than the individual and realising their own potential – it’s about the impact on you and your whole team.

Recognising growth opportunities for your team can be part of your annual performance reviews, quarterly check-ins and even daily huddles.

If you’re keen to understand how to build team loyalty through happiness and fulfillment at work, here are some steps to take:

• Understand the vision your team members each have for themselves.

• Help them to break down their goals for work and life outside work.

• Be interested in your team. Who are they outside of work? How was their weekend? What do they have going on that could impact their work life?

• Check-in. Know what works for each person – daily, weekly, monthly, and annually.

• Create certainty for them by letting them know they are valued and important to your practice. Show you care.

Does it mean they’ll stay forever?

Maybe they will, maybe they won’t.

But if you can show you’re committed, then you have a better chance of them showing they are, too.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on how to build team loyalty in your own teams…