Honesty vs. Loyaty: What is Better? 4 Ways You can Choose

Honesty refers to the quality of being truthful and lets you convey the truth in its original form. In contrast, loyalty refers to being faithful to something or someone. Both play a massive role in your personal decisions and professional dealings as they serve as a concrete baseline of trust.

While we interlink loyalty with affection, honesty also puts a responsibility on your shoulders to stand with authenticity. So, what if you’ve to choose between being transparent and devoted?

Here’s why and when you should choose honesty over loyalty and vice versa:

Is Honesty Really The Best Policy?

Honesty consistently holds the attributes of truth. Since it is a well-known proverb that honesty is the best policy, it emphasizes attributes of ethically or morally correct values.

For instance, an individual is viewed as an honest individual if he doesn’t cheat or steal or is not occupied with bribery. An individual with these attributes qualifies as a reliable candidate.

Being honest cuts off all the unnecessary drama from your life, but a subtle approach will always bring criticism of all extents. Thus, it requires sheer courage to sustain and stand with your take.

Being Honest Means a Transparent Life

Let me share a real-time example of my business. Our non-profit organization collects donations and uses them to provide quality education, healthcare, and welfare throughout the United States.  

We display the feedback from the people we support to let the donors know how we use their financial help to improve other lives.

Consequently, this is how honesty provides more people a reason to connect with us and place their trust in this initiative.

Honesty Makes You Fearless and Upfront

It is much more than speaking the truth. Undoubtedly, it’s about being true to yourself and others. It adds value and volume to your words. When you have no guilt or pressure to hide anything, you set your conscience free from the fear of being confronted or caught.

Honest People Are Always Appreciated

Honest people have standing and reputation in the general public. As a matter of fact, it is considered an essential quality of an individual. An honest individual is always valued by good people and gets rewarded by appreciation or by other means.

Does Loyalty Really Pay Off?

Josiah Royce, in his book ‘The Philosophy of Loyalty,’ characterized loyalty as the agreeable, practical, and thorough commitment of an individual to a cause or reason. According to the definition, it is clear that loyalty is about attachment loaded up with affection.

But here, I want to bring to your notice that showing commitment to the undeserving is unfair to yourself. People scared of accountability usually use it to manipulate you, even to support what’s against your values. Hence, never confuse being naïve with being faithful.

Attachment and Affection Prompts Loyalty

Let’s consider an example here. Suppose that an individual is loyal to his company. It demonstrates that the individual is dedicated to his company and won’t ever act against his company. Along the same lines, it also indicates that the reason for this dedication or faithfulness must be some attachment or affection shared by the individual with his company.

Being Loyal Builds Long-Term Relationships

Being loyal means sticking to the dedication and commitment you have with a relationship. It lets you be vulnerable and offer your devotion to a particular idea. No doubt, it helps you sustain relationships.

However, suppose the outcome is likely to bring toxicity in the personal, professional, or academic aspects of your life. In that case, it’s not worth holding on to.

Loyalty Always Comes Back to You

Indeed, loyalty is such a boomerang that always finds its way back to you. Offer pure value, quality, and consistency to your relationships with others or even customers. They’d have a psychological sense of responsibility to pay it back to you.

How Can You Choose Between Loyalty And Honesty?

While building durable experiences, loyalty is irreplaceable. Nevertheless, your support towards something or someone should be conditional. If you’re blind or submissive in the name of loyalty, people will always gaslight you to get their means.

Honesty is a subtle tool to support what is right. But if you intend to bring someone down or use it as a weapon to put out a fire of jealousy or toxicity, you might need to rethink your next step.

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