A quotation attributed to General Colin Powell is repeated in American leadership training and military writing: “When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not.” Once a decision is made, it continues, the debate ends, and loyalty means “executing the decision as if it were your own.”
Leadership writers trace the words to Oren Harari’s 2002 book The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell. The research for this post did not find them in any text written by Powell himself.