Why True Leaders Never Blame Others (Or Circumstances)

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Legitimate Leadership has a very practical and powerful tool that leaders can use to change in the first instance themselves, and thereafter their people, from what John Rex calls a “victim mindset” to a “responsible mindset”. This tool enables three shifts which together deliver a person...

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May 2021 – Question of the Month

Question of the Month: What should a manager do if the members of his/her team who produce the best results act like a law unto themselves? Answer: I had a case where a sales manager was having some difficulty with two people in his sales team. These two sales people were the top performers, consistently out-selling...

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Leading Remotely? Spend Less Time Managing, More Time Enabling

I have met many managers who cling tightly to the belief that people need to be managed. One manager I worked with held so tightly to this belief that even when the rest of the organisation had implemented remote working policies he told his team that the new policy literally didn’t apply to them. We...

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April 2021 – Question of the Month

Question of the Month: Why do managers in organisations generally not hold their people accountable? Answer: When I have asked this question of managers, they have typically given me a list of reasons which fall into the categories of Willing (the leader lacks the courage or is conflict-averse or wants to be liked too much, or he...

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When Leading Remotely, Don’t Miss The Opportunity To Commit To Your Values

The role that organisational values play in defining the way people behave in modern organisations is frequently overstated. It’s not that values shouldn’t play a leading role (we certainly believe they should), it’s simply that in most organisations they don’t. There’s no doubt that aligning organisation behaviours and practices with a set of aspirational values...

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I Like You – Who Cares?

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Care, from a Legitimate Leadership viewpoint, is a matter of intent or motive. For those in authority at work, care is about whose interests are being served. Leaders who care are in the relationship to “give” to their people not to “get” something out of them....

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An Empowerment Model For Cleaning The Lab

In a major chemical plant, an ongoing problem was that its testing laboratory, which operated 24×7, was old and dirty, and the small team of analysts who staffed it were resistant to cleaning it properly. They variously said it was “just old” and would “just get dirty again”, and that “cleaning it would be like...

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Reducing Control To Cultivate Accountability

“To be granted legitimate power in the workplace there needs to be a preparedness by the leader to let go of her need to control the outcome,” I pronounce. The faces of 16 senior executives stare back at me in silent disbelief. But this is a pivotal moment for me to slay some inherent leadership...

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March 2021 – Question of the Month

Question of the Month:  An employee finds out that he is earning 5% less than his peers, and assumes that the organisation and the management are unfair. This demotivates him and he considers finding another job. What should be done? Answer: This question arose in a recent Legitimate Leadership webinar – see our report on this below....

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Are Anonymous Callout Channels A Good Way To Deal With Abuse?

Bullying and abuse have been prominent in news reports about, among others, Priti Patel (the UK’s Home Secretary), Julie Payette (Canada’s Governor General), and Meghan Markle (the Duchess of Sussex). One question these cases prompt is: are anonymous callout channels a good way to deal with abuse? I recently weighed in on an article in...

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Why True Leaders Never Blame Others (Or Circumstances)

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Legitimate Leadership has a very practical and powerful tool that leaders can use to change in the first instance themselves, and thereafter their people, from what John Rex calls a “victim mindset” to a “responsible mindset”. This tool enables three shifts which together deliver a person...

View full article