The Cost Of Living Versus The Cost Of Leadership

2022 has seen inflation go from 1% to 10% in many countries, and it is still rising. So the cost of living has dominated headlines as people struggle to make ends meet financially. Money (pounds, dollars, euros, or whatever) is the currency people are focused on. In these difficult times, obviously leadership is ever more...

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Innovating Leadership

Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Put another way, when things don’t change, they atrophy or ultimately cease to exist. Yet management has largely remained unchanged for the past 100 years....

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August 2022 – Question Of The Month

Question: Is it ever appropriate to remove decision-making authority or to take back control?  Answer:  In the Legitimate Leadership framework, empowerment requires a leader to go beyond asking people for their opinions, listening to them, and only then deciding. Empowerment means letting people decide and living with their decisions even if they are contrary to the...

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Adam Grant – Beware The 4Rs Of Toxic Work Culture

COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP, ON THIS ARTICLE: I find Adam Grant’s mental map extremely helpful. The Relationship-Results continuum speaks to the criterion of Care. In Legitimate Leadership terms, though Care is about tough love, it is acting in the employees’ best interests (which are to be the best human beings that they can...

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July 2022 – Question Of The Month

Question: What determines the size of the anti-management population in any organization?  Answer: In any community of employees there will always be two populations: one which is anti-management and another which is pro-management. The two populations will always exist but the size of the positive group, and hence the degree to which there is overall...

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Managers Aren’t Heroes But They Deserve More Understanding

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY STUART FOULDS, ASSOCIATE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The Legitimate Leadership model originally came into existence, and has become ever more relevant over many decades, precisely because of the challenging, complex and vital nature of the leader’s role. This Economist article highlights several important issues: The impact of good versus bad bosses on...

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Organisational Change Is Impossible Without People Change

The reason why so many organisational transformation initiatives fail to deliver on their promises is because they are too much about changing things and too little about changing people. That things need to change for organisations to thrive or even survive is indisputable. New structures, operating models, technology, systems and processes can all make a...

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June 2022 – Question Of The Month

Question: Does Legitimate Leadership oppose the management of people?  Answer:  Our plea is: please don’t manage people, lead them. Because when you manage people you reduce them to the status of things. Legitimate Leadership has a clear view of the distinction between management and leadership: management is what you apply to things; leadership pertains to...

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Legitimate Leadership’s Roots In Workplace Safety

Wendy Lambourne, director of Legitimate Leadership, was recently interviewed by Christian Hunt for the HumanRisk podcast. Hunt founded UK-based HumanRisk (www.human-risk.com) to ‘bring behavioural science to ethics and compliance’ in helping organisations to understand and minimize human risk. In the podcast Wendy set out the origins and basic tenets of Legitimate Leadership. Below is our...

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Being Methodical About Empowerment

In the Legitimate Leadership Framework there are five steps to guide managers in effectively handing over control. In a recent discussion with managers, they pointed out two instances in which following the five steps methodically prevented them from rushing through and endangering the success of the process. The five steps in the Legitimate Leadership Framework...

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The Cost Of Living Versus The Cost Of Leadership

2022 has seen inflation go from 1% to 10% in many countries, and it is still rising. So the cost of living has dominated headlines as people struggle to make ends meet financially. Money (pounds, dollars, euros, or whatever) is the currency people are focused on. In these difficult times, obviously leadership is ever more...

View full article