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Question Of The Month
Does Legitimate Leadership claim that application of its framework improves a company’s results?
Company Boards – It’s All About The Relationship, Stupid
In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organisations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.
An insurance business in South Africa, which still exists today, was initially owned by a European company. The European company pulled out of South Africa and sold the South African company to an international insurance company which had its head office in Toronto, Canada.
A few months after the take-over, the relevant executive in Toronto asked the South African company’s CEO to come to Toronto. He told him, ‘Sorry, I know it’s a long way. But I need you to come here because I need to say something to you face-to-face.’
AI Sharpens The Distinction Between Management And Leadership
One of the defining principles of Legitimate Leadership is the capacity to extend trust – to give up control. Management, on the other hand, is all about control and controls, many of which are already being replaced or augmented by AI.
For more information regarding the above, please e-mail events@legitimateleadership.com
Question Of The Month
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: Does Legitimate Leadership claim that application of its framework improves a company’s results?
Answer: A Legitimate Leadership intervention impacts on employee contribution in an organisation. It does not lay claim to improved business performance, since business results can improve for all sorts of reasons extraneous to a transformation of the human side of an enterprise.
At the same time there is obviously a connection between people and results. Also, our experience is that organisations only change when the people within them change. Changes in systems and structures do not produce sustainable organisational change; only people change can do that.
What enables sustainable organisational change is the cultivation of the intent to serve at the level of the individual, the team and the organisation. Read the full response by clicking here.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Article: Company Boards – It’s All About The Relationship, Stupid
In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organizations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.
Below is a summary of Wendy Lambourne’s presentation. A summary of Ian Munro’s presentation appeared in our March 2025 newsletter.
‘Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s all about the economy, stupid.” Legitimate Leadership thinks it’s appropriate, in reference to boards and executive teams, to say, “it’s all about the relationship, stupid.” The relationship more than anything else is what matters – when it is constructive and collaborative, the experience is fundamentally different from the opposite.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
Vignette Case Study: The CEO Who Felt Liberated
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
An insurance business in South Africa, which still exists today, was initially owned by a European company. The European company pulled out of South Africa and sold the South African company to an international insurance company which had its head office in Toronto, Canada.
A few months after the take-over, the relevant executive in Toronto asked the South African company’s CEO to come to Toronto. He told him, ‘Sorry, I know it’s a long way. But I need you to come here because I need to say something to you face-to-face.’
It was not a comfortable flight for the South African CEO because he assumed that in Toronto he would be fired.
READ THE FULL VIGNETTE CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE
Video Excerpt: AI Sharpens The Distinction Between Management And Leadership
By Seth Godin, American management and marketing guru, and the author of 20 international bestsellers.
COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO EXCERPT BY IAN MUNRO OF LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: One of the defining principles of Legitimate Leadership is the capacity to extend trust – to give up control. Management, on the other hand, is all about control and controls, many of which are already being replaced or augmented by AI. We would, therefore, agree with Godin that management is likely to become less important, but it is also likely to become easier, with the possible implication that even more “leaders” are drawn to the expedience of command-and-control. AI may make management less important and leadership more important as Godin suggests, but it isn’t likely to make leadership, especially the kind that is dependent on generosity and courage, any easier.
OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: Leadership says let’s get the right people in the room, give them the right resources and the right problems to go solve things – with an incentive of status and affiliation for doing so.
With AI now doing most of the jobs where we can write down specifically what we need done, management is going to get less and less important and leadership is going to become more and more important.
Which is why strategy matters so much – because you want to tell people the strategy and let them find the tactics. Ray Croc (founder of McDonald’s – editor) and Henry Ford (founder of Ford – editor) were pioneers of management. Frederick Taylor (an American mechanical engineer who became famous in the late 1800s for his methods to improve industrial efficiency – editor) had a stopwatch, and we got the phrase ‘human resources’ from the idea of treating people like machines.
And if you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘being jerked around’ or calling someone ‘a jerk,’ it comes from Ford Model T plants – because you would watch the workers and they would be dancing around like marionettes. Because there was something like a stopwatch on every single motion.
READ THE FULL EXCERPT BY CLICKING HERE
TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE
