Article Type: Non Vignette

The Legitimate Leadership Model – Getting Started

In my experience the number of people who enthusiastically and fearlessly take theory and translate it into action is small. I am convinced that this is the case when it comes to legitimate leadership. I am also convinced that this doesn’t have to be so.

“Application” is not some mysterious process out of the reach of all but the most forward-thinking and courageous leaders. It simply requires commitment, perseverance, and the acceptance that trial-and-error is a legitimate (and often very necessary) part of our growth.

In an intervention, while Legitimate Leadership typically follows the 2-day Introduction to The Legitimate Leadership Model with a series of Application Modules aimed specifically at the particular problem, I always make the point that leaders don’t have to wait for an Application Module before they start to change their own intent and behaviour. It all starts with intent – a change in heart.

From there it simply requires taking what now sits in your head, and putting it into your hands: changing your behaviour so that people experience you differently.

It won’t (and can’t) happen overnight. People will be sceptical, especially if your new behaviour is radically different from what they’re used to, but they’ll get used to the new you. With a little luck they’ll even help you get there.

I have been meaning to put pen to paper on this issue for a while now. The two catalysts which resulted in the deed were 1) an informal conversation that I had with a participant two weeks after one of our 2-day introductory programmes, and 2) an email that I received from another individual who attended a similar 2-day introductory programme.

I obviously can’t share the informal conversation verbatim of the first person, but I can say that the individual involved simply went out and tried something new.

The email of the second person (written after the introductory programme but before any Application Module) is below. Hopefully it will give others the encouragement they need to take a chance and do something different and new when they get back to the office.

“I thoroughly enjoyed the course.  I learnt so much about myself and my leadership style.  During the workshop, a big eye-opener for me was that I need to take a step back and lead the managers reporting to me.  I am a very hands-on person, so I am always on the floor and staff tend to talk to me about challenges they may have.  What I was doing before, is I would jump in and try to solve their challenges.  This potentially would have and was becoming a big problem, as more and more staff were coming to me directly and not to their managers. 

“This is actually a behavior I have had for many years as a manager.  I would always wonder why I spent so much time solving everyone else’s issues and never getting to the work I should be doing.  Silly for me to never realize that what I was doing was disempowering the other managers …

“I have started one-on-one meetings with the managers reporting directly to me.  During these sessions we are discussing what exactly I expect from them and what they expect from me.  This is proving to be a good idea, as what I assumed – that they knew I wanted from them – they didn’t.  Once I have laid a solid foundation with them, they in turn need to do the same with their direct reports, etc … We are a new management team, and the timing of the survey and course are perfect.  I have no doubt that we are going to gain a lot from it.” 

Why Legitimate Leadership Comes From South Africa

The Legitimate Leadership Model, in essence, strives to increase trust between management and non-management in all kinds of organisations; it strives to decrease the fraction of the workforce which is disaffected and disengaged, and increase the fraction which is pro-establishment.

It is no coincidence that South Africa has been, and still is, a country where there is considerable research on disaffection and disengagement in the workforce. The latest World Economic Forum report on country competitiveness for 2016-2017, for instance, ranks South Africa as having the worst labour-employee relations in the world (137 out of 137 countries surveyed).

Arising from its long history of conquest, colonialism, industrialisation and apartheid, it is probably not surprising that South Africa is a leader in labour disaffection and disengagement.

The Legitimate Leadership Model originated from seminal research into trust in management in the South African gold mines in the late 1980s, during the apartheid era. However, contrary to expectation then, trust in management was not consistently low, but varied immensely, both across mines and even in different shafts on the same mine.

Surprisingly, trust in management was not found to be a function of the political environment, working/living conditions, rates of pay, trade union activity, or the sophistication of the company’s human resources policies and systems. Rather, trust in management was granted or withheld on the basis of employees’ perception of their leadership’s genuine concern for their welfare.

The leadership of a mine was seen to be legitimate and worthy, or not, of support on this basis only.

In extrapolating these research results, it was concluded that whether the management of any enterprise is trusted and viewed as legitimate, therefore, is ultimately a function of the intent of the immediate supervisor at any level in the hierarchy.

The findings of this original research in the South African gold mining industry were developed into what is now the Legitimate Leadership Model.

Over the past 25 years the precepts of the Legitimate Leadership Model have been confirmed in diverse organisations across the world.

Coming back to 2018 … the WEF report is based on the perceptions of business executives in the countries surveyed. The executives were asked to characterise labour-employer relations in their countries as “generally confrontational” or “generally cooperative”.

Commenting on South Africa’s bottom position in the labour survey, South African industrial relations specialist Andrew Levy said employers have been depending on “bad advice” on how to tackle workplace challenges. He agreed that union rivalry contributed to poor employer-employee relations and said that management was also failing in its role.

“Our union movement is the most militant and difficult in the world at the moment,” he said. “Many unions were built on their role in the struggle (against apartheid) and saw bosses as the enemy and oppressors. We have not worked beyond that.”

According to Gawie Cillié, employment relations expert and lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa’s bottom position in the labour survey is directly linked to the low levels of trust between employers and employees. This, coupled with poor reliance on professional management, the country’s capacity to retain and attract talent, as well as high unemployment and poverty levels, had all contributed to a negative labour-employer relationship, he said.

“There are many reasons for high levels of conflict in our labour-employer relationship, but by far the low levels of trust underpin the reality we are facing,” he said. “If there is little or no trust, cooperation suffers and the conflict escalates, quickly resulting in severe damage in the relationship, costing money and employee efficiency.

“The lower the levels of trust are, the greater the need to rely on formal rules to keep employees productive and compliant.

“On the other hand, if trust is high, reliance on the rules becomes less necessary. Employees tend to be more self-motivated, conflicts tend to be resolved quickly and equitably, and formal rules (for instance relating to poor work performance or ill-discipline) only have to be applied as a last resort,” he said.

COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE: In any relationship the core issue is trust between the parties. This was true in the South African gold mining industry in the late 1980s when seminal research into trust in management on South African mines was carried out under the auspices of the Chamber of Mines. 30 years later, trust remains the core issue in South Africa’s mines, in South African organisations, and in organisations across the world. The Legitimate Leadership framework, principles and practices, applied in in diverse organisations across the world, have been shown to deliver significant improvements in trust in management as well as greater legitimacy of those in command roles, and increased employee willingness and accountability. In essence, it has been proven that trust is a function of the immediate manager’s commitment to his/her people in terms of care and growth. The degree to which managers deliver on their people’s expectations for care and growth directly impacts on the ratio of disaffected and disengaged to pro-establishment and willing workers.