This article was originally written by Stefaan van den Heever in 2018. Nearly two decades later, his observation that coaching alone cannot drive lasting change feels more relevant than ever.

I have been an executive coach since 2007. It is work I love deeply; there is something profoundly privileged about holding up a clear, unfiltered mirror for someone, creating the space for them to confront gaps in their own authenticity and leadership.

But over the past two decades, I have arrived at an uncomfortable truth: coaching, on its own, has limits.

When an organisation’s culture and systems are not conducive to a coaching or learning way of leading, even the most powerful individual breakthroughs can quietly unravel.

The Collision

Here is what I have observed, time and again. During coaching, a leader gains genuine insight. They commit to new behaviours. They leave sessions energised and resolved. And then, something happens. Their new frame of reference collides with the reality of the organisation around them.

A mission statement hangs on a wall. Values are printed in an annual report. But the lived culture tells a different story entirely.

I was part of an intervention at a manufacturing plant some years ago. The goal was to develop a coaching leadership style, one built on listening, asking questions, and genuine engagement. The training landed well. People connected to it. There was real energy in the room.

But when the pressure came, as it always does, people reverted. Command and control reasserted itself almost instinctively.

“It’s hard to collaborate with another department when we’re competing against them for KPIs.”

That sentence captures the problem precisely. You cannot coach people into a new way of being if the system they return to every day is designed to pull them in the opposite direction.

The Foundation: What Legitimate Leadership Understands About People

Before exploring how the framework creates systemic change, it is worth understanding the insight at its core, one that has been validated over decades of research and organisational practice worldwide.

The Legitimate Leadership framework is built on a foundational finding: that what employees most respond to is not improved conditions, better pay, or more sophisticated HR policies. What truly unlocks willingness at work is the quality of the relationship between those who lead and those they lead, and specifically, whether employees experience their leaders as genuinely acting in their interest.

Willingness at work arises when those in charge strive for the very best in their people, care for them sincerely, and help them to grow, with no payback agenda in mind.

This research originated in the South African gold mining industry in the 1980s, where trust in management varied widely across mines, not as a function of pay or working conditions, but entirely on whether employees perceived their leaders as genuinely concerned for their welfare. It has since been validated repeatedly across diverse industries and countries.

The framework distils this into two essential leadership responsibilities: Care and Growth. Leadership is defined not by position but by intent. It asks a simple question: What must I do for this person to grow? It gives attention. It gives care. It gives development. It gives feedback that strengthens rather than diminishes.

Givers and Takers — and What Leaders Actually Create

The framework introduces a powerful distinction that goes to the heart of organisational culture: the difference between leaders who give and leaders who take.

Both givers and takers exist in any organisation. But the mix is not a matter of chance. They are largely manufactured by those in charge of them. What people are is, on the whole, a reflection of those who exercise authority over them.

This is a sobering insight, and a liberating one. It means that culture is not fixed. It is a product of leadership intent. When leaders shift from a taking to a giving orientation, those around them shift too. Leaders should be judged on the calibre of their people, not business results, because their job is not to produce results but to cultivate people.

And when people are genuinely cultivated? They bring more than what is required. They take ownership. They develop capability. Not because they are controlled, but because they are willing.

Coaching Within a System That Supports Change

I am now convinced that the most successful coaching interventions are those embedded within a broader systemic shift, in which culture changes at the same time, not separately.

Coaching then becomes the mechanism through which people internalise and truly live the new way of doing things. It stops being an isolated event and becomes part of something larger.

This is what drew me to the Legitimate Leadership framework, and ultimately to becoming an associate.

What the Framework Gets Right

Most leadership development focuses on what leaders do. The Legitimate Leadership framework goes deeper: to who a leader is and, more fundamentally, to their intention.

When an organisation adopts this framework, that question doesn’t just sit with individual leaders. It becomes a lens for the entire system. The focus shifts toward qualities that most organisations aspire to but rarely systematically build: legitimacy, trust, genuine contribution, and meaningful accountability.

A Legitimate Leadership intervention delivers measurable organisational outcomes: employees are convinced that the collective leadership is legitimate and has their support; they trust both those they report to and their colleagues; and the average employee is committed to the organisation’s objectives and willing to make an above-and-beyond contribution to realising them.

How the Shift Happens

This is not abstract philosophy. The framework translates into concrete, systemic change:

Mission, vision, and values have been realigned to reflect a giving orientation, shifting from “Being The Best Producer Of X” to “Enabling Excellence For Our Customers.”

Organisational structure is redesigned to genuinely empower people to contribute and be accountable, not just nominally, but in practice.

Performance management is reinvented so that employees have real control over their results, with clarity of contribution and meaningful accountability.

Discipline and reward systems are aligned to the new culture, so that what gets recognised and what gets addressed is consistent with lived values.

Empowerment, both vertical and horizontal, is implemented deliberately to reduce excessive controls that stifle initiative.

Employee Excellence brings employees together around personal, team, and organisational excellence, and around the foundational question of intent.

The Bottom Line

Coaching is a powerful tool. But for it to work, for insights to stick and new behaviours to take root, people need to return to an environment that supports, rather than undermines, who they are trying to become.

The Legitimate Leadership framework creates that environment. It is the systemic foundation that makes individual growth not just possible, but sustainable. And in a world where organisations continue to invest heavily in coaching without always seeing the culture change they hope for, that foundation matters more than ever.

That is why I believe in it.