Question of the Month: Do Legitimate Leadership consultants find managers in client organisations who are simply not prepared to hold their people accountable. If so, what can be done about this?
Answer: Unfortunately yes, we often find managers who lack the will or testicular fortitude to ultimately hold people accountable for deliberate malevolence. When we have come across this reticence we have tried to coach the manager and persuade him or her to do this. Failing that, we have sometimes tried to get those people’s managers to insist that they hold people accountable. But at the end of the day if people are relentless in their avoidance of holding people accountable there is literally nothing you can do about it. This is simply because, as a consultant, you don’t have the line authority to do this on their behalf or to hold them accountable for not doing it. In short, if managers in line roles do not hold people accountable, the Legitimate Leadership Model fails to be embedded in the organisation.