Seeking to gain or increase legitimacy is a goal, often implicit rather than explicit, of all senior leadership teams. As David Harding, an operations director, now retired, said: “If you are not continually thinking about how to win the hearts and minds of your people, you are not leading.”

The starting point for those in pursuit of legitimacy must be to gauge how much legitimacy they currently have – that is, estimate the relative size of the two populations which make up their organisation.

The first population consists of people whose primary allegiance is with those in authority. They are pro-management and hence are seen to be on the side of, and loyal to, management. Simply, they trust those in charge of the enterprise.

The second group are the opposite in that they distrust management.

These employees may not be disaffected, nor totally reject the authority which is exercised over them, but their acceptance of it will be circumspect or limited. If they have allegiance to anyone, it is not to those in charge of the enterprise.

When we ask senior managers to estimate the split between those who are pro- versus those who are anti-management, and the basis for their assessment, they typically point to people metrics (employee retention, sick leave, absence, timekeeping) and/or to the latest employee engagement survey results.

Neither of these are particularly helpful, in our view. The metrics can be misleading. In one client, employee turnover increased from 5% (“when we were a family”) to a giddy 29% (when management began to practice “tough love”). In truth, according to the managing director, only three of the exits were regrettable, and two of the three came back. High turnover was evidence of increased legitimacy, not decreased.

Employee engagement surveys provide a reading of “satisfaction” and the factors which impact on it, but they very often let managers off the hook. Only one question out of 12 in a Gallup Employee Survey pointed directly to the role of the manager – “My supervisor or someone at work seems to care about me as a person” – and even then, this suggested that someone outside the line of command could still have delivered on Care (our first criterion for legitimate power).

We advocate an approach which is more direct, more focused, and more “intimate” in the sense of really getting to the essence of the state of leadership’s legitimacy at any point in time.

This two-pronged approach consists firstly of 30-minute interviews with a representative sample of employees (15-20%), preferably face-to-face on site – but if not, via a virtual call. The very few questions that interviewees are asked are derived from Legitimate Leadership’s ongoing research into trust in the management of an enterprise. More important than the actual response to the questions – for example “To what degree do you trust management to look after your interests?” – is the “why” or reasons for the answer given.

In addition to the interviews, Legitimate Leadership consultants spend time in the organisation observing the nature of the interactions between those in authority and those who they exercise authority over. They witness how direct reports respond to their managers in meetings, whether the executive are welcomed or not outside the boardroom, and the degree to which employees abide by managerial decisions. They look out for signs of resistance, both overt and covert, and draw conclusions from what they have seen and heard.

What is determined from this approach is clarity on the following:

• The proportion of employees who are pro- and anti-management and the make-up of those two fundamental populations.
• The degree to which, and the reasons why, employees trust various levels of leadership in the organisation.
• The patterns of alliance, or with whom employees’ loyalty is vested.
• Where in the line of command authority exists and where it is absent.
• What the information requirements and credible sources of information are for both pro- and anti-management groups.

The knowledge gained can then provide the basis for crafting an effective remedial strategy. Only once leaders’ degree of legitimacy has been accurately gauged are leaders sufficiently armed to do what they now know is required: to win more hearts and minds and further mobilise their people’s consent to being led by them.