The first edition of the book which was written by Wendy Lambourne, founder of Legitimate Leadership, to fully describe the Legitimate Leadership model – itself called Legitimate Leadership – has been updated in a second edition – now called Legitimate Leadership In Action.

Although most of the content is fundamentally unchanged, the second edition update particularly contains the results of recent research which has confirmed the basic tenets of the framework. Those basic tenets were originally derived from research into what accounted for trust in management in South Africa’s gold-mining industry in the late 1980s.

The new research came firstly in May-June 2020, when the world was in the grip of the coronavirus pandemic. A diagnostic exercise was conducted by Legitimate Leadership across its client base internationally. 300 client interviews conducted in 16 organisations over seven industries showed that trust in management had increased significantly for the majority of legitimate leaders during the pandemic. The reason for this was what was noteworthy: when trust increased it was because management showed genuine concern for their people’s welfare by putting health and safety first – no matter the impact on results. Moreover, legitimate leaders demonstrated personal concern for the individuals, stayed in contact to find out how they were doing as human beings under the circumstances, and gave time to what was important to their people (such as keeping them informed and entrusting them with new responsibilities). Most significantly, in the diagnostic results, receiving care and growth was more important to their people than either job or income security at that time.

Secondly and separately, a statistical analysis was conducted in 2023 by Legitimate Leadership and IT company Entelect on direct reports’ reasons for saying that there had been an improvement in leadership behaviour and practice against the Legitimate Leadership criteria. The analysis was of Legitimate Leadership leadership audits conducted internationally between 2015 and 2023. It encompassed over 17,000 responses across more than 230 audits.

Among the analysis’s conclusions were that when people said that their ‘manager is able to bring out the best in them’, this was done by being ‘an extremely effective coach’, by ‘providing me with the support I need, even if it is difficult to do so’, and by showing ‘genuine appreciation for my efforts and contribution’.

Absolutely consistent with the findings of the 1980s, the route to employee trust, willingness and loyalty was seen by direct reports to be for leaders to ‘give’ care and growth to those in their charge, not to pay them more or improve their working conditions.

The Legitimate Leadership model appears simple. However experience has shown that implementing it is not easy. The first edition was written in response to the question, ‘yes, I resonate with the model, I get it, but I don’t know how to do it’. The second edition still answers that question, in updated form.