A project to data-process nine years of results from Legitimate Leadership’s leadership profile surveys has confirmed the fundamental conclusion upon which the Legitimate Leadership Model has been built: that pay or salary is not a vital determinant of the legitimacy of the leadership of any organisation.

This is in line with the basic research from which the Legitimate Leadership framework originated. In the late 1980s, 70,000 miners in South Africa’s gold mines were asked about their trust or distrust of the management of their mines and shafts. The results of this survey were a surprise: employees’ trust was built or eroded according to the choices that employees witnessed managers making. Whenever managers chose to put their employees’ interests before their own interests, they gained their trust. It had nothing to do with pay or salaries (as important as those might otherwise be).

In other words, the research both in the 1980s and in 2023 concluded that money (or more bean bags or free food, etc) cannot buy legitimacy.

The 2023 data processing project was undertaken by Entelect, a South African information technology company which has long been a client of Legitimate Leadership. The project analysed a dataset of 3,451 individual Legitimate Leadership leadership profile surveys. The surveys were conducted between 2015 and 2023 in a number of countries, across five management levels in companies in 12 industry sectors.

Legitimate Leadership leadership surveys ask direct reports 42 questions about their leaders/managers, from which leadership profile reports on the leaders/managers are produced. There was an average of five direct reports’ responses per leadership profile in the dataset.

The results of the project were presented at a breakfast function attended by 72 people in Johannesburg on 28 September 2023.

Erwin Bisschops, data and analytics leader for Entelect, said that referring to Legitimate Leadership ’s care and growth framework, the analysis found that all industries were better at care than ability and accountability aspects of leadership. There was a slight variation between different industry sectors, with IT and communication services and retail and automotive having the highest overall scores and manufacturing having the lowest overall scores.

The Legitimate Leadership leadership survey questionnaire has two fundamental types of question: firstly, whether a leader gives something to a direct report (for instance, gives respect or gives fairness, etc); and secondly, what the leader surveyed could do (for instance, to earn the respect or to earn the perception of being fair from his/her direct reports).

The second type of question produces the ‘how to’ for a leader to become a more legitimate leader.

For the first time, the analysis by Entelect of the dataset has indicated what the most effective ‘how tos’ or actions are for a leader to take.

It did this by parsing out from the dataset the highest correlation in scores for various traits required in order to be a legitimate leader.

It found:

• What shows that a manager takes a personal interest (in a direct report) correlates most highly with the statement (from the leadership surveys): ‘My manager listens openly to my personal problems and concerns.’ And it correlates least with: ‘Considering my contribution, I think I am paid fairly.’
• What causes someone to view their manager as unprejudiced and fair correlates most highly with the statement: ‘Should my manager need to take disciplinary action, I believe that he/she will be fair.’ And again, it correlates least with: ‘Considering my contribution, I think I am paid fairly.’
• What makes a manager bring out the best in someone correlates most highly with the statement: ‘My manager is an extremely effective coach.’ And again, it correlates least with: ‘Considering my contribution, I think I am paid fairly.’

The analysis concluded that the biggest influencers of legitimacy in leadership are: ‘My manager treats me with respect (care)’; ‘My manager listens openly to my personal problems and concerns (care)’; ‘Should my manager need to take disciplinary action, I believe that he/she will be fair’ (accountability); and ‘My manager is an extremely effective coach (ability)’.

And it concludes that the smallest influencer of legitimate leadership is: ‘Considering my contribution, I think I am paid fairly (accountability).’

Entelect also did a word cloud analysis of the additional comments made by direct reports in the leadership surveys. Word cloud analysis is a visual representation of word data – the bigger and bolder the word appears, the more often it is mentioned and the more important it is. This analysis indicated that:

• What leader should be doing more of is: feedback, communication and giving of time.
• What leader should be doing less of is: graphs, statistics and meetings.