Featured

Question Of The Month

How important is employee engagement for organisational performance?

Why Intent Matters

John C. Maxwell (an American author, speaker and pastor who primarily focuses on leadership) famously said: “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” We do not have to look far to see the far-reaching impact leadership decisions can have, for better or worse. I know, as I suspect most people do, the huge impact a leader can have on our careers, growth, health and even our lives, again for better or worse. Yet despite this potentially huge personal, and potentially global, ripple that leaders can have, it is a largely unregulated industry with no behavioural standards and therefore very little accountability for behaviour. In addition, even though there exists a plethora of evidence and case studies that show the benefits and even return on investment (ROI) of values-based leadership, the true adoption of these principles is generally sluggish.

Why Leadership Development Programs Fail

Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale.

For years, organizations have lavished time and money on improving the capabilities of managers and on nurturing new leaders. US companies alone spend almost $14 billion annually on leadership development. Colleges and universities offer hundreds of degree courses on leadership, and the cost of customized leadership-development offerings from a top business school can reach $150,000 a person.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How important is employee engagement for organisational performance?

Answer: Legitimate Leadership believes that the most important criterion for sustained organisational performance is the degree to which the will of employees is engaged to go above and beyond in the pursuit of the organisation’s objectives.

For people to contribute in the workplace, more important than either what people have (systems), or know (skills and knowledge), is their willingness.

A person’s willingness to work, more than anything else, is determined by the nature of the relationship he has with his immediate manager and the intent of that manager. Only when the manager’s intent is to give to her people will they be willing. The “give” that she needs to make is highly specific: it is to have a sincere and genuine interest in her people’s welfare and to enable them to realise the best in themselves. To deliver on these two criteria requires a manager to understand what makes each of the people reporting to her tick and to align what care and growth she gives to each of them, according to their individual needs and circumstances.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Why Intent Matters

By Dieter Jansen, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

John C. Maxwell (an American author, speaker and pastor who primarily focuses on leadership) famously said: “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” We do not have to look far to see the far-reaching impact leadership decisions can have, for better or worse. I know, as I suspect most people do, the huge impact a leader can have on our careers, growth, health and even our lives, again for better or worse. Yet despite this potentially huge personal, and potentially global, ripple that leaders can have, it is a largely unregulated industry with no behavioural standards and therefore very little accountability for behaviour. In addition, even though there exists a plethora of evidence and case studies that show the benefits and even return on investment (ROI) of values-based leadership, the true adoption of these principles is generally sluggish.

Why?

The conventional view of leadership rests in phrases like ‘climbing the ladder’, ‘getting to the top’, ‘being in charge’, etc, and is mostly ego-based.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: Why Leadership Development Programs Fail

By Pierre Gurdjian, Thomas Halbeisen, and Kevin Lane of global management consulting company McKinsey.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE OF LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: We agree with the authors on all four of the common mistakes:

1. Understanding Context. What is required of leaders (other than an intent to serve through the care and growth of direct reports) is tailoring Legitimate Leadership to their context. This is the reason for Legitimate Leadership, in conjunction with the client organisation, classifying their unique “why” and tailoring any intervention to this before it is launched.
2. Decoupling Reflection From Real Work. A fundamental principle of Legitimate Leadership is how to use the task/job to grow the person. Our 12-15 month application process ensures that the tools and insights gleaned from the Application Modules are translated into day-to-day leadership practices. Leaders are required to make shifts in behaviour and practice, are coached, and then held accountable for doing so.
3. Understanding Mindsets. There are two prerequisites for change. First, a conviction that there is an alternative and better way to lead. This is achieved through a two-day debate with leaders arguing for a “care and growth” rather than a “command and control” approach to leadership. Second, an understanding that “I am the project, and who needs to change is me, not them”. The leadership profile, which holds up the mirror to leaders on how aligned they currently are against the criteria for legitimate power, is very useful to stimulate changing leaders’ behaviour and practice.
4. Failing To Measure Results. We measure the health of leadership/alignment to the care and growth criteria at both the start and end of the intervention: how do direct reports, at the start and the end, perceive their direct manager in terms of care, means, ability and accountability? We also track the impact of these shifts on organisational performance. In a fashion retailer, sales were down over a peak trading period due to recessionary economic conditions, but profit was significantly up due to a focus on implementing standards in stock control, customer engagement and productivity.

THE ARTICLE: Sidestepping four common mistakes can help companies develop stronger and more capable leaders, save time and money, and boost morale.

For years, organizations have lavished time and money on improving the capabilities of managers and on nurturing new leaders. US companies alone spend almost $14 billion annually on leadership development. Colleges and universities offer hundreds of degree courses on leadership, and the cost of customized leadership-development offerings from a top business school can reach $150,000 a person.

Moreover, when upward of 500 executives were asked to rank their top three human-capital priorities, leadership development was included as both a current and a future priority. Almost two thirds of the respondents identified leadership development as their number one concern. Only 7 percent of senior managers polled by a UK business school think that their companies develop global leaders effectively, and around 30 percent of US companies admit that they have failed to exploit their international business opportunities fully because they lack enough leaders with the right capabilities.

We’ve talked with hundreds of chief executives about the struggle, observing both successful initiatives and ones that run into the sand. In the process, we’ve identified four of the most common mistakes. Here we explain some tips to overcome them.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

 

Featured

Question Of The Month

How should a leader get feedback on how she is doing as a leader?

Spatialedge – Can You Have Legitimate Leaders Without Managers?

In the winelands outside of Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa is an extraordinary company, a data and applied AI solutions start-up called Spatialedge. When I was first introduced to Spatialedge, they were a company of 85 people. Just over a year later they now have plus-130 people, who they call “data enthusiasts”.

They have attracted investor funding, are scaling exponentially and expanding internationally. They would argue, and I agree, that their success in the AI space, while partly due to the qualifications and exceptional skills of their people, is also due to their unique culture which has been developed and fostered by the founders since the inception of the company.

Is Generosity The Most Underrated Leadership Skill?

Leadership isn’t about role or position, it’s about generosity. We need generous leaders, who give of themselves freely without expectation of personal gain so others can develop, grow and thrive at their full potential.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Josh Hayman, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How should a leader get feedback on how she is doing as a leader?

Answer: Legitimate Leadership believes that if one truly wants to know how a leader is doing, the best judges are the very people who depend on that person for leadership. We incorporate this principle into our approach to transforming leaders by conducting Leadership Surveys for each participant. These surveys diagnose how the leader is perceived to be aligned to the four key criteria of giving Care, providing Means, cultivating Ability, and holding people Accountable.

The process is of course anonymous. It provides leaders with immensely useful feedback – and gives them clarity and focus on where their development opportunities lie.

When discussing this feedback with leaders on our programmes, one of the questions I often ask is how often they themselves ask their people directly for feedback on how they are doing. The response is generally not about how often it happens, but more about whether it happens at all.

Read the full response by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Case Study: Spatialedge – Can You Have Legitimate Leaders Without Managers?

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

In the winelands outside of Cape Town at the southern tip of Africa is an extraordinary company, a data and applied AI solutions start-up called Spatialedge. When I was first introduced to Spatialedge, they were a company of 85 people. Just over a year later they now have plus-130 people, who they call “data enthusiasts”.

They have attracted investor funding, are scaling exponentially and expanding internationally. They would argue, and I agree, that their success in the AI space, while partly due to the qualifications and exceptional skills of their people, is also due to their unique culture which has been developed and fostered by the founders since the inception of the company.

So why should they need Legitimate Leadership? As with any of our clients, we clarify upfront what they are seeking to achieve in embracing the Legitimate Leadership principles and practices.
At the outset, the leadership of Spatialedge was crystal clear about their “why”:

READ THE FULL CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE

 

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Video: Is Generosity The Most Underrated Leadership Skill?

By Joe Davis, former regional chair for Boston Consulting Group in North America, and author of the book The Generous Leader: 7 Ways to Give of Yourself for Everyone’s Gain.

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Giving is only giving if it is unconditional – giving without expectation of getting. Joe Davis provides some good examples of generous giving. But to be an exceptional leader requires two forms of giving, not one. The other form of giving is courage – it is about putting oneself on the line. Of the two, courage is more difficult because the price that may have to be paid is greater. What we need are leaders who are both generous and courageous.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: My first job was as a sales rep for Procter & Gamble; thereafter as a manager with three reps reporting to me. They were in their 40s I was 26 and frankly I had no idea how to be a manager. I rode with them every two weeks, visiting stores yet rarely giving any feedback. I was in awe.

Then it came time for year-end reviews. I compiled a list of things that each person could do to improve. I launched into my review with Rich. About three minutes in he cut me off: ‘Wait a minute, you ride with me every two weeks and you’ve never said any of these things!’ I was mortified – he taught me something in that moment.

Leadership isn’t about role or position, it’s about generosity. We need generous leaders, who give of themselves freely without expectation of personal gain so others can develop, grow and thrive at their full potential.
 
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE
TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

Featured

Question Of The Month

Does Legitimate Leadership claim that application of its framework improves a company’s results?

Company Boards – It’s All About The Relationship, Stupid

In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organisations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.

The CEO Who Felt Liberated

An insurance business in South Africa, which still exists today, was initially owned by a European company. The European company pulled out of South Africa and sold the South African company to an international insurance company which had its head office in Toronto, Canada.

A few months after the take-over, the relevant executive in Toronto asked the South African company’s CEO to come to Toronto. He told him, ‘Sorry, I know it’s a long way. But I need you to come here because I need to say something to you face-to-face.’

AI Sharpens The Distinction Between Management And Leadership

One of the defining principles of Legitimate Leadership is the capacity to extend trust – to give up control. Management, on the other hand, is all about control and controls, many of which are already being replaced or augmented by AI. 

 

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: Does Legitimate Leadership claim that application of its framework improves a company’s results?

Answer: A Legitimate Leadership intervention impacts on employee contribution in an organisation. It does not lay claim to improved business performance, since business results can improve for all sorts of reasons extraneous to a transformation of the human side of an enterprise.

At the same time there is obviously a connection between people and results. Also, our experience is that organisations only change when the people within them change. Changes in systems and structures do not produce sustainable organisational change; only people change can do that.

What enables sustainable organisational change is the cultivation of the intent to serve at the level of the individual, the team and the organisation. Read the full response by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Company Boards – It’s All About The Relationship, Stupid

In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organizations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.

Below is a summary of Wendy Lambourne’s presentation. A summary of Ian Munro’s presentation appeared in our March 2025 newsletter.

‘Bill Clinton famously said, “it’s all about the economy, stupid.” Legitimate Leadership thinks it’s appropriate, in reference to boards and executive teams, to say, “it’s all about the relationship, stupid.” The relationship more than anything else is what matters – when it is constructive and collaborative, the experience is fundamentally different from the opposite.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

 

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Vignette Case Study: The CEO Who Felt Liberated

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

An insurance business in South Africa, which still exists today, was initially owned by a European company. The European company pulled out of South Africa and sold the South African company to an international insurance company which had its head office in Toronto, Canada.

A few months after the take-over, the relevant executive in Toronto asked the South African company’s CEO to come to Toronto. He told him, ‘Sorry, I know it’s a long way. But I need you to come here because I need to say something to you face-to-face.’

It was not a comfortable flight for the South African CEO because he assumed that in Toronto he would be fired.

READ THE FULL VIGNETTE CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE

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Video Excerpt: AI Sharpens The Distinction Between Management And Leadership

By Seth Godin, American management and marketing guru, and the author of 20 international bestsellers.

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO EXCERPT BY IAN MUNRO OF LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: One of the defining principles of Legitimate Leadership is the capacity to extend trust – to give up control. Management, on the other hand, is all about control and controls, many of which are already being replaced or augmented by AI. We would, therefore, agree with Godin that management is likely to become less important, but it is also likely to become easier, with the possible implication that even more “leaders” are drawn to the expedience of command-and-control. AI may make management less important and leadership more important as Godin suggests, but it isn’t likely to make leadership, especially the kind that is dependent on generosity and courage, any easier.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: Leadership says let’s get the right people in the room, give them the right resources and the right problems to go solve things – with an incentive of status and affiliation for doing so.

With AI now doing most of the jobs where we can write down specifically what we need done, management is going to get less and less important and leadership is going to become more and more important.

Which is why strategy matters so much – because you want to tell people the strategy and let them find the tactics. Ray Croc (founder of McDonald’s – editor) and Henry Ford (founder of Ford – editor) were pioneers of management. Frederick Taylor (an American mechanical engineer who became famous in the late 1800s for his methods to improve industrial efficiency – editor) had a stopwatch, and we got the phrase ‘human resources’ from the idea of treating people like machines.

And if you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘being jerked around’ or calling someone ‘a jerk,’ it comes from Ford Model T plants – because you would watch the workers and they would be dancing around like marionettes. Because there was something like a stopwatch on every single motion.

READ THE FULL EXCERPT BY CLICKING HERE
TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

Featured

Question Of The Month

From a Legitimate Leadership perspective, what can our preoccupation with our cell phones show us?

Answer: We are not only very connected, we are also very hooked. If we leave the devices at home for 24 hours, we feel that we have been excommunicated from society. When we are unable to check messages for 30 minutes, we feel desperate.

Company Boards – A Little Give Goes A Long Way

In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organisations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.

Below is a summary of Ian Munro’s presentation. A summary of Wendy Lambourne’s presentation will appear in our April 2025 newsletter.

The Amplification of Best-Behaviour Culture Is A Leadership Imperative

At its core, this article is about accountability. Specifically, the article discusses amplifying positive behaviours and actions through celebration, recognition and reward; and confronting negative attitudes and behaviours clearly and fairly. This is entirely consistent with the Legitimate Leadership Model. 

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: From a Legitimate Leadership perspective, what can our preoccupation with our cell phones show us?

Answer: We are not only very connected, we are also very hooked. If we leave the devices at home for 24 hours, we feel that we have been excommunicated from society. When we are unable to check messages for 30 minutes, we feel desperate.

We are still bedazzled by the technology and impressed by the obvious utility of these devices. We are fixated on what these wonderful contraptions can do to help us manage our lives.

But a less obvious underlying utility of mobile devices lies in their potential to provide us with key insights into what is happening, not in our busy world, but in the world behind our eyeballs – in our inner realm. They are excellent barometers, in real time, of our intent.  Read the full response by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Company Boards – A Little Give Goes A Long Way

In early March, Ian Munro and Wendy Lambourne, directors of Legitimate Leadership, made presentations on Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Building Strong Boards (or governing bodies of organisations) as part of a FluidRock online webinar on that subject.

Below is a summary of Ian Munro’s presentation. A summary of Wendy Lambourne’s presentation will appear in our April 2025 newsletter.

Ian Munro: ‘In 2007 I was offered a professional opportunity that I had really wanted, and I had no hesitation in accepting. The opportunity was to move to the UK – to move my whole life from South Africa – and to consolidate a number of projects in the UK and Europe that the business I was then working for had. It was very exciting!

‘It was somewhat less exciting – in fact terrifying – in 2008 when I got on the plane a week after the financial crisis.
‘When I arrived at the London office on the first day, every one of our projects there had been put on hold – in other words, we had no revenue. In hindsight, though, I did have one thing that was incredibly fortunate.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

 

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Article: The Amplification of Best-Behaviour Culture Is A Leadership Imperative

From SKOR, a US-based culture measurement company.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY IAN MUNRO, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: At its core, this article is about accountability. Specifically, the article discusses amplifying positive behaviours and actions through celebration, recognition and reward; and confronting negative attitudes and behaviours clearly and fairly. This is entirely consistent with the Legitimate Leadership Model. It is also more difficult to do in practice than it might at first seem. It requires both generosity and courage. The latter in particular is frequently in short supply – even in seasoned leaders. Legitimate Leadership requires that leaders go beyond simply role-modelling or leading by example. Legitimate leaders not only walk the talk, they also demand that their people walk the talk. They go beyond simply being accountable. They hold others accountable too.

THE ARTICLE: Last week, I attended CultureCon, an awesome event centered around organizational culture. One particular slide from Eric Hutcherson, the Chief People & Inclusion officer at Universal Music Group, the keynote speaker, resonated deeply with me. It read:

The culture of any organization is shaped by the WORST behavior the leader is willing to TOLERATE.

The culture of any organization is shaped by the BEST behavior the leader is willing to AMPLIFY.

This insightful statement captures a simple yet critical truth: leaders are the custodians of culture. It is their daily choices—what they tolerate and what they celebrate—that define the boundaries and aspirations of the workplace environment. A further reason why SKOR assesses only Leaders, rather than individual contributors when it comes to assessing culture.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Featured

Question Of The Month

What are practical examples of Legitimate Leadership’s intent test?

In Legitimate Leadership’s introductory programmes, one of the ideas we work through is the Intent test. Legitimate Leadership argues that the only real measure we have of whether we can trust someone is whether they are able to suspend their agenda for ours; whether they are able to set aside their self-interest, and act instead in our interests. It is on this basis alone that trust is granted or withheld and, in the leadership relationship, the manager is seen to be worthy of support, or not.

So what does it mean to pass the intent test in practice?

Will Your Business Survive Your Exit?

Whether it is a family, a small business, a corporation or a country, the true success of any leader can only be measured by the performance of the entity long after the leader is no longer in charge.

Imagine you have a thriving business with good people. The business grows and sets up the usual hierarchies. The senior management team is established and working well, with managers taking responsibility and accountability for their departments. Business thrives and the measures of success in departments – typically OTIF (On Time and In Full Delivery), financial stability, and production efficiency – are visible and tangible. This goes on for a number of years, the business grows further and the people get older. Some may even be getting close to retirement age.

‘Service Leadership’ And The Work-From-Home vs Return-To-Office Debate

Peter Diamandis’s article endorses many of the Legitimate Leadership principles and practices. I love his point that a focus on broad outcomes, or what Legitimate Leadership calls ‘enabling givers’, is analogous to engaging with employees as grown-ups. If you want your staff to behave as grown-ups, then don’t infantilise them. Secondly, I appreciate his focus on location – neither home nor office, but for frontline workers the clients’ premises; and for leaders, out with their people, both caring for them and enabling the best in them to be realised. Leaders, unlike managers, go to where their people are, as opposed to their people coming to them.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Josh Hayman, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: What are practical examples of Legitimate Leadership’s intent test?

Answer: In Legitimate Leadership’s introductory programmes, one of the ideas we work through is the Intent test. Legitimate Leadership argues that the only real measure we have of whether we can trust someone is whether they are able to suspend their agenda for ours; whether they are able to set aside their self-interest, and act instead in our interests. It is on this basis alone that trust is granted or withheld and, in the leadership relationship, the manager is seen to be worthy of support, or not.
So what does it mean to pass the intent test in practice?

• A lead has arisen that could lead to an important sale for your business. You have two sales people you can assign the work to. Jill is your top sales performer and realistically has the best chance of securing the deal. Andrew is a good sales performer, and giving this deal to him will stretch his ability and he will have gained some much-needed experience in pursuing the opportunity. His prospects of success are not as good as Jill’s. Who do you give the opportunity to? Read the full response by clicking here

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Will Your Business Survive Your Exit? 

By Dieter Jansen, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Whether it is a family, a small business, a corporation or a country, the true success of any leader can only be measured by the performance of the entity long after the leader is no longer in charge.

Imagine you have a thriving business with good people. The business grows and sets up the usual hierarchies. The senior management team is established and working well, with managers taking responsibility and accountability for their departments. Business thrives and the measures of success in departments – typically OTIF (On Time and In Full Delivery), financial stability, and production efficiency – are visible and tangible. This goes on for a number of years, the business grows further and the people get older. Some may even be getting close to retirement age.

Supposing someone does leave. The department initially carries on the momentum, but slowly the disciplines fall away – and the measures show the decline. The blame is laid squarely on the shoulders of the current manager, with secret (and sometimes not-so-secret) thoughts of wishing that the previous manager was still in charge, because then things worked. Where can the business get another manager like that?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: ‘Service Leadership’ And The Work-From-Home vs Return-To-Office Debate

By Peter H. Diamandis, an American marketer, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Peter Diamandis’s article endorses many of the Legitimate Leadership principles and practices. I love his point that a focus on broad outcomes, or what Legitimate Leadership calls ‘enabling givers’, is analogous to engaging with employees as grown-ups. If you want your staff to behave as grown-ups, then don’t infantilise them. Secondly, I appreciate his focus on location – neither home nor office, but for frontline workers the clients’ premises; and for leaders, out with their people, both caring for them and enabling the best in them to be realised. Leaders, unlike managers, go to where their people are, as opposed to their people coming to them.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE: Amazon recently made returning to the office a requirement, starting January 1, 2025. Is that the right way to go?

Is there a 3rd option? Jack Hidary, CEO of the unicorn startup (a unicorn is a startup company valued at over US$1billion which is privately owned and not listed) SandboxAQ, says yes, there is a 3rd, and much better, way. SandboxAQ is a US-based start-up which ‘leverages the compound effects of AI and advanced computing to address some of the biggest challenges impacting society.’

I just had a fascinating conversation with Jack on my Moonshots podcast about this topic.

READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Featured

Question Of The Month

How does a leader ‘win over’ his/her people, so that those people grant the leader the authority needed to be effective?

In Leadership, INTENT Is Primary, But It Is Not Sufficient. Skills Are Important Too.

This article is inspired by two recent conversations. The first was with one of our consultants. He shared his frustration with leaders who, while clearly appreciating the need for dedicating time to hobbies if they want to see improvement, don’t appear to have the same insight when it comes to leadership. In short, if I want to be a better cyclist or a better pianist, I see the importance of practice. If I want to excel, I may even consider getting a fitness coach or music teacher. Leadership, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to inspire such an obvious need to put in the time and effort to become exceptional.

How To Change The Organisation’s Culture When You Are Not The CEO

When the CEO exemplifies and leads the desired change, the transformation is accelerated. He/she sets the example for others to follow. Even better if the CEO coaches direct reports to evidence the required standards and holds them accountable for doing so. But at the end of the day change sits in the hands of the individual only. People can and do change irrespective of their environment. If all the CEO does is allow the change to happen, that is good enough for change to be realised.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How does a leader ‘win over’ his/her people, so that those people grant the leader the authority needed to be effective?

Answer: The research on which the Legitimate Leadership framework is based, shows that most leaders approach the above challenge either through a process of compelling their people to carry out certain actions and behaviours, or persuading them to do so.

But the real question lies with the person who is being compelled or persuaded. What motivates them to do a great job?

The orthodox response is: offering them a reward or recognition, and perhaps money.

However, the world has shifted and these presumed motivating factors, though they may be effective initially, do not produce long-standing success.

This is because what motivates individuals is in fact themselves. In general, people are driven to complete a task excellently if they see themselves progressing towards a goal and gaining new skills and knowledge.

If this is the case, it makes more sense for leaders to focus on their people rather than their actions or behaviours. In other words, focusing on the best interests of those who they have authority over will activate them to do a great job.

When leaders are perceived to have the best interests of their people at heart, their people willingly grant them power and they will then be truly powerful.

In the absence of their people granting them power, all leaders are left with is control. And control is not sustainable or motivating, as is evident in the world around us today.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: In Leadership, INTENT Is Primary, But It Is Not Sufficient.
Skills Are Important Too.

By Ian Munro, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

This article is inspired by two recent conversations. The first was with one of our consultants. He shared his frustration with leaders who, while clearly appreciating the need for dedicating time to hobbies if they want to see improvement, don’t appear to have the same insight when it comes to leadership. In short, if I want to be a better cyclist or a better pianist, I see the importance of practice. If I want to excel, I may even consider getting a fitness coach or music teacher. Leadership, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to inspire such an obvious need to put in the time and effort to become exceptional.

Perhaps it is too easy to convince myself that I’m an accomplished leader. All I really need is an accomplished team and the rest takes care of itself. If my team is good enough, I don’t really have to have much leadership knowledge or skill at all and I still get the credit – both from others and often from myself. It is certainly harder to convince myself that I’m an above-average cyclist when I can’t ride up a steep hill, or an exceptional pianist when I can’t play a C major scale!

The second conversation took its cue from the first. I asked a client what he felt was the most important skill in differentiating average from exceptional leaders. For him it was clear: the ability to remember and recall detail – from details about business strategy to details about colleagues’ careers and life stories.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

 

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Video Excerpt: How To Change The Organisation’s Culture When You Are Not The CEO

By Simon Sinek, American author on leadership and motivational speaker.

Comment on this video excerpt by Wendy Lambourne, Legitimate Leadership: When the CEO exemplifies and leads the desired change, the transformation is accelerated. He/she sets the example for others to follow. Even better if the CEO coaches direct reports to evidence the required standards and holds them accountable for doing so. But at the end of the day change sits in the hands of the individual only. People can and do change irrespective of their environment. If all the CEO does is allow the change to happen, that is good enough for change to be realised.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: I get this question all the time: ‘I’m not the CEO, how do I change the organisation when there are four levels above me?’

The answer is that of course you cannot change the behaviours of people you have no contact with. But you take responsibility for the environment that you can control.

So if you have influence over seven people and you just work to create that little pocket of magic, you tend to find when you have well-led teams, those teams outperform all the other teams. And someone from the team will eventually get promoted out and bring all the lessons that you taught them and leave that team the same way.

Then someone there gets promoted and you have four magical teams; and then you have eight magical teams. It creates magical ripples inside the organisation.

Having a top leader in the organisation who understands this is just more efficient. It doesn’t mean it’s the only way.

So don’t worry about the CEO or the company, just worry about what you can control.

TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

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Question Of The Month

Is it fair for managers to simply classify their employees as “givers” and “takers”?

Lead From The Heart – Preparing For The Launch In China Of The Legitimate Leadership In Action Book

Ahead of the launch in China of the Mandarin version of the book Legitimate Leadership In Action, Simon Zhou, Legitimate Leadership’s representative in China, visited Wendy Lambourne in Cape Town, South Africa, and recorded a podcast with her (link below).

In the podcast, Wendy Lambourne, the book’s author, said that Legitimate Leadership is essentially a framework for understanding what accounts for trust in the leadership of an enterprise, no matter what its size.

Meta Fires Personnel For Abuse Of Its $25 Meal Voucher Scheme

This one action of a famous, super-rich person just gave me a little hope for the future of leadership and values. Leaders are very visible and our expectations of behaviour from them are exactly the same as for everybody else, irrespective of title. What does it say about your values if you can misappropriate $25?

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: Is it fair for managers to simply classify their employees as “givers” and “takers”?

Answer: As managers, it is tempting to divide employees into two groups: “givers” and “takers”. That is, those who take accountability and ownership and those who do not. We thank our lucky stars for the “givers” while we tear our hair out and feel despair for the “takers”.

We wonder whether the ratio of givers:takers in our business is a matter of providence and therefore something beyond our power or agency …? Or whether it is possible to determine, or at least influence, the relative size of the two groups.
At Legitimate Leadership, our response to these questions is:

• There are “givers” in any organisation – wonderful human beings who are just this way, always have been and always will be, irrespective or even despite those who lead them.
• Equally, every organisation has its share of “takers” – unattractive specimens of humanity who are similarly just this way, always have been and always will be, even under exceptional leadership.
• But undoubtedly the mix of “givers” and “takers” is not a matter of chance. “Givers” and “takers” are largely manufactured by those in charge of them. What people are is largely a reflection of those who exercise authority over them. Beyond a shadow of a doubt “givers” beget “givers” and “takers” beget “takers”.

Read the full response by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Podcast: Lead From The Heart – Preparing For The Launch In China Of The Legitimate Leadership In Action Book 

Ahead of the launch in China of the Mandarin version of the book Legitimate Leadership In Action, Simon Zhou, Legitimate Leadership’s representative in China, visited Wendy Lambourne in Cape Town, South Africa, and recorded a podcast with her (link below).

In the podcast, Wendy Lambourne, the book’s author, said that Legitimate Leadership is essentially a framework for understanding what accounts for trust in the leadership of an enterprise, no matter what its size.

Wendy Lambourne: “Our research has found that people’s trust in management is not based on things like how much they are paid or what facilities they are given. It is based on something much more personal – essentially, the relationship that any individual in an organisation has with their immediate manager. Depending on what that relationship is like, it generalises. So if your relationship with your manager is positive, you will have an overall more positive view of leadership in the organisation. If it is negative, that becomes your view of the leadership in the organisation.”

“And what makes this relationship positive or negative boils down to intent: whether the leader’s intent is to give to you or to get from you.”

“Regarding legitimacy, if you are in a leadership position in an organisation, you have the authority which comes with the position. But in our view you only have real power when you deliver on two things: you genuinely care about the people you have authority over AND you enable them to become the best they can be.”

“This is not philanthropy because we know that sustainable results can be achieved with exceptional people. So the leadership job is not to get results out of people but to cultivate excellence in people and then the results will naturally follow.”

Simon Zhou: “We first met when you visited China in 2014; you visited us again in 2017.”

READ THE FULL PODCAST SUMMARY BY CLICKING HERE
TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST CLICK HERE

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News Item: Meta Fires Personnel For Abuse Of Its $25 Meal Voucher Scheme

COMMENT ON THIS NEWS ITEM BY LEONIE VAN TONDER, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: This one action of a famous, super-rich person just gave me a little hope for the future of leadership and values. Leaders are very visible and our expectations of behaviour from them are exactly the same as for everybody else, irrespective of title. What does it say about your values if you can misappropriate $25? What is your price for fraud/theft/espionage? It is not the quantum, it’s the action. In South Africa this principle was ratified by the Labour Court in a case of a $2 pie. But there is a marked difference in accountabilities as you go up the line. The example you set is followed – NOT your words. For all to be treated equally, including engineers earning six-figure salaries, is refreshing and sends the right message to all of us – not just Meta staff. St Francis of Assisi said: ‘Preach the gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.’

THE NEWS ITEM: Meta, controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, has dismissed a number of staff members after they abused the company’s $25 meal scheme to order household goods like toothpaste and washing powder.

About 30 people in Meta’s Los Angeles office were dismissed after they were found to be routinely using takeaway credits to order groceries and cosmetics, according to reports. The sackings included engineers earning six-figure salaries, according to posts on the anonymous chat app Blind.

READ THE FULL NEWS ITEM BY CLICKING HERE

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Question Of The Month

How do leaders raise human excellence, according to Legitimate Leadership?

Cyberlogic’s Transformative Leadership Journey

We had an incredible morning at the Legitimate Leadership breakfast, where our CEO, Mark Tew, and People Operations Lead, Aminah Mobara, shared the story of Cyberlogic’s transformative leadership journey and how the Legitimate Leadership framework has redefined our leadership standards.

How to Stop Delegating and Start Teaching

The primary reason why so much of the time we delegate is expediency rather than people growth. It comes down to our intent. Too often we default to ‘what is good for me’ – what I can hand off to others that will help me. We should rather deliberately choose the intent to give – to serve the interests of our people.  When we do, the question then becomes: what can I hand over or delegate that will help my people learn?  This is a mindset that we can cultivate in ourselves and our leaders.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How do leaders raise human excellence, according to Legitimate Leadership?

Answer: Leaders, unlike managers, focus not on the achievement of results but on enabling excellence in their people. They do so because they know that sustainable organisational excellence is not possible with mediocre people.

One way to enable excellence in people is to deliberately and consistently raise the bar. No one ever made it to the Olympics by jumping repeatedly, no matter how often, over a height of 1.50m or even 1.80m. Olympic high jumpers need a coach who continually raises the bar – in the case of the high jump, literally.

Similarly, leaders enable their people to be the best that they can be by continually reimagining and then implementing higher standards of behaviour and performance. Read the full response by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Cyberlogic’s Transformative Leadership Journey

Written by Cyberlogic about a breakfast presentation on its leadership journey, done by it in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 3 October. Cyberlogic is a fast-growing managed IT solutions provider.

We had an incredible morning at the Legitimate Leadership breakfast, where our CEO, Mark Tew, and People Operations Lead, Aminah Mobara, shared the story of Cyberlogic’s transformative leadership journey and how the Legitimate Leadership framework has redefined our leadership standards.
Some key leadership takeaways from the breakfast:

• Leaders who develop clear standards create a culture where individuals feel valued, supported, and empowered to succeed.
• Offering hands-on experience, constructive feedback, and training helps prepare future leaders to take on greater responsibilities and maintain momentum.
• Staying committed to core leadership principles ensures teams remain aligned and perform at their best, even under pressure.

Leadership is not just a function or a title; it’s a commitment to guiding, supporting, and growing people.
When done well, leadership is the catalyst that drives innovation, performance, and, ultimately, organisational success.
A big thank you to Joshua Hayman and the Legitimate Leadership team for having us (for the presentation – editor).

If you’re interested in learning more about our leadership approach or how it can impact business success, check out the full case study by CLICKING HERE

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Article:  How To Stop Delegating and Start Teaching 

By  Art Markman, writing in Harvard Business Review. Dr Markman is the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, USA.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY JOSH HAYMAN, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The primary reason why so much of the time we delegate is expediency rather than people growth. It comes down to our intent.  Too often we default to ‘what is good for me’ – what I can hand off to others that will help me. We should rather deliberately choose the intent to give – to serve the interests of our people.  When we do, the question then becomes: what can I hand over or delegate that will help my people learn?  This is a mindset that we can cultivate in ourselves and our leaders.

SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE: As a manager, a central part of your job is to develop people. But when you delegate a task to someone — with no prior training — simply because you are unavailable to do it, their chances of succeeding are slim.  Managers need to stop thinking of passing off responsibilities as delegating, and start taking on the mindset of a trainer. If you do, you will naturally look for ways to give a little more responsibility to the people who work for you.

Start by gauging who on your team genuinely wants to move up in the organization, and identify their main areas of interest. Create a development plan for them and write down the skills they will need in order to reach their goals. Then focus on giving them assignments that require those skills. Help them work their way up to a challenging task by starting with a series of practice sessions.
The first time you introduce a task to someone, let them shadow you while you explain some of the key points. Then, give them a piece to do on their own with your supervision. Only let them carry the full load when you sense that they are ready. By doing this, you are helping your supervisees reach their career goals, and creating a team of trusted associates who can step in when you are overwhelmed or out of the office.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Featured

Question Of The Month

Why, according to Legitimate Leadership, should big organisations strive to dismantle their internal bureaucracies?

Sustainable Leadership – In A Nutshell

What is the most important issue and opportunity/challenge facing leaders today? Whether we are in a startup, a corporation, a community, a non-profit, or in government: what will it take to change leaders?

The Mindset Of Continuous Improvement

A CEO of a company in Germany coined the phrase, ‘The world belongs to the happily discontented.” He did not mean that you should continuously beat yourself up for not winning or not meeting targets.

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For more information regarding the above, please e-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com

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Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: Why, according to Legitimate Leadership, should big organisations strive to dismantle their internal bureaucracies?

Answer: Bureaucracy has been described as ‘a tax on human accomplishment’. A major problem facing big organisations today is that they have a management model ‘that perpetuates a caste system of thinkers (managers) and doers (everyone else), that regards human beings as mere ‘resources’, that values conformance above all else, that squeezes people into slot–shaped roles irrespective of their innate capabilities, that swallows up human initiative in the quicksand of bureaucratic busy–work, and that regards freedom as a dangerous threat to alignment and discipline’ (Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, in their article What We Learned About Bureaucracy From 7,000 HBR Readers). Legitimate Leadership fully endorses this perspective. We also support Hamel and Zanini in believing that the first step is to establish an empowerment (the opposite to bureaucracy) scoreboard and to hold managers (especially senior managers) accountable against it. We support the final statement in their article: ‘If, as they claim, leaders are willing to share power, and if, as our respondents believe, employees are capable of exercising it wisely, then there’s no excuse for not getting on with the hard but eminently worthwhile work of dismantling bureaucracy.’

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Video: Sustainable Leadership – In A Nutshell

Our summary of this recent video by Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Leaders, the planet needs you to act with care and courage.

What is the most important issue and opportunity/challenge facing leaders today? Whether we are in a startup, a corporation, a community, a non-profit, or in government: what will it take to change leaders?

Many years ago I worked in an explosives factory. After we killed 14 people in two explosions we came to a fairly obvious conclusion: that if you have a safety problem you have a people problem because most accidents are caused by people.

And if you have a people problem you have a leadership problem. In other words, we were the problem!

So we decided we needed to change. We embraced a framework which at the time didn’t have the name Legitimate Leadership.

READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE
TO VIEW THE VIDEO BY CLICKING HERE

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Report: The Mindset Of Continuous Improvement

Our report on Mike Tomlin, coach for the Pittsburgh Steelers of USA, speaking during a team meeting.

Comment on this report by Wendy Lambourne of Legitimate Leadership: A CEO of a company in Germany coined the phrase, ‘The world belongs to the happily discontented.” He did not mean that you should continuously beat yourself up for not winning or not meeting targets. He meant, ‘Do not accept the status quo; never say it’s good enough.’ Rather, always strive to be a little better than before. The goal is not to be better than them but to be better than you were before. Individuals and businesses prosper and thrive when they continuously raise the bar – when they raise the standards, not the targets.

OUR REPORT: In the growth and development of this team, I’m talking to you about norms, expectations and mindsets – mindsets that you should have.

It’s always good to acknowledge reasonable expectations.

I expect you to get better in all areas – whether it’s the knowledge of what you do, the maintenance and the preparation of your body, or the understanding of the end of the game, etc, etc.

You need to continually be a guy on the rise. That is a reasonable expectation.

What do I mean by that?

I mean the things that made you viable in the past aren’t going to be the things that make you viable moving forward.

READ THE FULL REPORT BY CLICKING HERE