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

Featured

Question Of The Month

What does ‘courage’ mean in the Legitimate Leadership Model?

Closing The Gap Between Knowing And Doing – Making Changes Stick

We have all been there, and probably will be again: we’ve read the book, gone to the seminar, ruminated on the ideas and theories – but when we have returned to the office, our priorities got in the way, our habits took over, and our resolve to make changes disappeared.

Change Your Perspective To The Infinite Game

In game theory there are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games.

A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules and an agreed-upon objective. Baseball is an example. We know the rules, we all agree to the rules, and whoever has more runs at the end of nine innings is the winner and the game is over. Nobody ever says, ‘If we can just play two more innings, I know we can come back.’ It doesn’t work that way – the game is over. That’s a finite game.

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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: What does ‘courage’ mean in the Legitimate Leadership Model?

Answer: Courage is not about thoughts and feelings but about words and deeds. Courageous leaders face what needs to be faced and do what needs to be done for the greater good of others. Courage in a leader is notable in the following respects:

1. Leaders who have courage are not devoid of fear, worry and angst – but they do not let these feelings control or define them. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “Courage is not the absence of fear but the triumph over it.”
2. When leaders are courageous, they don’t dither or delay but act decisively. This is not because they know what the right call is but because they understand that a call has to be made. Despite the uncertainty, they take a stance and follow through on it no matter how unpopular it is. They then do not let pride stand in the way of overturning their decisions if evidence suggests that they should do so.
3. Like any human being, courageous leaders want to save their own skins, protect their interests and enjoy the good opinions of others. Yet they do not let these things deter them from self-sacrifice and even inflicting pain on their people if it is in the longer-term best interests of all.

In the workplace and in the Legitimate Leadership Model, courage means, inter alia, that: READ THE FULL ANSWER BY CLICKING HERE

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article:  Closing The Gap Between Knowing And Doing – Making Changes Stick

By Dieter Jansen, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

“The greatest gap is the gap between knowing and doing” – John C Maxwell

We have all been there, and probably will be again: we’ve read the book, gone to the seminar, ruminated on the ideas and theories – but when we have returned to the office, our priorities got in the way, our habits took over, and our resolve to make changes disappeared.

We may even have gone further and started planning some actions, only to find that while the seminar was inspiring at the time, it didn’t really give any decent “how to” advice. All we were left with was concepts that we resonated with, but we miss more in-depth definitions of terms, their implications, and how to practically implement them.

Back to paragraph one above and soon we are doing the same ol’ same ol’.

An event will seldom bring about substantial shifts. Only the intentional implementation of a process can accomplish this – a drip-feed approach that keeps our thoughts on track and our momentum building.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Video Excerpt: Change Your Perspective To The Infinite Game

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

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO EXCERPT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The vast majority of organisations are playing the finite game even though they may profess otherwise. If it was not so, why would organisations with a worthy cause, doing good for the world, still have short-term goals and measure/evaluate themselves against them? When companies are truly playing the infinite game they don’t have a scoreboard. If they quantify anything it is: ‘What does what we do, do for our customers?’ A very special boutique AI company based in Stellenbosch, South Africa, does just that. Not surprisingly, they are thriving – the company is growing and their people are 100% committed to going above and beyond in service to their customers.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: In game theory there are two kinds of games: finite games and infinite games.

A finite game is defined as known players, fixed rules and an agreed-upon objective. Baseball is an example. We know the rules, we all agree to the rules, and whoever has more runs at the end of nine innings is the winner and the game is over. Nobody ever says, ‘If we can just play two more innings, I know we can come back.’ It doesn’t work that way – the game is over. That’s a finite game.

Then you have an infinite game. Infinite games are defined as: known and unknown players; the rules are changeable; and the objective is to keep the game in play to perpetuate the game.

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

Featured

Question Of The Month

Caring and growing people seems good in theory, but what should managers DO to effect it?

Legitimate Leadership And Its Impact On The Third Sector

For over a year now (since mid-2023 – editor), the MyBnk leadership team has been part of the Legitimate Leadership programme, which is based on the core values of care and growth. Our latest session delved deeply into emotions and reflections on recent progress at MyBnk. Discussions revolved around trust and power dynamics, highlighting the importance and complexity of these elements in leadership.

Stepping Up To Be A Legitimate Leadership Associate

Every now and again a moment comes along when you know you have discovered something significant, even if you can’t define it at the time.

Practising Empathy With People We Don’t Understand

How do we practice empathy with someone we don’t understand? How do we practice empathy with an organization or a group that we’re struggling with?

It breaks down to four things: parenting, technology, impatience and environment.

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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: Caring and growing people seems good in theory, but what should managers DO to effect it?

Answer: Leaders are not necessarily clear as to what caring for and growing their people means practically. We have found the following 20 ideas on getting started on the road to legitimacy to be useful for those in authority who would like to work at becoming people that others “want to” rather than “have to” work for:  READ THE FULL ANSWER BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: Legitimate Leadership And Its Impact On The Third Sector

By Claire Quigley, Fundraising & Communications Director of MyBnk, a UK social enterprise and charity which specialises in financial education and enterprise for 7-25-year-olds. 

For over a year now (since mid-2023 – editor), the MyBnk leadership team has been part of the Legitimate Leadership programme, which is based on the core values of care and growth. Our latest session delved deeply into emotions and reflections on recent progress at MyBnk. Discussions revolved around trust and power dynamics, highlighting the importance and complexity of these elements in leadership.

The Hot Potato Of Trust
Trust is a delicate issue, isn’t it? Charities are privileged to care for and support those in need. In my opinion, there tends to be a general openness to empathy and less cynicism in this environment. This atmosphere can sometimes lead to more blind trust, which can foolishly mistaken for a lack of business acumen (both internally and externally).

Challenges Facing The Third Sector
Currently, the third sector is facing significant challenges. With funding becoming harder to secure and the demand for care increasing, the pressure on charities is immense. More than ever, charities need performance-driven individuals who will not settle for mediocrity and who can lead their organisations through any storm, regardless of their rank or position.

Despite this, charity workers are expected to maintain a ‘soft, warm, and fuzzy’ demeanour, reminiscent of the Brady Bunch, and avoid adopting any business-like strategies or, dare I say, plain old toughness.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: Stepping Up To Be A Legitimate Leadership Associate

By Dieter Jansen, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Every now and again a moment comes along when you know you have discovered something significant, even if you can’t define it at the time.

I had attended a presentation at a company that unapologetically explained its almost ruthless insistence on mature, accountable leadership behaviour by repeatedly referring to a concept called Legitimate Leadership. It said its application of Legitimate Leadership was partly responsible for the growth of its business.

I thought I would research this model – only to discover that it was a leadership model and a company operating in South Africa, where I live.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Video: Lead With Empathy

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

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: This is a follow-up on Simon Sinek’s famous talk on the problem with millennials. It is excellent. How does it relate to Legitimate Leadership? Simply: empathy is a subset of care. It means understanding where the other person is at and acknowledging their thoughts and feelings without judgement. Legitimacy comes when leaders care and grow those in their charge, but care is primary. And finally, is not about changing our people, but about changing ourselves as leaders – the project is YOU!

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: How do we practice empathy with someone we don’t understand? How do we practice empathy with an organization or a group that we’re struggling with?
It breaks down to four things: parenting, technology, impatience and environment.

On parenting: millennials have grown up subject to what has been described as a failed parenting strategy. Too many of them were told as they were growing up that they were special, that they could have whatever they wanted just because they wanted it. They got participation medals for coming in last.

The science on this is already good: it devalues the feeling of somebody who works hard and comes in first place, and it actually embarrasses the person who comes in last because they know they don’t deserve it. So it actually makes them feel worse, it doesn’t help.

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

Featured

Question Of The Month

What is the most important factor in management-employee communications?

Four Insights From Cyberlogic – What It Takes To Sustain A Healthy Leadership Culture In A Growing Tech Business

Cyberlogic is a Managed Solutions Provider with a focus on infrastructure, cloud, cyber security, and business intelligence. In 2020, Cyberlogic had a 25-year track record in the South African market and was doing well, but its leadership knew it had the potential to do better.

Poised for growth, the organisation recognised that in order to fulfil its stated promise of “Delivering Unquestionable Value” to a growing client base, enabling people excellence through great leadership would be key, particularly in a market where competition for talent is intense.

Lead With Empathy

Leaders have pressure on them that we can’t comprehend: maybe they weren’t given an education about how to lead, maybe they have had terrible role models, maybe they’ve got screwed up incentive structures, maybe they have a terrible boss.’

‘We don’t know what they’re operating in and we have to assume that they’re doing the best they can with the circumstances and the tools they’ve got. So we should come in with empathy and affirmation rather than argument (‘You have to do it this way’ – rather: ‘I can only imagine that it’s frustrating …’).

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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: What is the most important factor in management-employee communications?

Answer: At Legitimate Leadership we believe that the critical factor accounting for successful management-employee communication is the degree to which employees trust the source of the communication. Neither the content of the message (WHAT management says) nor the choice of medium (HOW they say it) is anywhere near as important as whether it is trusted in the first place.

When managers are trusted, individually and collectively, then what they say is generally believed and accepted. When trust in management is low, employees are suspicious of everything that management says, even if it is the truth.

Trust in management is granted or withheld on the basis of a single criterion: the degree to which employees perceive management to be in the relationship to “give” or to “take”. When managers are perceived to be pursuing their own interests, to only be in the relationship to get something out of their people, trust in them will be low. Only when managers are experienced as being there to give or serve their people, will their staff be willing to give to them – because they trust that their managers have their best interests at heart.

In essence, only when managers are communicating in their employees’ best interests, rather than their own interests, will they be trusted. Only when managers not only tell their employees the truth, but disclose to them information that they don’t have to share, trusting that their employees will not use the information against them, will they be trusted.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Case Study: Four Insights From Cyberlogic – What It Takes To Sustain A Healthy Leadership Culture In A Growing Tech Business

By Josh Hayman, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Cyberlogic is a Managed Solutions Provider with a focus on infrastructure, cloud, cyber security, and business intelligence. In 2020, Cyberlogic had a 25-year track record in the South African market and was doing well, but its leadership knew it had the potential to do better.

Poised for growth, the organisation recognised that in order to fulfil its stated promise of “Delivering Unquestionable Value” to a growing client base, enabling people excellence through great leadership would be key, particularly in a market where competition for talent is intense.

When leaders understand that their role is to both care about and enable their people to be their best and then translate this into every-day leadership, companies become places people really want to work. Attracting and retaining good people is much easier and employees willingly take on more ownership and accountability. With that as a base, growing the business and maintaining consistently excellent standards is easier to achieve.

Three years later, the organisation has doubled in size to service a growing client base, and in that time has achieved a significant shift in culture, moving from dependence on a few key people to a significantly broader and more empowered base of leaders across the business who are trusted and supported by their people. The organisation continues to sustain that shift over time through a deliberate investment of time and effort.

READ THE FULL CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE
DOWNLOAD THE PDF VERSION OF THE CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE

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Video: Lead With Empathy

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

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: When anyone is underperforming or behaving badly, the place to start is with the ‘why’. There are only three ‘whys’ in the workplace: they lack the means, the ability, or the will, to perform or behave appropriately. There is obviously also a ‘why’ outside of work: personal circumstances are impacting them at work. Making the correct diagnosis is imperative because only then can the correct leadership action be taken. Whether the person is a ‘good lad’ or a ‘bad lad’ (as they say in north-west England) is also irrelevant. Stick to the facts.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: I went for a walk with a friend who is struggling at work. This is how the conversation started: ‘My boss is a terrible person, I hate working for her.’

I said: ‘Oh my God, does she abuse her children and kick her dog?’

She said, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Ah, so we don’t know that she’s a terrible person, we just know that she’s a terrible leader.’

Leaders have pressure on them that we can’t comprehend: maybe they weren’t given an education about how to lead, maybe they have had terrible role models, maybe they’ve got screwed up incentive structures, maybe they have a terrible boss.’

‘We don’t know what they’re operating in and we have to assume that they’re doing the best they can with the circumstances and the tools they’ve got. So we should come in with empathy and affirmation rather than argument (‘You have to do it this way’ – rather: ‘I can only imagine that it’s frustrating …’).

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

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Question Of The Month

What does ‘acting in employees’ best interests’ mean with respect to communication?

Clear Performance Expectations Enable Employee Success

Legitimate Leadership often finds that a lack of clear performance expectations is the most important factor in people’s unhappiness at work.

Employees will complain about the desk, the chair, a colleague and the coffee. But when you really do a root-cause analysis, they are unsure of what is expected of them and thus are not gainfully engaged in what they must do. So complaining about what they do know is so much easier.

How To Handle Remote And Blended/Hybrid Teams

 One of the challenges that has hurt collaboration across the board was lockdown.

Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said music is what happens between the notes. Trust is what’s built between the meetings – it’s the chatter as you’re walking into the meeting, it’s the meeting that happens after the meeting, it’s the bumping into someone in a hallway and ‘Oh, I meant to tell you …’, ‘You want to grab lunch?’, ‘You want to grab a coffee?’ 

It’s all those little innocuous things that by themselves do nothing but over time build trust and support collaboration.

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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: What does ‘acting in employees’ best interests’ mean with respect to communication?

Answer: It means that management commits to communicating even when it appears not to be in their best interests at the time. They communicate with their people even when it does not seem to be the most utilitarian or expedient thing to do. They tell it like it is even if there’s no advantage to them in doing so.

If they communicate when it suits them and stop communicating when it doesn’t, they won’t be trusted.

Secondly, they tell their people what they want to know, not what management wants to tell them. And what employees want to know is primarily two things: How is the business doing? And how am I / my team doing? Only when management consistently delivers on these two primary information needs will they be seen as acting in their employees’ best interests.

Thirdly, management never lies to their people but rather always speaks the truth. This is because when management lies, they destroy trust. They create the conditions that, going forward, their people can no longer take them at their word. As Frederick Nietzsche said: ‘What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that I can no longer believe in what you say.’

Lastly, management goes beyond responding honestly to questions asked. They actively disclose and give feedback. They provide the ‘why’ behind their decisions. They share both their thoughts and their feelings, as well as the facts. They both tell their people what they expect of them and how well they are doing against those expectations.

Living up to these standards is not easy. The benefits to management, long-term, of doing so are immense, however.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com  

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Clear Performance Expectations Enable Employee Success

By Leonie van Tonder, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Legitimate Leadership often finds that a lack of clear performance expectations is the most important factor in people’s unhappiness at work.

Employees will complain about the desk, the chair, a colleague and the coffee. But when you really do a root-cause analysis, they are unsure of what is expected of them and thus are not gainfully engaged in what they must do. So complaining about what they do know is so much easier.

Legitimate Leadership is built on the foundations of CARE, MEANS, ABILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Video Excerpt: How To Handle Remote And Blended/Hybrid Teams

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

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: You get what you pay for. Legitimate Leadership believes that people should be paid primarily for their contribution against a standard, not the result. Part of contribution is behavioural standards – including collaboration, face-to-face engagement, and getting to know people as human beings not human resources. Virtual interaction has its benefits but is never first prize. It can never replace the benefit of spending time in person with colleagues in one-to-ones, in team meetings, and out in the field watching the game. I liked Sinek’s ideas with respect to getting people back to the office in a way which is encouraging and supportive rather than by dictate.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO EXCERPT: One of the challenges that has hurt collaboration across the board was lockdown.

Isaac Stern, the famous violinist, said music is what happens between the notes. Trust is what’s built between the meetings – it’s the chatter as you’re walking into the meeting, it’s the meeting that happens after the meeting, it’s the bumping into someone in a hallway and ‘Oh, I meant to tell you …’, ‘You want to grab lunch?’, ‘You want to grab a coffee?’

It’s all those little innocuous things that by themselves do nothing but over time build trust and support collaboration.

But when we work at home we just have the meeting. There is no ‘between’.

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

Featured

Question Of The Month

How important is it for the culture of an organisation to align with the kind of coaching that people in it are getting?

News: The Origins Of Legitimate Leadership In Action

Wendy Lambourne, founder of Legitimate Leadership, was, during March, invited to a Q&A chat event by UK-based business environmental sustainability organisation SUSXL. The event was hosted by Bernard Lebelle, CEO of The Green Link, and Davis Mukasa, founder of TotallyNewThinking. 

The Happy Index And Upside-Down Management

Question:  What is upside down management?

James Timpson: ‘Most businesses are run from the top down so the people who actually serve customers, drive trucks and put money in the till are told what to do and have to follow lots of rules and processes. If they don’t, they get told off.

‘But in our business those on the front line can do whatever they want, whatever they think is right, subject to two rules:

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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 Stefaan van den Heever, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How important is it for the culture of an organisation to align with the kind of coaching that people in it are getting?

Answer: A coach hopefully holds up a clear, mostly-untainted mirror for someone so that she can come to terms with those places or areas where there are gaps or incoherence with authenticity. I have been coaching for nearly 20 years but in the past few years it has become clear that coaching can have only a limited impact if the system and culture of an organisation is not conducive to a coaching or learning way of leading really being ‘lived’ by the individual in it.

During coaching, the client can gain great insights about how he comes across to others, and he can then go out and implement new behaviour based on those insights.

But then the new frame of reference ‘collides’ or comes into contradiction with what is going on within the organisation.

It happens quite often that an organisation has an inspirational mission statement and values – but they are only words.  For instance, we were commissioned to teach people in a manufacturing plant to lead in a coaching way – to get people to engage with each other in a ‘learning’ way, where listening and asking questions were key competencies for them to build. The training was successful and most people connected to this new way of engaging. Unfortunately when pressure for performance rose, most people reverted back to their old style of ‘control and command’.

Coaching interventions are much more successful when they are part of a systemic intervention in which culture also shifts. Coaching then helps people to embed and really ‘live’ the new way of doing things.

The Legitimate Leadership Model offers this systemic change to shift culture. Then coaching can be really successful.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

 

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News: The Origins Of Legitimate Leadership In Action

Wendy Lambourne, founder of Legitimate Leadership, was, during March, invited to a Q&A chat event by UK-based business environmental sustainability organisation SUSXL. The event was hosted by Bernard Lebelle, CEO of The Green Link, and Davis Mukasa, founder of TotallyNewThinking.

Mukasa commented that Wendy’s “insights on leadership and trust are a powerful take on organisational management … key takeaways include the imperative for leaders to empower employees through decision-making authority, prioritise long-term interests over short-term gains, and foster a culture of accountability and trust. By embracing a ‘giver’ mentality and setting an example for environmental sustainability, leaders can drive meaningful organisational transformation. Wendy’s emphasis on the essential framework of trust in management underscores the enduring relevance of these principles some 30 years on, serving as a poignant beacon for future leadership endeavour.”

During the event Wendy traced the origins of Legitimate Leadership, as well as the book she has authored, called Legitimate Leadership In Action.
How did she initially get exposed to this whole framework?

READ THE FULL NEWS ITEM BY CLICKING HERE
TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST CLICK HERE

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Video: The Happy Index And Upside-Down Management

A podcast of UK TV personality Krishnan Guru-Murthy interviewing James Timpson, CEO of Timpson. Timpson has shoe/key/watch repair stores throughout the UK. The group also has Snappy Snaps and other retail brands. James Timpson has authored a book, The Happy Index: Lessons In Upside-Down Management.

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: This is well worth the fairly long read. It is a story of operationalising ‘care and growth’ such that it is embedded in the culture. A few takeaways:

• It is about trusting your people. Timpson employees can do whatever they like as long as they adhere to two rules: put the money in the till, and look the part.
• There is one single measure of area managers’ performance – it is not profitability but their rating on a single survey question: ‘How do you rate your area manager for their kindness to you?’
• Act decisively on poor performance without any of the normal HR processes.
• Spend time in the field where the game is being played to find out what the front-line employees need to provide excellent service to customers.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: 
Q: What is upside down management?
James Timpson: ‘Most businesses are run from the top down so the people who actually serve customers, drive trucks and put money in the till are told what to do and have to follow lots of rules and processes. If they don’t, they get told off.
‘But in our business those on the front line can do whatever they want, whatever they think is right, subject to two rules:

1. You put the money in the till.
2. You look the part.

‘For the rest, you can do whatever you think is right. All we are interested in is: are you happy, are you doing everything you can to give amazing service, and are you following our two rules.

‘Everyone else’s job is not to tell them what to do but to support them. For instance, if they want to give someone a discount or give something away for free, or they want to change the displays, go ahead. They can order whatever stock they want. They decide when to have a break. They can even paint the shop pink if they want. It’s their shop – they do whatever they think is right to give amazing service to their customers.’

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

Featured

Question Of The Month

Is one style of leadership appropriate for all individuals and all phases of an organisation, from start up to maturity?

Legitimate Leadership’s New Programme – Safety Leadership Excellence In Practice Leadership

If you have a safety problem, you have a people problem. And If you have a people problem, you have a leadership problem.

Legitimate Leadership has developed a 6-8-month intensive Safety Leadership Excellence In Practice programme which focuses on leaders enacting changes in themselves.

Safety Leadership – The Difference That Makes the Difference

Representing Legitimate Leadership, I presented a paper at IChemE’s recent Hazards 33 conference in Birmingham, UK. The paper explored the role of leadership when applied in a safety context, and indicated how Legitimate Leadership’s fundamental approach can be used as a basis for safety improvement.

How You Can Say What You Mean Without Being Mean

Kim Scott is the leading proponent of what she calls ‘radical candor’ or caring and challenging at the same time – in Legitimate Leadership terms: Care AND Growth. In this video she explores through brilliant examples the consequences of doing either Care or Growth and the motive of the leader when they get this wrong – what she terms ‘ruinous empathy’, ‘manipulative insincerity’ and ‘obnoxious aggression’.

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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 Sean Hagger, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: Is one style of leadership appropriate for all individuals and all phases of an organisation, from start up to maturity?

Answer: Yes, leadership style is (that is, the intent to give). However, it takes a high level of different skills in my opinion to be a start-up leader to a cash-cow leader. Start-ups require massively high energy, risk taking and passion to do anything at any time to ensure the business gets to the next step – so there might be times where empowering the people around you has to take a back seat because if we don’t act then, there is no business anyway. In a cash cow, the leader needs to be skilled at efficiency and cost saving, have a passion for continuous improvement and be comfortable making big decisions – you may have to move manufacturing to China and shut down a few factories. When the cash cow value starts to decline, you need to be comfortable with change. New business opportunities may come up and need to be managed as well as the current business – so you have a foot in both camps (entrepreneur and efficiency). I have found most businesses tend to change their senior leadership when the business moves from start-up to maturity just because these two types of people are interested in different things.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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News: Legitimate Leadership’s New Programme – Safety Leadership Excellence In Practice 

If you have a safety problem, you have a people problem. And If you have a people problem, you have a leadership problem.

Legitimate Leadership has developed a 6-8-month intensive Safety Leadership Excellence In Practice programme which focuses on leaders enacting changes in themselves.

The programme starts with an Introductory workshop focusing on what safety leadership practices characterise care, means, ability and accountability.

This is followed by diagnosing against the Legitimate Leadership criteria.

Initial safety leadership assessments fundamentally ask: ‘How are we doing individually and collectively against the criteria of safety leadership excellence?’

Tailored application workshops then tackle specific areas of misalignment to the criteria, as diagnosed, addressing salient questions:

READ THE FULL NEWS ITEM BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: Safety Leadership – The Difference That Makes the Difference

By Rachael Cowin, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Representing Legitimate Leadership, I presented a paper at IChemE’s recent Hazards 33 conference in Birmingham, UK. The paper explored the role of leadership when applied in a safety context, and indicated how Legitimate Leadership’s fundamental approach can be used as a basis for safety improvement.

Consultants at Legitimate Leadership have first-hand experience of applying our leadership framework, both in supporting clients and previously as employees of these organisations. What Legitimate Leadership consultants have consistently found is that focus on leadership has a positive impact upon safety, even when such improvements are not the primary aim of an intervention. This should not be a surprise – there is substantial research evidence which connects specific leadership practices throughout an organisation with safety outcomes. Indeed, the practical, embedding practices which Legitimate Leadership has developed – such as watching the game, leadership diaries, empowerment and accountability – serve to facilitate behaviours recommended in studies that we reviewed.

However, despite the recognition of the importance of the human aspects of safety, particularly as the industry matures, specific leadership practices rarely receive sufficient organisational priority in safety improvement efforts.

To move the discussion forward, Legitimate Leadership undertook a major exercise to surface safety leadership excellence criteria. We derived 28 safety leadership excellence criteria, clustered around Legitimate Leadership enablers of trust.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Video: How You Can Say What You Mean Without Being Mean

By Kim Scott, a former executive with Apple and Google, and author of the book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Kim Scott is the leading proponent of what she calls ‘radical candor’ or caring and challenging at the same time – in Legitimate Leadership terms: Care AND Growth. In this video she explores through brilliant examples the consequences of doing either Care or Growth and the motive of the leader when they get this wrong – what she terms ‘ruinous empathy’, ‘manipulative insincerity’ and ‘obnoxious aggression’.

OUR SUMMARY OF THE VIDEO: How can you say what you mean without being mean?
I started thinking about this in 1999. I had started a software company and in the office one day about half the people had sent me the same article about how everyone would rather have a boss who is really mean but competent than one who is really nice but incompetent.

I thought ‘Gosh are they sending me this because they think I’m a jerk or because they think I’m incompetent – and surely those are not my only two choices?’

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

Featured

Question Of The Month

How do you, and should you, adjust your leadership approach for different generations and different work ethics?

10 Years Of Legitimate Leadership

A party to celebrate the 10th birthday of Legitimate Leadership as well as the publication of the second edition of the book Legitimate Leadership was held in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 7 February 2024.

A New Edition Of The Legitimate Leadership Book

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. 

Gallup Finds Employees Who Trust Their Leadership Are Four Times As Likely To Be Engaged

To help leaders and managers more effectively lead their teams and organizations to greater success, Gallup annually measures US employees’ perceptions of their interactions with leaders and managers, as well as their experiences related to performance management in their organization.

In 2023, 23% of respondents agreed with the statement, ‘I trust the leadership of this organization’.

Gallup says this matters because by examining employee perceptions of leadership/management and how employees experience performance management in their organization, leaders discover opportunities to implement leadership best practices that can positively affect their organizational outcomes.

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For more information regarding the above, please email events@legitimateleadership.com

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

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Question Of The Month 

By Sean Hagger, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How do you, and should you, adjust your leadership approach for different generations and different work ethics?

Answer: You adjust your leadership style to the person you are leading, full stop. If you have a genuine interest in them as a person then you will learn about who they are and what burns inside them. The generation they are from is irrelevant.

You may need to learn from them what their values are, but in my experience values don’t change a great deal from generation to generation, though they may be expressed differently – which makes it interesting.

Regarding work ethic, if you don’t have a good one, I will try and find one in you. If you don’t play ball then work somewhere else.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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News: A New Edition Of The Legitimate Leadership Book

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.

READ THE FULL NEWS ITEM BY CLICKING HERE

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Article: Gallup Finds Employees Who Trust Their Leadership Are Four Times As Likely To Be Engaged

By Gallup, Inc, an American multinational analytics and advisory company.

COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE ON THIS ARTICLE: The latest validation of the Legitimate Leadership principles comes from Gallup’s 2023 survey of employees’ perceptions of their interactions with their managers. Highlights were firstly the link between trust in leadership and employee engagement and retention. Secondly, the finding that a huge 70% in employee engagement is attributable to the manager-employee relationship. Finally, what is needed to enable managers to be coaches, not bosses – in Legitimate Leadership terms, care and growth of their people.

OUR SUMMARY OF THE GALLUP RESULTS: To help leaders and managers more effectively lead their teams and organizations to greater success, Gallup annually measures US employees’ perceptions of their interactions with leaders and managers, as well as their experiences related to performance management in their organization.

In 2023, 23% of respondents agreed with the statement, ‘I trust the leadership of this organization’.

Gallup says this matters because by examining employee perceptions of leadership/management and how employees experience performance management in their organization, leaders discover opportunities to implement leadership best practices that can positively affect their organizational outcomes.

READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THE ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
READ THE FULL THE ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

 

Featured

Question Of The Month

How do you keep people motivated when the metrics are going south and management’s response is to impose the following cost savings on everything: a recruitment freeze, no bonuses, no promotions, no travel, no spending on training, etc?

Is One Style Of Leadership Appropriate For All Individuals And All Phases Of An Organisation, From Start-Up To Maturity?

You may experience very different strategic and operational leadership challenges depending on your stage in the business lifecycle. But whatever your business, the characteristics of an effective people leader remain broadly the same.

All Leaders Have Courage

We talk about vision and charisma – yes these are important, but I’ve known some wonderful leaders who don’t have huge world-changing vision; I’ve known some wonderful leaders that are quiet and sit in the corner.

But they all have courage – the courage to advance a vision; the courage to ignore the short-term ups and downs of the business; the courage to take risks on people; the courage to believe in people; the courage to speak truth to power; the courage to do the right thing and have integrity.

I think courage is a very undervalued characteristic of leadership.

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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 Sean Hagger , Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How do you keep people motivated when the metrics are going south and management’s response is to impose the following cost savings on everything: a recruitment freeze, no bonuses, no promotions, no travel, no spending on training, etc?

Answer: Move away your focus from the three small p’s (parking, pension and pay), towards the three big P’s (Purpose, Passion and People).

• Recruitment freeze – this hardly ever happens on direct personnel (that is, people who are needed to meet demand). It is normally a freeze on recruitment of indirect staff, which in my experience is often an over-populated area anyway. Focus the support teams back on their purpose, why they exist and what they are supposed to do to support the value adding teams; re-prioritise their activities to the absolute key work (they can tell you what that is – because of passion for the craft); be brave and remove any non-value adding work that has crept in from the centre and get them on the pitch (means, ability and accountability), helping the value stream (with problem solving activities, improving flow, communications, internal training/coaching, audit actions, etc). In one case, my engineers had lost their will to live – they had become engineers to work with machines and over the years we had systematically removed a large part of these responsibilities. Do the same with the quality people, for instance – get them back to doing what they love.
• Training – there are lots of opportunities to train in-house with no external spend.  Read full answer by clicking here.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Is One Style Of Leadership Appropriate For All Individuals And All Phases Of An Organisation, From Start-Up To Maturity?

By Stuart Foulds, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

You may experience very different strategic and operational leadership challenges depending on your stage in the business lifecycle. But whatever your business, the characteristics of an effective people leader remain broadly the same.
To run a successful business, broadly speaking one needs three kinds of leadership:

•    Strategic leadership – assessing opportunities and threats in the business environment and crafting a plan that will lead the organisation towards long term success.
•    Operational leadership – organising, structuring and equipping the business to deliver on its identified strategic objectives.
•    People leadership – building and sustaining a team of willing, capable and accountable employees who will go the extra mile to turn the strategy into reality.

The first two types of leadership often involve very different styles and strengths, depending on the stage of the business lifecycle.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

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Video: All Leaders Have Courage

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

COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP, ON THIS VIDEO:  There are two must-haves for leaders generally, but particularly in a crisis. They are generosity (a giving of things) and courage (laying oneself on the line). Of the two, courage is more difficult because the price you may have to pay is greater. Courage is also in shorter supply. But without courage – ‘benevolence in the hand but steel in the hand’ – you cannot lead.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: We talk about vision and charisma – yes these are important, but I’ve known some wonderful leaders who don’t have huge world-changing vision; I’ve known some wonderful leaders that are quiet and sit in the corner.

But they all have courage – the courage to advance a vision; the courage to ignore the short-term ups and downs of the business; the courage to take risks on people; the courage to believe in people; the courage to speak truth to power; the courage to do the right thing and have integrity.
I think courage is a very undervalued characteristic of leadership.

Leadership is perhaps one of the most misunderstood subjects in business. Leadership has nothing to do with rank. I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations but who are not leaders. We do as they tell us because they have authority over us but we do not trust them and we do not follow them.

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

Communication is a key activity for leaders – your team will take their cues on what is important by what you spend time discussing. People want to know how they and the organisation are doing; they need clarity and an opportunity to test their understanding. Beyond the content, you also communicate your values when you speak with honesty and courage.
Rachael Cowin, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

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Featured

Question Of The Month

I feel like I communicate clearly, but my team says they’re confused. How do I fix this?

Why Clear Communication Really Matters

Creating an environment where people can thrive and perform at their best is a key function of leadership.  A characteristic of such an environment is that people know two things:

1. What is expected of them
2. Where they stand

In both cases, the onus is on the leader to give their people this knowledge with absolute clarity.  Often, this is where we trip up and fail.

Kind Leadership Is About Clarity, Even When It Stings

A recent article by Jeni-Anne Campbell offers a refreshing perspective on leadership and what it truly means to lead with kindness. The key message is simple: being a kind leader is not about avoiding difficult conversations or keeping everyone comfortable all the time. It is about being honest, clear, and consistent, even when the truth may be uncomfortable.

The article challenges the idea that “nice” leadership is always effective. In many cases, avoiding feedback, delaying decisions, or softening important messages creates more confusion and anxiety within teams. People perform better when they understand expectations, know where they stand, and receive feedback that helps them grow.

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Question Of The Month 

By Paulette Daniels, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: I feel like I communicate clearly, but my team says they’re confused. How do I fix this?

Answer:  As a Legitimate leader, communication is not only about what is said but also about what is heard, understood, and experienced by others.

When a team says they are confused, it often indicates a gap between the leader’s intent and the communication’s impact. Leaders should slow down enough to check for understanding, create space for feedback and ensure alignment between their words, behaviour and expectations.

Clarity comes through repetition, consistency, context and genuine engagement. Rather than assuming the message landed, invite your team into the conversation by asking them to reflect on what they heard, what they understand their role to be and where they still feel uncertain.

Legitimacy is built through trust when people feel seen, heard, and included in the process, rather than simply instructed and compelled to align.

To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com 

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Article: Why Clear Communication Really Matters

By Dieter Janen, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Creating an environment where people can thrive and perform at their best is a key function of leadership.  A characteristic of such an environment is that people know two things:
1.    What is expected of them
2.    Where they stand

In both cases, the onus is on the leader to give their people this knowledge with absolute clarity.  Often, this is where we trip up and fail.

Communication is more than just speaking, more than just speaking and having someone else listen.  Communication is about the leader taking a picture in their mind and accurately transferring it to their people’s minds. And the full responsibility for ensuring this is done well lies with the leaders. Just saying “If you have any questions, you know where I am” isn’t good enough.  How would people know they might be wrong?

Let me describe this concept using a situation I had during a home-building project.  The agreement was that I would pay for the materials directly, and the building contractor would handle the construction.  In many cases, this meant I had to estimate the amount of material needed.  In essence, the plan worked well until we had to tile the walls in the 3 bathrooms.  We discussed the tasks and agreed that tiling would be done to the window height.  A clear specification that I could work with.  I calculated how many tiles we would need, added a bit for wastage, bought them, and the builder continued.  At one point, the builder let me know that they had run out of tiles and would have to make some contingency plans.  It was a semi-heated exchange. I wasn’t sure how we had messed this up, and in a very frustrated mood, drove out to the building site some 3 hours away.  As soon as I walked in, I saw the problem: the builder had tiled up to the tops of the windows, while I had calculated everything to the windowsills.  “Tile to window height.”  We had heard the same words but had understood different things.  Who was to blame? Clearly, buying more tiles was required to solve this problem, but who would pay?

Read the full article by clicking here

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Article: Kind Leadership Is About Clarity, Even When It Stings

By Jeni‑Anne Campbell, founder of JAW Advertising

Comment on the article by Josh Hayman, Managing Director (South Africa), Legitimate Leadership: We have saying at Legitimate Leadership: “Giving is not about being nice, it is about being appropriate”.  This article by Jeni-Anne Campbell illustrates this principle with clarity.  Conversations we have in organisations often highlight that leaders experience things like Care and being Honest about anything difficult is a trade-off: “If I want to be seen to Care, I have to give up something in terms of Honesty. If I want to be honest about something that might be uncomfortable for a person to hear, I’ll give up something in terms of Care”.  When our Intent is to Give, Care and Honesty are inseparable.  You won’t be experienced as Honest if you don’t Care, and if you aren’t Honest, you won’t be seen to Care.

We don’t have to put one down to do the other. Do both.

Our summary of this article: A recent article by Jeni-Anne Campbell offers a refreshing perspective on leadership and what it truly means to lead with kindness. The key message is simple: being a kind leader is not about avoiding difficult conversations or keeping everyone comfortable all the time. It is about being honest, clear, and consistent, even when the truth may be uncomfortable.

The article challenges the idea that “nice” leadership is always effective. In many cases, avoiding feedback, delaying decisions, or softening important messages creates more confusion and anxiety within teams. People perform better when they understand expectations, know where they stand, and receive feedback that helps them grow.

One of the most powerful ideas in the article is that clarity is actually a form of care. Leaders who communicate openly create trust, accountability, and a stronger sense of stability within their teams. Honest conversations, when handled with empathy and respect, help people improve and feel supported rather than uncertain.

Read our full summary by clicking hereh awareness and intentional practice, every leader can learn to amplify the intelligence and potential of their team.