Category: Newsletters

December 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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.

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

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 

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

 

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

November 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

Featured

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?

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

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 

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

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

October 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

Featured

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.

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

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 

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

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

September 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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.

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

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 

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

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

August 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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.

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

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 

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

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

July 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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.

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

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

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

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

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

June 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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 …’).

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

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 

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

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

May 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

Featured

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.

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

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  

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

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

April 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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:

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

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 

 

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

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
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March 2024

Posted on by Sylvania

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’.

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

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 

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

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

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
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