Category: Newsletters

February 2023

Posted on by ll

Featured

Question Of The Month

How should supervisors deal with problematic behaviour?

Answer:  A supervisor’s response to poor behaviour is often to close her eyes and hope the problem will go away. It rarely does, and often it gets worse.

Legitimate Leadership, Stoicism And The Blessing Of Books

Growing up in a small mining town did not give one much upside on life but I am ever grateful for two things. I started playing cricket at the age of eight, which eventually provided me with a sports bursary to pay for my university education; and, bless my mother, she introduced me to reading at about the same age.

What It Takes To Build Cultures Where Givers Actually Get To Succeed

Adam Grant has previously spoken about givers putting up boundaries or limiting their generosity as a way to protect themselves against over-giving. At Legitimate Leadership we prefer to think about two forms of giving: generosity and courage. Appropriate giving is therefore about acting with generosity or courage, whichever is more appropriate at the time.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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

Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How should supervisors deal with problematic behaviour?

Answer:  A supervisor’s response to poor behaviour is often to close her eyes and hope the problem will go away. It rarely does, and often it gets worse.

There are really only two ways to address poor behaviour. The one is through clarity of expectations and the other is through consequences.

The supervisor needs to communicate in clear terms what the person is doing which is not acceptable and why. She then needs to be explicit about what she does expect and the consequences of the person not meeting those expectations. The consequences then need to happen, both negative (if the expectations are not being met) and positive (if they are).

Clear expectations and consequences are what set people up for success.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

Article: Legitimate Leadership, Stoicism And The Blessing Of Books
By Jim Furstenburg, Legitimate Leadership.

Growing up in a small mining town did not give one much upside on life but I am ever grateful for two things. I started playing cricket at the age of eight, which eventually provided me with a sports bursary to pay for my university education; and, bless my mother, she introduced me to reading at about the same age.

To this day I am still not without a read.

Among my past year’s books for an international audience are:

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Video: What It Takes To Build Cultures Where Givers Actually Get To Succeed

By Adam Grant of Wharton University, USA; author of Give and Take

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Adam Grant has previously spoken about givers putting up boundaries or limiting their generosity as a way to protect themselves against over-giving. At Legitimate Leadership we prefer to think about two forms of giving: generosity and courage. Appropriate giving is therefore about acting with generosity or courage, whichever is more appropriate at the time. What I find really interesting in Adam Grant’s piece is his statement that “the negative impact of a taker on a culture is double to triple the positive impact of a giver”. I absolutely agree with this finding. The implication is that the way to build a culture of givers is to confront and deal with takers. In Legitimate Leadership we talk about takers as victims, and organisations with too many takers as being beset by a victim disease. So the route to increase the number of givers in an organisation is to confront and address victim behaviour whenever and in whomever it evidences itself.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: I spend a lot of time in workplaces, and I find paranoia everywhere. Paranoia is caused by people that I call “takers.” Takers are self-serving in their interactions. It’s all about what you can do for me. The opposite is a giver. It’s somebody who approaches most interactions by asking, “What can I do for you?”

Of course, not all takers are narcissists. Some are just givers who got burned one too many times. Then there’s another kind of taker that we won’t be addressing today, and that’s called a psychopath.

I was curious, though, about how common these extremes are, and so I surveyed over 30,000 people across industries and around the world’s cultures.

I found that most people are right in the middle between giving and taking. They choose this third style called “matching.”

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

January 2023

Posted on by ll

Featured

Question Of The Month

How can standards enable human excellence?

Stop Complaining And Start Leading – An Overbearing Sense Of Entitlement Isn’t Good For Your Employees Either

One of the more frequent complaints I encounter in the work I do is managers grumbling about entitled team members. And they’re not wrong. Entitlement is certainly alive and well in organisations the world over. It’s also not a phenomenon limited to Millennials and Gen Zers. I’ve come across plenty of senior managers who display many of the hallmarks of entitlement. In fact, my challenge to managers complaining about their entitled teams (at least when I’m familiar enough to be flippant), is to ask them why they feel they themselves are entitled to a team of fully formed, mature, generous employees in the first place. Maybe they’re the entitled ones, I quip.

Gen Z And The Value of Experience

A very powerful summary of why some people who apparently do the same jobs are worth more than their peers. Most people have a day job that is defined by job descriptions, policies, instructions and sometimes even standard operating procedures (SOPs), and that is the basic standard which the job needs to be done to and therefore has a worth in the marketplace. Legitimate Leadership believes in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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 a Legitimate Leadership intervention fundamentally seek to achieve?

Answer: A Legitimate Leadership intervention seeks to achieve a specific transformation – namely, a change in motive or intent from being here to take to being here to give at the level of the individual, the team and the organisation.

Leaders (those in authority) in organisations who are here to give understand that they are here to serve their people, not the other way round. What serving their people means boils down to two drops of essence: to care for and to grow their people.

By “care” is meant to have their people’s best interests at heart and to have a sincere and genuine interest in them as individuals, as human beings. By “growth” is meant to enable them to realise their full potential, to be the very best that they can be.

Employees who are here to give come to work concerned with what they can give or contribute rather than with what they can get while giving as little as possible.

Employees who are here to give are committed unconditionally to going above and beyond in pursuit of the organisation’s objectives. They are actively engaged at work and come to work to do the best job they can do.

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

Article: Stop Complaining And Start Leading – An Overbearing Sense Of Entitlement Isn’t Good For Your Employees Either

By Ian Munro, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

One of the more frequent complaints I encounter in the work I do is managers grumbling about entitled team members. And they’re not wrong. Entitlement is certainly alive and well in organisations the world over. It’s also not a phenomenon limited to Millennials and Gen Zers. I’ve come across plenty of senior managers who display many of the hallmarks of entitlement. In fact, my challenge to managers complaining about their entitled teams (at least when I’m familiar enough to be flippant), is to ask them why they feel they themselves are entitled to a team of fully formed, mature, generous employees in the first place. Maybe they’re the entitled ones, I quip.

In fact, I don’t believe that the challenge of dealing with entitled team members and direct reports is a new challenge at all. People focusing on what they are getting (or not getting, as is the case with entitlement) rather than what they are giving is at its core a function of personal and professional maturity.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Video: Gen Z And The Value of Experience

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

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY TONY FLANNIGAN, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: A very powerful summary of why some people who apparently do the same jobs are worth more than their peers. Most people have a day job that is defined by job descriptions, policies, instructions and sometimes even standard operating procedures (SOPs), and that is the basic standard which the job needs to be done to and therefore has a worth in the marketplace. Legitimate Leadership believes in a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. However, policies, procedures and instructions tend to only cover what happens when everything goes well and the process is on the tram lines. It is impossible to codify every upset or mishap that might happen in each process and that is where experience kicks in. The ability to add value to a business by knowing what to do when the process comes off the tracks can be invaluable in safety/quality/output terms. The people who can handle those situations are clearly worth more – and even more so if they have the attitude and ability to transfer that experience to more junior, inexperienced people. In Legitimate Leadership terms this is what we mean by Maturity – that is, the courage and generosity to stick around when things are less than perfect, learn and then pass on that experience to build capability in others.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: The definition of what full-time employment is, is now up for debate. But Gen Z does seem less capable of dealing with stress than previous generations.

They are really good at presenting a confidence that they don’t have. They sound they sound like they have all the answers when they don’t.

It raises the question: is that bad?

The grass is always greener. You have people who are going from relationship to relationship to relationship; worse, from job to job to job.

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

December 2022

Posted on by ll

 

Featured

Question Of The Month

How can standards enable human excellence?

The Contribution Cycle And The Value-Added Statement

At a recent Legitimate Leadership development day, we discussed performance management systems and their role in contribution.

Legitimate Leadership helps leaders at every level to transform their organisations through applying the Legitimate Leadership Model, characterized by building the following: Legitimacy, Trust, Contribution and Accountability.

Relentless Raising Of The Bar And Not Accepting Any Element Of Mediocrity – Pep Guardiola’s Feedback To Raheem Sterling

This video reflects a great example of relentless raising the bar and not accepting any element of mediocrity. Watch the video (link below) a few times – first to get the context and flow, then to observe the body language and face of the two participants.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

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

Question Of The Month 

By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: How can standards enable human excellence?

Answer: There are two ways that standards can be used to enable human excellence. First, standards describe excellence or what “good” looks like. When leaders describe excellence in clear and unequivocal terms they are telling their people what they expect from them. It is almost as if people now know – “So this is what you want, okay I will give it to you.” People want to do what is expected of them when they have a good relationship with their manager. They don’t want to let their manager down because their manager is not letting them down. The manager is in the relationship to give to his/her people and the natural human response to being given to you is to want to give back. Second, when people expect excellence, then excellence is what they get. When leaders expect the very best from their people, more often than not the best is what they get. When the standard is set high, people live up to it. Conversely, when the standard is set low, people live down to the lower standard. In a software development company, the quality of software being produced improved by a quantum amount simply by managers asking the following question when a piece of software was delivered to them: “Is this excellent? Is this the best that you can be?” 

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

Article: The Contribution Cycle And The Value-Added Statement

By Jimmy Furstenburg, Legitimate Leadership.

At a recent Legitimate Leadership development day, we discussed performance management systems and their role in contribution.

Legitimate Leadership helps leaders at every level to transform their organisations through applying the Legitimate Leadership Model, characterized by building the following: Legitimacy, Trust, Contribution and Accountability.

The common purpose that binds people in a collective is the contribution which that collective makes to its outside environment. In companies, contribution is about customers in the first place and the broader community in the second. The extent to which individual contributions are aligned to company contribution will determine the degree or ultimate strength and success of the organization. We can assume then that any job, team or function in the organization should be aligned to Contribution. If not, what is the value being added?

Performance management systems do not exist in isolation of the management accounts of the company, and we would expect most key performance indicators at collective and individual level to be based on them.

However, the only financial statement that reflects contribution is the value-added statement or VAS.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Video: Relentless Raising Of The Bar And Not Accepting Any Element Of Mediocrity – Pep Guardiola’s Feedback To Raheem Sterling

COMMENT ON THIS VIDEO BY TONY FLANNIGAN, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: This video reflects a great example of relentless raising the bar and not accepting any element of mediocrity. Watch the video (link below) a few times – first to get the context and flow, then to observe the body language and face of the two participants. The context is that Pep Guardiola (Spanish) is the manager of Manchester City (a very good English football team). Rahim Stirling joined Manchester City three years ago as a good but not brilliant player. Pep has coached Rahim to go from good to great – so that now Rahim plays for the England national team regularly. This video was taken after the FA Cup Final three years ago (the last match in England’s Football Association Challenge Cup, the most prestigious domestic football trophy in England). Manchester City won the match easily and Rahim scored three goals (a hat trick). The video shows the immediate aftermath with the ticker tape still coming down. Pep goes to Rahim and after acknowledging that while he did score a hat trick, tells him that his contribution was not to the required standard he had set for him. That is that in the first half of the game Rahim (a striker) had tracked back when Manchester City lost the ball and helped the defence out; but in the second half, after scoring and going ahead, he became complacent and stopped tracking back. Pep reminds him that he wants him to be a world-standard player – that he can actually do it (as he did it in the first half) and that he needs to be at that standard for 90 minutes plus extra time if necessary, to be a world-standard player. Rahim is initially defensive, saying “but I scored a hat trick”. But you can see him then listening intently to Pep, and while he doesn’t like it, he knows Pep is doing it for his own good. Pep has obviously earned the right to be that strict by getting him from good to great in the previous three years. Manchester City has dominated English football in the past few seasons with Pep as coach.

TO VIEW THE VIDEO CLICK HERE

November 2022

Posted on by ll

Featured

Question Of The Month

What should be done for a successful internship programme?

Leading Remotely? Make Growth A Priority!

Two years ago, quite abruptly, the working world many of us were used to changed. Many people who had previously spent their entire careers office-bound, suddenly found themselves working from home.

Why The Fuss Over Quiet Quitting?

Two years ago, quite abruptly, the working world many of us were used to changed. Many people who had previously spent their entire careers office-bound, suddenly found themselves working from home.

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

Question Of The Month 

By Ian Munro, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: What should be done for a successful internship programme?

Answer: The most important shift to be achieved through internship is to move the intern away from an attitude of getting (for instance, “I’m here to get experience”) to one of giving (“I’m here to actually give something to this job”).
If someone comes out of an internship able to clearly articulate what contribution she can make, and able to focus on that contribution, she will have an infinitely higher chance of either getting a job in your organisation or other organisations.
Nonetheless, an intern who has an entitlement attitude should not be spurned because this is part of the maturity journey. Before one enters the world of work, the world of childhood and school have typically been about you, about the results that you “get”. At school, how often do you get to make a contribution? People mature significantly through the world of work.

Ten points to bear in mind before and during an internship programme:

Read the full answer by clicking here . 

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 

Article: Leading Remotely? Make Growth A Priority!

By Ian Munro, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Two years ago, quite abruptly, the working world many of us were used to changed. Many people who had previously spent their entire careers office-bound, suddenly found themselves working from home.

With this rapid shift to remote working it is understandable that the initial priority was about the short term. Is everyone safe? How are people’s friends and families?

As the pandemic went on, the focus shifted to enabling people to be productive at home. For most this meant focusing on technology, both hardware and software, which would enable employees to not only do their work, but also to be more collaborative and more engaged remotely.

But as lockdown conditions stubbornly continued on, dealing with longer term care issues such as physical and mental health became the priority.

More recently the focus has shifted once again – this time to rules and protocols for staying at home or returning to work (or a bit of both).

One thing that all of the above shifts in focus have in common is that they have been driven by external and mostly short-term factors. They have also directed significant focus to the short-term, which has in turn distracted us from giving sufficient attention to the longer term – particularly when it comes to people’s growth, empowerment and development.

The result: employees, especially top performers – who have often experienced genuine care and found a way to be highly productive from their bedrooms, kitchens and living rooms – are now leaving their jobs despite their success and positive experiences in search of new opportunities to grow.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

Article: Why The Fuss Over Quiet Quitting?

By Bartleby, in The Economist.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY STUART FOULDS, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The term ‘quiet quitting’ has recently become a buzzword, but the worldwide problem that almost 80% of employees are not fully engaged is definitely not new. At Legitimate Leadership we have been advising leaders and organisations about this challenge for many years, and we believe it is at heart a leadership issue.

Simply put, employees want to be fairly remunerated – but money alone is not enough to motivate most people to go above and beyond at work. In reality, most employees will go the extra mile only if motivated by one or more of three P’s:

  • A personal PASSION for what they do.
  • A bigger PURPOSE that makes their work inspiring and worthwhile.
  • A PERSON who displays the kind of leadership for which it’s worth going the extra mile.

All three of these motivators speak to excellence in leadership. As leaders we should be connecting our people’s work with their passions, showing them the worthwhile purpose behind our shared endeavours, and (above all) being the kind of leaders who unlock people’s energy and loyalty. We’re failing our people if we don’t do these things.

The most concerning thing about ‘quiet quitters’ may in fact be the poor leadership they’ve been receiving from their corporate bosses.

THE ARTICLE: It’s not the crime but the cover-up. And it’s not the video but the reverberations. In the past few weeks the term ‘quiet quitting’ has entered conversations about the workplace. A 17-second clip on TikTok, a social-media platform, in which an American called Zaid Khan embraces the notion of not going above and beyond at work, has caused an awful lot of noise.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

October 2022

Posted on by ll

Featured

Question Of The Month

Interns look to learn from the companies they join. But what can the companies learn from the interns?

The Problem Of Silos, And How To Break Them Down

This Legitimate Leadership breakfast/webinar was held on 29 September 2022; 37 people attended, both in person and remotely.

Many companies face the problem of silos, which disrupt collaborative working and result in lost opportunities.

Accidental Or Deliberate Growth?

Lots of leaders claim that the growth and development of their teams is extremely important but it is only exceptional leaders who truly make this their highest priority.

Middle Managers – From Motivating Staff To Maintaining Company Culture, Demands On Them Intensify As They Juggle The Expectations Of Employees And Senior Leaders

In her middle manager role, Catherine says she has experienced “more pressure” since the start of the pandemic than ever before. Based in Zurich and working for a financial services company, she is trying to navigate a stiffening in senior leadership’s tone, pushback against demands for higher wages and hybrid work plans.

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

Question Of The Month 

By Ian Munro, Director, Legitimate Leadership.

Question: Interns look to learn from the companies they join. But what can the companies learn from the interns??

Answer: Whether your internship project is a success or a failure, you can be sure of one thing: it will clarify whether your organisation (or your part of it) is a “giving” or a “taking” one. This is because in almost all internship projects, there will be more “give” by the employer than “take”. And that is essentially because the company is able to give a lot more – it has all the experience and knowledge.

Conversely, the intern is not easily able to give because she does not have that experience and knowledge yet.

The concepts of giving and taking are essential in understanding an internship. Both the manager and the intern need to understand them, and keep conscious of them during the internship. Read the full answer by clicking here .

To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com

Event: The Problem Of Silos, And How To Break Them Down 

This Legitimate Leadership breakfast / webinar was held on 29 September 2022; 37 people attended, both in person and remotely.

Many companies face the problem of silos, which disrupt collaborative working and result in lost opportunities.

Ian Munro of Legitimate Leadership said when people in organisations see silos developing they typically diagnose them as technology or system issues, or issues with people. But often they are rather issues of culture or leadership.

The breakfast / webinar thereafter addressed (A) WHY SILOS ARE A PROBLEM and (B) WHAT WE SHOULD DO ABOUT SILOS.

READ THE FULL REPORT BY CLICKING HERE

Article: Accidental Or Deliberate Growth?

By Tony Flannigan, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.

Lots of leaders claim that the growth and development of their teams is extremely important but it is only exceptional leaders who truly make this their highest priority.

Clever leaders know that using the job at hand to grow the person is much better than sending them off for classroom training that may or may not be used for months – by which time the person will have forgotten 80% of what they were taught.

Using the job at hand is incredibly useful to grow both technical and functional skills but also to develop people’s maturity of behaviour – such as being more collaborative, not speaking over others, etc.

The big questions therefore become:

  1. Are you even aware that using the job to grow your people is an ‘always on’ opportunity?
  2. Even if you know this:
  • Is growth by accident with no help from you (they are growing themselves as necessity is the mother of invention)?
  • Is growth just spontaneous or opportunistic (in response to an unplanned event or forced upon you)?
  1. Is growth deliberate? That is, you know exactly what growth (be it skills or maturity) you can extract for each person from the job at hand, either planned or unplanned?

For growth to be deliberate you must spend significant time with each member of your team in three ways.

EAD THE FULL REPORT BY CLICKING HERE

Article: Middle Managers — From Motivating Staff To Maintaining Company Culture, Demands On Them Intensify As They Juggle The Expectations Of Employees And Senior Leaders

By Emma Jacobs, Financial Times.

COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: This is not about demands for inflation-based increases, hybrid working, or pressure for results – the current presenting issues. It is about how middle managers or managers of first line managers excel irrespective of the current set of environmental conditions. From a Legitimate Leadership perspective, middle managers excel when (1) they coach the first line managers who report to them to care and grow their people, (2) they ask for the means and ability they need to perform as opposed to spending their time providing reports on performance up the line, and (3) they collaborate rather than compete with their peers. They ask for and give help and support to others in the team.

THE ARTICLE: In her middle manager role, Catherine says she has experienced “more pressure” since the start of the pandemic than ever before. Based in Zurich and working for a financial services company, she is trying to navigate a stiffening in senior leadership’s tone, pushback against demands for higher wages and hybrid work plans.

“In the past two years, the company gave a lot of support. The sense is, that’s done,” she says. “We’re entering a different chapter, a different economic context and a push to get people back into the office.” She has received little training on how to manage, though she is grateful for some coaching on building boundaries between work and family life.

“It’s very lonely — my boss is at a different level. I found myself having no place to turn to speak openly [in order to get] a sanity check.”

At the same time, Catherine is putting in long hours trying to motivate her team. She says the new generation coming into work have different expectations of what they want to do. Some of her team members expect nine-to-five jobs.

“Your job is to motivate, but they don’t have the same drive as I did. I have to step in and do a lot of this work. My hours are endless between handholding and managing their work.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

September 2022

Posted on by ll
FEATURED
Question Of The Month
What does Legitimate Leadership believe about controls in an organisation?
The Cost Of Living Versus The Cost Of Leadership
2022 has seen inflation go from 1% to 10% in many countries, and it is still rising. So the cost of living has dominated headlines as people struggle to make ends meet financially. Money (pounds, dollars, euros, or whatever) is the currency people are focused on.
In these difficult times, obviously leadership is ever more important. But what is the currency of leadership?
Recognizing And Rewarding Behavior, Not Results
There are two possibilities when it comes to rewarding people in organisations: you reward them for the RESULTS (what they Get) or for their CONTRIBUTION (what they Give). People should be rewarded for what they give because this is what they have control over. Rewarding people for results ignores what we all know, which is that the results are always in part attributable to extraneous factors – good or bad luck.
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 Legitimate Leadership believe about controls in an organisation?
Answer: In times of adversity, typically the number of rules and controls, particularly surrounding spending, increases in an attempt to meet tighter budgets – rather than setting cost reduction targets and giving local management the freedom to determine how to achieve them.
There is a misconception that Legitimate Leadership’s position is that all controls are bad and should be done away with. This is simply not true.
Legitimate Leadership in fact believes the following.
  • Freedom without rules and constraints is anarchy.
  • Rules and constraints without freedom is totalitarianism.
  • Empowerment is freedom within constraints.
Read the full answer by clicking here . 
To submit your question,  email info@legitimateleadership.com 
Article:  The Cost Of Living Versus The Cost Of Leadership
By Tony Flannigan, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
2022 has seen inflation go from 1% to 10% in many countries, and it is still rising. So the cost of living has dominated headlines as people struggle to make ends meet financially. Money (pounds, dollars, euros, or whatever) is the currency people are focused on.
In these difficult times, obviously leadership is ever more important. But what is the currency of leadership?
At Legitimate Leadership, we ask people: ‘Who is the boss you would go the extra mile for?’ In response, a room of 15 or so people will always generate a massive list of qualities of a great boss – such as ‘listens to me’, ‘empathetic with me’, ‘consults with me’, ‘stretches me’, ‘gives me killer feedback’, ‘develops me’, ‘coaches me’, ‘knows me’, etc., etc.
A list of 100 or so things a perfect boss must do can easily be generated in this way. This is obviously daunting to both new and existing leaders – as they realise what their teams expect them to be like!
And while it is indeed a daunting list, there are a couple of things that help:
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
Video: Recognizing And Rewarding Behavior, Not Results
By Simon Sinek, American author on leadership and motivational speaker.
COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP, ON THIS ARTICLE: There are two possibilities when it comes to rewarding people in organisations: you reward them for the RESULTS (what they Get) or for their CONTRIBUTION (what they Give). People should be rewarded for what they give because this is what they have control over. Rewarding people for results ignores what we all know, which is that the results are always in part attributable to extraneous factors – good or bad luck. Rewarding for the results produced by a collective results in passengers being rewarded when the results are good, and contributors being punished when the results are bad. Rewarding for results moreover produces a short-term focus, selfish and even malevolent behavior. Simon Sinek’s boss was a brave person who rewarded him even though the results were bad, for displaying behaviors aligned to the company’s values. Only when employees who are values-driven are rewarded for doing so, AND those who contravene the values but produce results are punished, will values be instilled – and will values become more than nice words on a wall or the company website.

OUR SUMMARY OF THIS VIDEO: Recognition and reward are important. It doesn’t always have to be financial – it can be public gratitude (you know, praise in public, criticize in private). For instance, ‘I just want to point out … thanks to whoever for doing something,’ in in a large group. That makes people feel good especially when we’re recognizing and rewarding integrity and upholding values.

I’m a huge fan of recognizing and rewarding initiative.

When I was young in my career I worked at a big ad agency. When we had a new business pitch it was the senior folks who did it; the junior kids were just assigned to do support work.

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

August 2022

Posted on by ll
FEATURED
Question of the Month
Is it ever appropriate to remove decision-making authority or to take back control?
innovating Leadership
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Adam Grant – Beware The 4Rs Of Toxic Work Culture
Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina famously begins, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
But every toxic company culture isn’t toxic in its own way. Every type of terrible company culture can be traced to just a handful of fundamental errors, apparently.
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 ever appropriate to remove decision-making authority or to take back control?
Answer: In the Legitimate Leadership framework, empowerment requires a leader to go beyond asking people for their opinions, listening to them, and only then deciding. Empowerment means letting people decide and living with their decisions even if they are contrary to the decisions that the leader would have made.
The degree to which a person is empowered therefore simply equates to the number and types of decisions that the person is now making, independently of their boss, which they weren’t making previously. Conversely, the degree to which a person is being disempowered can be gauged from the number and type of decisions that the person was taking but which have subsequently been taken away from them.
On the assumption that empowerment is “good” and disempowerment is “bad”, it is useful to consider whether it is ever appropriate to remove decision-making authority because to do so is seemingly disempowering.
At Legitimate Leadership, we believe that taking away or reducing people’s decision-making authority is generally not a good move. However there are a few instances where it should be done. We believe it is not good for the following reasons:  Read the full answer by clicking here.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Article: Innovating Leadership
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
Put another way, when things don’t change, they atrophy or ultimately cease to exist.
Yet management has largely remained unchanged for the past 100 years.
Certainly, what managers believe they are here to do and for what purpose has remained largely unaltered for a century. Ask them (as we at Legitimate Leadership have done across the world for the past 25 years), “What are you here to do and for what purpose?” and the consistent response is, “I am here to get results out of people.”
Managers believe this for two reasons.
Firstly, people in a management role are generally not doing the work themselves – most of what is done is done by others. Secondly, most managers are measured and rewarded based on the results that they get out of people.
The problem with the results-focused conception is that it puts managers into a position where they are experienced by the people they lead as being there to ‘take’ from them. This in turn produces resistance and induces conflict into the relationship. Employees feel they are being coerced or forced when ‘the stick’ is used to get results out of them, and they resist. When ‘the carrot’ is used they feel manipulated, and their instinctive response is to manipulate back.
Legitimate Leadership turns this entire notion on its head.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
Article: Adam Grant – Beware The 4Rs Of Toxic Work Culture
By Jessica Stillman, Contributor, Inc.Com magazine.
COMMENT BY WENDY LAMBOURNE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP, ON THIS ARTICLE: I find Adam Grant’s mental map extremely helpful. The Relationship-Results continuum speaks to the criterion of Care. In Legitimate Leadership terms, though Care is about tough love, it is acting in the employees’ best interests (which are to be the best human beings that they can be). The Rules-Risk continuum relates to the criterion of Growth or Empowerment.
What Legitimate Leadership believes about controls in an organisation is as follows:
1. Both the retention of control to perpetuity and the instantaneous removal of all control are disenabling.
2. There is a place for control in a legitimate relationship of power as long as it is subordinate to the intention to empower.
3. Freedom without rules or constraints is anarchy. Rules and constraints without freedom is totalitarianism. Empowerment is freedom within constraints.
4. The level of control which is exercised in any legitimate relationship of power must be commensurate with the task and personal maturity of the person being empowered.
SUMMARY OF THIS ARTICLE: Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina famously begins, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
But every toxic company culture isn’t toxic in its own way. Every type of terrible company culture can be traced to just a handful of fundamental errors, apparently.
A “toxic” culture isn’t just one you subjectively don’t like.
On his WorkLife podcast recently, Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant said a toxic company culture is always about a lack of balance. Companies become toxic when they go way too far toward one side on a couple of scales of competing values: relationships versus results and rules versus risk.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

July 2022

Posted on by ll
FEATURED
Question of the Month
What determines the size of the anti-management population in any organization?
Legitimate Leadership And A Visually-Impaired Participant
In doing the seventh group of a Leadership Excellence Programme for a leading financial services company in South Africa, Legitimate Leadership consultant, Leonie van Tonder, faced a challenge when she was informed that there would be a visually-impaired person in the group.
Managers Aren’t Heroes But They Deserve More Understanding
Management is not a heroic calling. There is no Marvel character called “Captain Slide Deck”. Books and television shows set in offices are more likely to be comedic than admiring. When dramas depict the workplace, managers are almost always covering up some kind of chemical spill. Horrible bosses loom large in reality as well as in the popular imagination: if people leave their jobs, they often do so to escape bad managers. And any praise for decent bosses is tempered by the fact that they are usually paid more than the people they manage: they should be good.
For more information regarding the above, please
E-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com
Question of the Month 
By Wendy Lambourne, Director, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: What determines the size of the anti-management population in any organisation?
Answer: In any community of employees there will always be two populations: one which is anti-management and another which is pro-management. The two populations will always exist but the size of the positive group, and hence the degree to which there is overall trust in management, will be directly determined by the perceived intent of the leader(s) of the community.
The consistent finding of Legitimate Leadership research is that trust varies. In a retail bank, for example, trust levels in one branch were found to be dramatically different from a branch around the corner. Similarly, in a hospital, trust was seen to differ from ward to ward purely as a function of the ward sister’s relationship with nursing staff.
Intent is about whose interests in the relationship are believed to be being served. 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 there to give to or serve their people, will their staff be willing to give to them – because they trust that management has their best interests at heart.
What those in authority have to give to their people, what earns them trust, is not money. Across the world, from an illiterate miner shovelling rock several kilometres underground to the CEO of one of the biggest cell phone companies in Thailand, our experience shows that what management needs to give distils down to only two drops of essence.
Firstly, managers have to have a genuine concern for those in their charge. They have to care for their people as human beings – not as human resources which help their bottom line to grow. Secondly, they have to enable their people to realise the very best in themselves.
The price to be paid before employees will be truly willing to deliver on command is therefore not money; it is care and growth. This is what makes the power which is exercised by those in authority legitimate. When the price of power is not paid, people become resistant, no matter how much they are paid.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Vignette Case Study: Legitimate Leadership And A Visually-Impaired Participant
By Leonie van Tonder, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
In doing the seventh group of a Leadership Excellence Programme for a leading financial services company in South Africa, Legitimate Leadership consultant, Leonie van Tonder, faced a challenge when she was informed that there would be a visually-impaired person in the group.
Leonie says that she had never handled this type of challenge before and “anxiety was abundant!”
It was planned that the initial two-day Introduction to Legitimate Leadership would be in person and the subsequent application modules and reviews would be online, because the participants were spread across the country.
The interaction during sessions both in person and online is typically very visual, with writing on whiteboards and slides. So, the first question for Leonie was how to get past this.
READ THE FULL CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE
Article: Managers Aren’t Heroes But They Deserve More Understanding
By Bartleby, The Economist magazine.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY STUART FOULDS, ASSOCIATE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: The Legitimate Leadership model originally came into existence, and has become ever more relevant over many decades, precisely because of the challenging, complex and vital nature of the leader’s role. This Economist article highlights several important issues:
  • The impact of good versus bad bosses on productivity is indeed striking. Legitimate Leadership maintains that the way leaders lead is the single most important determinant of whether employees grudgingly do the minimum they can get away with, or whether they show up enthusiastically and willing to make their best possible contribution towards achieving the organisation’s goals.
  • It is also true, though, that excellence in leadership is genuinely difficult to achieve and sustain. This ‘structurally difficult’ job requires a complex mix of building deeply trust-based relationships and truly enabling employees’ performances over time. Moreover, the conflicting demands and stresses leaders face are becoming increasingly challenging, in step with the growing pace and complexity of our workplaces – not to mention the drive for ‘agile’ ways of working.
Yet in many of the organisations Legitimate Leadership works with, leaders say they find few opportunities to acquire genuinely useful and practical concepts and tools to guide them in doing their people leadership work well. We at Legitimate Leadership believe passionately that equipping leaders at all levels in this way is the best investment any organisation can make in achieving a sustainable, trust-based culture of excellence.
THE ARTICLE: Management is not a heroic calling. There is no Marvel character called “Captain Slide Deck”. Books and television shows set in offices are more likely to be comedic than admiring. When dramas depict the workplace, managers are almost always covering up some kind of chemical spill. Horrible bosses loom large in reality as well as in the popular imagination: if people leave their jobs, they often do so to escape bad managers. And any praise for decent bosses is tempered by the fact that they are usually paid more than the people they manage: they should be good.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

June 2022

Posted on by ll
FEATURED
Question of the Month
How can leaders hold their people appropriately accountable without fear of being held up for bullying or harassment?
Being Methodical About Empowerment
Many organisations talk about the creation of an appropriate safety culture, but in practice, how is this addressed? Safety culture is fundamentally a subset of the organisational culture or ‘how we do things round here’. At Legitimate Leadership we believe that this is determined by how leaders within the organisation are motivated and behave.
Legitimate Leadership’s Roots In Workplace Safety
Wendy Lambourne, director of Legitimate Leadership, was recently interviewed by Christian Hunt for the HumanRisk podcast. Hunt founded UK-based HumanRisk (www.human-risk.com) to ‘bring behavioural science to ethics and compliance’ in helping organisations to understand and minimize human risk.
Trusting Team Members Results In Positive Asymmetry
Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.
For more information regarding the above, please
E-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com
Question of the Month 
By Joolz Lewis, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: How can leaders hold their people appropriately accountable without fear of being held up for bullying or harassment?
Answer: This question frequently crops up with Legitimate Leadership consultants. As organisations rightfully focus on how to create safe environments for their people to work without fear of discrimination, it is also important to ensure that leaders can censure and discipline their people when needed.
The issue at stake for individual leaders is courage.
Leaders are not leaders unless and until they have a relationship of trust with their people. That trust is built on a personal relationship which requires the leader to put the employees’ interests first, to care for them as human beings – not just as human resources – and to grow them not just to be better, but excellent. This cannot be done without setting standards – behavioural and performance.
When employees do a good job, it is good manners to say thank you and give praise. When employees go above and beyond to make an exceptional contribution it is only right that they should be rewarded for doing so.
So what happens when standards are not met? Ignoring this for fear of retribution is effectively saying ‘it doesn’t matter’, and over time the inevitable decline leads to mediocrity or worse. This is reason enough to censure or discipline when needed.
But it’s not the core reason.  Read the full answer by clicking here clicking here .
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Vignette Case Study: Being Methodical About Empowerment
By Rachael Cowin, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
In the Legitimate Leadership Framework there are five steps to guide managers in effectively handing over control. In a recent discussion with managers, they pointed out two instances in which following the five steps methodically prevented them from rushing through and endangering the success of the process.
The five steps in the Legitimate Leadership Framework are: 1, decide on the next incremental handover; 2, teach people the why and how; 3, test for ability (know-how and know-why); 4, hand over the means, including decision-making authority; and 5, hold the person accountable.
In the discussion with managers about situations in which empowerment had failed, the conclusion was that this had commonly been because they had rushed through teaching people and testing for ability (steps 2 and 3 above). The conclusion was they had rushed because they had acted expediently and wanted to assume that they could move on in one step.
Two leaders in the group shared specific examples in which using the Legitimate Leadership five-step process made them more methodical and incremental.
READ THE FULL CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE
Podcast: Legitimate Leadership’s Roots In Workplace Safety
Wendy Lambourne, director of Legitimate Leadership, was recently interviewed by Christian Hunt for the HumanRisk podcast. Hunt founded UK-based HumanRisk (www.human-risk.com) to ‘bring behavioural science to ethics and compliance’ in helping organisations to understand and minimize human risk.
In the podcast Wendy set out the origins and basic tenets of Legitimate Leadership. Below is our summary of what she said.
Legitimate Leadership was virtually born in the world’s largest explosive factory, near Johannesburg, South Africa.
In the early 1990s, things were not going well in this factory. It had suffered two explosions, resulting in 14 fatalities. The explosives company had shortly before this been taken over by UK chemicals company ICI. ICI told the management of the explosives factory, ‘We don’t care that you have 87% of the explosives market in South Africa, we don’t kill people. So fix the problem or we will close you down.’
Management realised that if you have a safety problem, you have a people problem. If you have a people problem, you have a leadership problem. In other words, management itself was the problem.
So management looked for something that would be a golden thread to which they could revert for guidance on leadership. They found the framework upon which Legitimate Leadership is based.
Three years later the factory was acknowledged to be the safest explosives factory in the world.
It was, three years later, approximately the same factory as before (except that it had stopped using nitro-glycerine), and it was staffed by approximately the same people. The factor which had changed was the way leadership was done.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS PODCAST BY CLICKING HERE
TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST CLICK HERE
Article: Trusting Team Members Results In Positive Asymmetry
From the Brain Food blog archive.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY ANGELA DONNELLY, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP CANADA: Fascination with game theory, specifically as it relates to co-operative versus self-interested behaviour and outcomes led me to this article. I enjoyed the parallels to the Legitimate Leadership Framework and specifically the important role trust plays when leaders empower their people. Legitimate Leadership argues that TRUST must precede TRUSTWORTHINESS. Leaders take risks when empowering their people because they are required to suspend their need to control the outcomes. The results are no longer predictable. Trusting team members however results in something called positive asymmetry – a lot of upside and little downside. A low-trust approach reduces positive asymmetry. In an effort to avoid being taken advantage of by the untrustworthy few, managers put unnecessary controls in place, and in doing so forgo the asymmetric upside. Low trust eliminates the upside and results in a mindset of distrust and worry. As the article says, a low trust approach might put a floor on how often you get taken advantage of, but it puts a ceiling on what’s possible!
THE ARTICLE: Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.
Asymmetry is different. Even people who understand asymmetry consistently underestimate its power.
Positive asymmetry happens when you have a lot of upside and little downside. Negative asymmetry is when you have little upside and high downside. Finding hidden or overlooked asymmetry is the key to an unstoppable advantage. And there is a lot of it hiding in plain sight.
Consider trust. A lot of people are slow to trust. Their default level of trust is about 40% and you earn more.
Very few people understand that a low trust approach reduces positive asymmetry.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE

May 2022

Posted on by ll
FEATURED
Question of the Month
How can leaders hold their people appropriately accountable without fear of being held up for bullying or harassment?
Being Methodical About Empowerment
Many organisations talk about the creation of an appropriate safety culture, but in practice, how is this addressed? Safety culture is fundamentally a subset of the organisational culture or ‘how we do things round here’. At Legitimate Leadership we believe that this is determined by how leaders within the organisation are motivated and behave.
Legitimate Leadership’s Roots In Workplace Safety
Wendy Lambourne, director of Legitimate Leadership, was recently interviewed by Christian Hunt for the HumanRisk podcast. Hunt founded UK-based HumanRisk (www.human-risk.com) to ‘bring behavioural science to ethics and compliance’ in helping organisations to understand and minimize human risk.
Trusting Team Members Results In Positive Asymmetry
Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.

 

For more information regarding the above, please
E-mail  events@legitimateleadership.com
Question of the Month 
By Joolz Lewis, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
Question: How can leaders hold their people appropriately accountable without fear of being held up for bullying or harassment?
Answer: This question frequently crops up with Legitimate Leadership consultants. As organisations rightfully focus on how to create safe environments for their people to work without fear of discrimination, it is also important to ensure that leaders can censure and discipline their people when needed.
The issue at stake for individual leaders is courage.
Leaders are not leaders unless and until they have a relationship of trust with their people. That trust is built on a personal relationship which requires the leader to put the employees’ interests first, to care for them as human beings – not just as human resources – and to grow them not just to be better, but excellent. This cannot be done without setting standards – behavioural and performance.
When employees do a good job, it is good manners to say thank you and give praise. When employees go above and beyond to make an exceptional contribution it is only right that they should be rewarded for doing so.
So what happens when standards are not met? Ignoring this for fear of retribution is effectively saying ‘it doesn’t matter’, and over time the inevitable decline leads to mediocrity or worse. This is reason enough to censure or discipline when needed.
But it’s not the core reason.  Read the full answer by clicking here clicking here .
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Vignette Case Study: Being Methodical About Empowerment
By Rachael Cowin, Associate, Legitimate Leadership.
In the Legitimate Leadership Framework there are five steps to guide managers in effectively handing over control. In a recent discussion with managers, they pointed out two instances in which following the five steps methodically prevented them from rushing through and endangering the success of the process.
The five steps in the Legitimate Leadership Framework are: 1, decide on the next incremental handover; 2, teach people the why and how; 3, test for ability (know-how and know-why); 4, hand over the means, including decision-making authority; and 5, hold the person accountable.
In the discussion with managers about situations in which empowerment had failed, the conclusion was that this had commonly been because they had rushed through teaching people and testing for ability (steps 2 and 3 above). The conclusion was they had rushed because they had acted expediently and wanted to assume that they could move on in one step.
Two leaders in the group shared specific examples in which using the Legitimate Leadership five-step process made them more methodical and incremental.
READ THE FULL CASE STUDY BY CLICKING HERE
Podcast: Legitimate Leadership’s Roots In Workplace Safety
Wendy Lambourne, director of Legitimate Leadership, was recently interviewed by Christian Hunt for the HumanRisk podcast. Hunt founded UK-based HumanRisk (www.human-risk.com) to ‘bring behavioural science to ethics and compliance’ in helping organisations to understand and minimize human risk.
In the podcast Wendy set out the origins and basic tenets of Legitimate Leadership. Below is our summary of what she said.
Legitimate Leadership was virtually born in the world’s largest explosive factory, near Johannesburg, South Africa.
In the early 1990s, things were not going well in this factory. It had suffered two explosions, resulting in 14 fatalities. The explosives company had shortly before this been taken over by UK chemicals company ICI. ICI told the management of the explosives factory, ‘We don’t care that you have 87% of the explosives market in South Africa, we don’t kill people. So fix the problem or we will close you down.’
Management realised that if you have a safety problem, you have a people problem. If you have a people problem, you have a leadership problem. In other words, management itself was the problem.
So management looked for something that would be a golden thread to which they could revert for guidance on leadership. They found the framework upon which Legitimate Leadership is based.
Three years later the factory was acknowledged to be the safest explosives factory in the world.
It was, three years later, approximately the same factory as before (except that it had stopped using nitro-glycerine), and it was staffed by approximately the same people. The factor which had changed was the way leadership was done.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF THIS PODCAST BY CLICKING HERE
TO LISTEN TO THE PODCAST CLICK HERE
Article: Trusting Team Members Results In Positive Asymmetry
From the Brain Food blog archive.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY ANGELA DONNELLY, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP CANADA: Fascination with game theory, specifically as it relates to co-operative versus self-interested behaviour and outcomes led me to this article. I enjoyed the parallels to the Legitimate Leadership Framework and specifically the important role trust plays when leaders empower their people. Legitimate Leadership argues that TRUST must precede TRUSTWORTHINESS. Leaders take risks when empowering their people because they are required to suspend their need to control the outcomes. The results are no longer predictable. Trusting team members however results in something called positive asymmetry – a lot of upside and little downside. A low-trust approach reduces positive asymmetry. In an effort to avoid being taken advantage of by the untrustworthy few, managers put unnecessary controls in place, and in doing so forgo the asymmetric upside. Low trust eliminates the upside and results in a mindset of distrust and worry. As the article says, a low trust approach might put a floor on how often you get taken advantage of, but it puts a ceiling on what’s possible!
THE ARTICLE: Linear games are won by working harder than others. And the harder other people work, the higher the bar. You need to work harder and harder, just to stay in the same relative position.
Asymmetry is different. Even people who understand asymmetry consistently underestimate its power.
Positive asymmetry happens when you have a lot of upside and little downside. Negative asymmetry is when you have little upside and high downside. Finding hidden or overlooked asymmetry is the key to an unstoppable advantage. And there is a lot of it hiding in plain sight.
Consider trust. A lot of people are slow to trust. Their default level of trust is about 40% and you earn more.
Very few people understand that a low trust approach reduces positive asymmetry.
READ THE FULL SUMMARY OF ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY CLICKING HERE