Processing Of Nine Years Of Leadership Surveys Confirms Legitimate Leadership’s Base Tenet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It found:

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

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

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

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

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

Entelect Describes Its Coaching Culture-Change Journey

In the breakfast function (above) Entelect described its own culture-change journey through the Legitimate Leadership framework, and particularly through coaching. This was in line with the finding, detailed at the breakfast, that what makes a manager bring out the best in someone correlates most highly with the manager being an extremely effective coach.

Entelect is a South Africa-based custom software, digital transformation and data analytics company. It was recognised in the inaugural Financial Times rankings of Africa’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2022.

Josh Hayman of Legitimate Leadership set out Legitimate Leadership’s basic ‘shifts’ required for a good coaching culture:

• Shift 1: improving the result to improving the person. This involves the means and ends inversion (the crux of the difference between management and leadership is an inversion of means and ends: managers use people as the means to get the job done and produce results, whereas leaders use tasks and results as the means to enable people). Coaching to improve the results is problematic because it is likely to only happen when there is a problem, or when something has been done wrong – and then it is likely to seem like command-and-control, and is also likely to entrench mediocrity.
• Shift 2: coaching which is reactive to coaching which is proactive. Once Shift 1 has been made, we stop coaching reactively and shift to more long-term, consistent coaching; focus less on the results and more on the person being coached. We also coach as much for strengths as we do for weaknesses.
• Shift 3: coaching as a competency to coaching as a standard. Once you have succeeded in getting some leaders to coach, expand this so that all leaders coach – that is, make coaching a standard in the organisation.

Candice Swarts, a people and culture manager for Entelect, set out how her company is implementing and expanding a coaching culture. She said Entelect had grown from a staff of 600 to 1,300 in the past few years. Growth of people had been identified as a core value of the company – “growth is not optional, it is part of our identity and culture”.

Having this basic value facilitated the implementation and expansion of a coaching culture in Entelect.

A year ago, eight senior influential leaders in Entelect, who saw the benefits of coaching and were enthusiastic about it, were selected. They each agreed to each coach two people.

An expected result of this exercise was increased competency in coachees.

But an unexpected result was that the people who were coached have become so enthusiastic and inspired that they have begun applying coaching to others around them.

She said it was important to plan to scale up coaching deliberately and coach people how to coach. Once coaching was part of the values of an organisation, it should be done every day, and people should be held accountable for it. In other words, coaching should be made a standard.

External expertise should also be used – “external feedback is important”. She said Hayman was still helping Entelect with targeted groups.

“Rome was not built in a day but it is a commitment. So identify exemplars; align coaching with your values; and decide how you scale it and embed it. The results will follow.”

Kyle McAllister, a Team Lead at Entelect, shared some insights in applying coaching in the teams he leads:

• Your own expertise is an asset as well as a liability. Assuming you are an expert, you will get some legitimacy “for free”. But expertise can also become a liability and get in the way – because it encourages coaches to step in and control people. Also, someone does not have expertise to coach someone else, the coach must first gain sufficient expertise to be able to coach.
• Are you an accountability partner or an advisor? It is hard to be both, so decide which. McAllister said in one instance a direct report of his wanted to manage a project. So he gave the direct report a heap of advice on how to do this. For two weeks the person applied himself, but unenthusiastically. Hayman advised McAllister that the lack of enthusiasm might be due to the fact that the ‘how to’ ideas did not come from the direct report himself. McAllister then solicited some excellent ideas from the direct report which were implemented, and his enthusiasm in application increased considerably. “So in that case, my job was to be an accountability partner, not an adviser.”
• Be prepared to watch the train wreck happen (but create safety). Prepare for the coachee to make mistakes and for fallout as a result, but as far as possible “make it safe”. For instance, a direct report of his was not good at speaking directly when holding people to account. In coaching her, McAllister said she needed to be more direct and possibly to upset some people. She then went about giving feedback in an incorrect way so that she did upset a colleague. McAllister could have jumped in to smooth the feathers but he opted to rather give her feedback on how she could make the matter right so that she could increase her competence.

Ian Munro of Legitimate Leadership, said that in the past Legitimate Leadership had recognised that it was important that a legitimate leader should bring out the best in their people. The data analysis by Entelect had confirmed that coaching by the leader/manager is definitively the key differentiator in achieving  this.

“There is no professional sports person who does not have a coach. Growth, and how you enable it, is about courage. It takes courage not to give more stuff or money, but to give more feedback and deal with accountability. This does not mean that you should care less; it means that you should care more and grow more.”

Legitimate Leadership 10 Years Data Insights September 2023

Breakfast Presentation – Coaching 2023