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July 2022
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What determines the size of the anti-management population in any organization?
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.
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.
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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.
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:
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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.
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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.
