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What does the Legitimate Leadership Model say about dealing with “victims” in organisations?
If You Want To Make Dotted Line Reporting Work, You Need To Do 3 Things (From The Archives (2018)
Effective leadership is easier said than done at the best of times. Leading with legitimacy is not necessarily difficult (it’s a simple matter of choosing giving over taking, really), but it is undoubtedly hard. When it comes to leading, knowing and doing are not the same thing.
However, when you introduce dotted lines, what started as simple to understand but hard to do becomes complicated to understand and, therefore, even harder to do. It’s why matrix structures and project environments are so often fraught with leadership challenges. And it’s why, if you have dotted reporting lines in your business, it’s so vital that you do the following three things …
Middle Managers Feel the Least Psychological Safety at Work
New research reveals a significant and consequential blind spot in organisational culture: middle managers feel less psychologically safe than both their senior executives and their direct reports. While “team psychological safety”— the belief that one won’t be punished or humiliated for admitting a mistake or raising a concern — has become a leadership staple, the crucial middle layer is often overlooked.
An ongoing global study of 1,160 managers found a notable gap: middle managers scored 68.0 out of 100 on psychological safety, significantly lower than the 72.7 scored by C-suite executives and 4.2 points higher than their own teams. The most vulnerable group is newly promoted middle managers (in their roles for less than 3 years), who scored nearly 5 points lower than their more seasoned peers, indicating a difficult adjustment period.
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: What does the Legitimate Leadership Model say about dealing with “victims” in organisations?
Answer: The issue of ‘victimhood’ is surfacing more and more as the world of work has become more complex, and where people are confronted with the lack of time and with mounting pressures to perform. On the surface, this victimhood mentality is evident in people blaming others (finger-pointing) when held accountable (vs. taking ownership). There is also another way in which it appears, and it’s that of entitlement. We frequently hear this from managers who say employees are often ‘disgruntled’ and want frequent promotions, regular bonuses, and so on. This victim mentality is evident in a ‘taking’ intent. In contrast, the opposite is people coming to work to make an exceptional contribution, to support both their managers and their colleagues, and, in essence, to give unconditionally to the organisation. When people give unconditionally, they become stronger, and paradoxically, promotions and bonuses tend to happen more consistently…
Let’s look at some other distinctions the Legitimate Leadership Model makes when it comes to victims: Being a victim bears no relationship to age, gender, nationality, culture or life circumstances. Any person can be a victim.
- Being a victim bears no relationship to age, gender, nationality, culture or life circumstances. Any person can be a victim.
- Being a victim is not a function of life’s circumstances but about one’s response to life’s circumstances.
- Victims behave in a way in which they focus on being here “to get”, which puts them in a position of weakness. It is a position of weakness because when they want something (such as significance or recognition) from others, it is beyond their control. The control (and strength) then is with the other person. Read the full answer by clicking here.
To submit your question, email info@legitimateleadership.com
Article: If You Want To Make Dotted Line Reporting Work, You Need To Do 3 Things
First published in 2018, this article by Ian Munro, Director at Legitimate Leadership, explores the leadership complexities of dotted line reporting and why making it work requires clarity, consistency, and conscious intent. Its insights remain as relevant today as when it was first written.
Effective leadership is easier said than done at the best of times. Leading with legitimacy is not necessarily difficult (it’s a simple matter of choosing giving over taking, really), but it is undoubtedly hard. When it comes to leading, knowing and doing are not the same thing.
However, when you introduce dotted lines, what started as simple to understand but hard to do becomes complicated to understand and, therefore, even harder to do. It’s why matrix structures and project environments are so often fraught with leadership challenges. And it’s why, if you have dotted reporting lines in your business, it’s so vital that you do the following three things:
1. Face The Right Way
Try asking an employed person who they work for, and they’ll almost always give you one of two answers. They’ll either name their company or they’ll name their boss (manager). It is an accurate reflection of the way things currently are. Most people are serving up the line, not down it. Yet leadership does not have to be about service to company targets and our managers’ whims. In fact, legitimate leaders invert this line of service – legitimate leaders are first and foremost there for their people, not their bosses. They face down the line, not up it.
This principle is best explained through an example. I was contacted one day by a Safety Manager from a remote site in a manufacturing organisation. She had a problem. A new Safety Executive had recently been employed, and she now had two reporting lines: one to her Factory Manager, and one to the new Safety Executive.
Since the appointment, she had started to struggle to get around to doing everything that was expected of her. By her own admission, she was failing, and both senior managers agreed.
Read the full article by clicking here
Article: Middle Managers Feel the Least Psychological Safety At Work
An article in the Harvard Business Review by Jan U. Hagen, a professor of management at ESMT Berlin, Germany, and Bin Zhao, a professor of management and organisation studies at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business in Vancouver, Canada.
COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLE BY STEFAAN VAN DEN HEEVER, ASSOCIATE, LEGITIMATE LEADERSHIP: Psychological safety is a relevant and timely topic of discussion in organisations, a topic that has gained momentum since the onset of COVID-19, as employees around the world have faced lockdowns, isolation, and uncertainty.
There was a notable pattern at a South African bank: employees during COVID sent emails at 2 or 3 am! When this was investigated, it was found that people deliberately set their emails to be sent via Outlook at these early hours, and it wasn’t because they were awake… One can imagine what people went through to go to such lengths to show their value-add, and the lack of psychological safety that existed (and still exists) in a lot of organisations worldwide.
As Legitimate Leadership, we believe that psychological safety should be evident where leadership is applied intentionally and consistently. Lots of organisations talk about leadership, but it’s often put off when there’s pressure, or when pressure is applied from the top to deliver results.
We believe a fundamental shift managers in an organisation should make is from ‘I am here to get more out of my people’ to a new intent: ‘I am here for my people, to enable excellence in my team so that they can achieve excellent results’. The practical implication of this shift is that managers realise the level of reporting to them reflects their leadership and how they care for and grow their people. Practically, this will mean they prioritise leadership: one-on-one meetings where connection happens, managers intentionally holding enabling, supportive team meetings, and managers watching the game and coaching their direct reports to embody excellence and accountability, and to be the best they can be. If applied consistently, this then has a chain reaction downwards, where people at every level in the organisation feel cared for and where there’s an intentional focus on everyone’s growth and development. All this downward focus on improvement and development throughout the line of command comes to full effect with the all-important customer being on the receiving end of this focus on care and growth.
In line with the above, Legitimate Leadership believes that trust is central to creating psychological safety. For us, there are four key ways for managers to earn trust and build psychological safety:
Build personal relationships with your direct reports:
- Get to know your people as human beings, not as human resources.
- Have due concern for their personal circumstances and prioritise the ‘moments that matter for your people’.
- Do you know what makes your people ‘tick’?
Give time and attention to your direct reports:
- Spend time with your people, as mentioned above, through one-on-one meetings, enabling team meetings and watching their game and coaching them towards improvement and excellence.
- Being ‘busy’ should not be an excuse for not spending time with your people. Nothing breaks trust like managers who keep moving one-on-one meetings, who do most or all the talking, or who make these meetings all about progressing the work and not about progressing the person.
Read the full article by clicking here
