About Us

A key problem facing leaders at work is to establish a sense of legitimacy for their leadership, to mobilise the consent of their people to being led by them. This only happens when leaders have a sincere and genuine concern for those in their charge and enable their people to realise the very best in themselves. In other words, managers have the right to demand delivery of their people, not because they pay them or because they are in a position of authority, but because they Care for and Grow them.

Care and Growth are the universal criteria for any Legitimate Relationship of Power.

What are the roots of the Legitimate Leadership Model?

The Legitimate Leadership Model originated from seminal research into trust in management in the South African gold mines in the late 1980s. Contrary to expectation, trust in management in the apartheid era was not consistently low, but varied immensely, both across mines and even in different shafts on the same mine. Trust in management was not found to be a function of working/living conditions, rates of pay, trade union activity, or the sophistication of the company’s human resources policies and systems. Rather, trust in management was granted or withheld on the basis of the employees’ perception of their leadership’s genuine concern for their welfare. The leadership of a mine was seen to be legitimate and worthy, or not, of support on this basis only.

Whether the management of any enterprise is trusted and viewed as legitimate, therefore, is ultimately a function of the intent of the immediate supervisor at any level in the hierarchy.

Where has the Legitimate Leadership Model been applied? 

Over the past 25 years the original research findings have been applied in more than 250 diverse organisations around the world. Legitimate Leadership Partners and Associates work with clients globally both on-site and from their home locations in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Canada, Belgium and Finland.

OUR TEAM

Our core consulting team of Legitimate Leadership directors and associates are supported by an exceptional back office team and specialist staff, as well as a broad network of consultants, coaches and mentors who work together to enable the shift from TAKING to GIVING.

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Dieter Jansen

Office Administrator, Higher Certificate In Management Assistant

Dieter grew up in Johannesburg as one of two sons to German parents. After completing his undergraduate degree and compulsory military conscription, Dieter moved to the Western Cape where he worked in the defence industry and subsequently completed his Master’s degree at UCT.  From there he moved back up to Pretoria where he worked in research before joining the team at Tiger Wheels Manufacturing, an international supplier of automotive aluminium wheels.  Here his career went from design to 24hr production management, and finally an appointment to the board as the company’s HR Director.

It was during this time that Dieter began to appreciate the inevitable interplay between people, process and technology to achieve desired outcomes, and spent much of his time training himself and his team in leadership skills, specifically servant-leadership.  Dieter describes this period as one of the most rewarding growth phases in his career.

Dieter then went into the consulting industry, where he has spent almost two decades, consulting initially on business process optimisation, where he was the Western Cape regional manager for a boutique consulting firm, and then in leadership development and coaching after attending an intense program with Maxwell Leadership in the USA.

Dieter lives in a small village outside of Mossel Bay with his wife Marita, and is a keen trail and road runner.  While they enjoy exploring the off-the-beaten track areas in the Garden Route, they are often found elsewhere in the country for both work and personal reasons.

Dieter believes the style and culture of future leadership depends on us all to be good role models for future leaders, and is therefore passionate in developing himself and others to be just that, which prompted him to author his book Decision Point: How the decisions you make, make you.  He was introduced to the Legitimate Leadership framework in 2023 which strongly resonated with his beliefs, leading him to join the Legitimate Leadership team.