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.

article

Josh Hayman

Associate, Master’s Degree in Manufacturing Leadership, University of Cambridge, Mechanical Engineering (Hons) , University of Sheffield

Josh Hayman has been working with the Legitimate Leadership Model for 15 years, and in that time, he has consulted to a wide range of industries, both locally and internationally, on establishing and sustaining organisational cultures characterised by ownership, trust and accountability, with the Legitimate Leadership Model as the foundation. His current responsibility in the organisation is for the South African business.

The first half of his career was spent first as a Project Manager and then as a Programme Manager. He led large, complex business transformation programmes and implemented project management best practices in the public and private sectors. During this time, he gained first-hand experience of how intent – and with it trust, accountability and legitimacy – impact business success. When introduced to the Legitimate Leadership model in 2012, Josh found the Model immediately resonated with what he had experienced as sustainable. He joined Legitimate Leadership and set about helping leaders to apply the Model sustainably in their organisations.

Josh grew up with one foot in Gauteng and the other in the Eastern Cape, which is where he now resides. He lives in a small coastal village on the east coast, outside East London, and enjoys an active outdoor life.