Leadership Legitimacy
When teams are winning and organizational machinery is running smoothly, leadership can seem almost invisible. Gifted leaders are quick to assign credit to others, recognize the efforts of their team, and often work behind the scenes to focus attention and resources where they are needed most. Conversely, in times of crisis, failure, or simply transition, leadership is at its most visible. With the presidential inauguration putting leadership transition in the spotlight and sparking conversations nationwide over legitimacy, it is worth kicking off this first article of the year by taking a closer look at leadership legitimacy itself.
You are likely familiar with the idea that the tone at the top matters. The phrase is repeated often enough to become a cliché but the real question is why and how does it matter? It’s not enough to simply wave a magic wand labeled “leadership” over a troubled or transitioning organization and expect every issue or growing pain to be fully addressed. Simon Sinek points out that the only thing all leaders have in common is that they have followers; by themselves, they can do nothing. The tone at the top matters because it directly affects followers’ perception of leadership legitimacy and whether or not a leader will ultimately be followed.
Leaders draw on multiple factors to build legitimacy as they do their work including formal (or positional) authority, personal expertise, relationship capital, and resource control. While some emerging and senior leaders seem to do this instinctively, leaders can fast-track their development by drawing on leadership theorists’ insights into the three fundamental sources of leadership legitimacy described by Zelditch and Walker (1984): authorization, endorsement, and propriety.
Authorization entails support from a higher authority within an organizational hierarchy. In the context of the presidential election, this function is typically filled not by individuals but through references to the constitution and the law. Alternately, the election result may be described as a figurative form of authorization given that the authority of the government stems from the will of the people in a representative democracy. For organizations, this may come from leaders higher in the org-chart, its board of directors, shareholders, or through reference to the firm’s charter or articles of incorporation.
Endorsement includes both lateral support from peers and bottom-up support from subordinates. For the president, this comes from other branches of government such as the judiciary ruling on challenges or congress having certified the election and accepted the result. For organizations this comes when other leaders, managers, and teams agree to follow the new leader.
Propriety is described as support at the individual level. However, unlike authorization and endorsement, it is a subjective and culturally-bound phenomenon. Propriety encompasses the idea that individuals in an organization will support or withhold support from another individual based on one’s own assessment of whether a leader’s actions are appropriate and within the scope of authority inherent in the role. In the political realm, this source of legitimacy draws on individual assessments of how well or poorly an individual is seen as fulfilling the historical norms, traditions, and dignity of the office. For organizations it is a similarly emergent phenomenon in which followers make continuous assessments about whether the leader’s actions, demeanor, and values are deserving of their followership and loyalty.
Of the three sources of leadership legitimacy, propriety is perhaps the most dynamic. It is also the area in which leaders are most likely to undermine themselves. For example, a supervisor may legitimately take issue with a subordinate who frequently misses deadlines. However, should the supervisor monitor the employee’s place of worship and take issue with their church attendance most people would see that as clearly inappropriate and beyond the scope of the leader’s authority. Propriety requires individuals to perceive and assess whether the leader is faithfully executing their leadership role. It is a judgement that is unique to individuals and reflects their beliefs about how things should be done. At the collective level, it is cultural in that it is built upon the expectations, historical norms, and practices that groups of individuals expect of the person filling the leadership role.
Workplace culture and morality are emergent phenomena in which the leaders and members of a community come together to interpret, organize, prioritize, and validate multiple behavior frameworks and social norms that apply at the team, department, organizational, and even industry level. As leaders shape the culture of their organizations, propriety provides a mechanism through which they can define the expectations that their followers will use to judge them.
As the pandemic and economic crisis of 2020 continue into 2021, leaders will continue to be challenged by novel situations and circumstances. They will make good decisions and they will make some bad ones, but leaders who build their legitimacy and ensure that they are worth following will find a way to meet challenges. As a leader in your organization, you set the tone for those that follow you. Stay focused on the mission, culture, and your people. You will find your way. Guidance can help.
Let’s get to work!
