How to Lose Legitimacy

Years ago, I worked with a professional group that had thrived for years as an open community. Anyone could show up to the monthly meetings, share ideas, and contribute to discussions. It was messy sometimes, but that openness created real value for everyone.

Then the inner circle who started the group decided they didn’t like how things were going. They felt discussions were too unfocused. Some of the new members were inexperienced and lowered the level of conversation. They felt standards were slipping. After intense internal debates among themselves (not with the broader group), they changed the fundamental rules. What had been an open community suddenly became invitation-only, with existing members deciding who got to join.

I warned them this could backfire, in closing the group, they risked entropy, an eventual decline without replenishment from new energy. But they were confident in their decision. After all, they were there from the beginning, and felt they knew what the group needed.

Within two years, their group had completely collapsed.

Several lessons from that stayed with me. First, systems will erode without new input. But secondly, when those in power rewrite the rules to benefit themselves, they often end up killing the very thing that gave them power in the first place. They thought they were protecting the integrity of the group, but they were really just protecting their own control over it

Game rules matter. And if you are the one in power, you usually know the rules. You probably set them. And if you want, you can change them to your benefit.

Right now, we’re watching this play out in the U.S.: gerrymandered districts and restrictive voter laws tilt the game in favor of those already in power. When rules are rewritten in mid-play by those who benefit, those not in power can’t compete.

This is a serious political problem—a major, maybe even fatal, threat to democracy. The biggest misuse of power is to tilt things in your favor to stay in power and limit participation and opposition from others. And the hardest thing to do when you’re in power is to follow the rules, even when it’s inconvenient, even when it might mean your ouster.

And that’s hard. Temptation is everywhere. Even for those with just a little power, there are countless ways we indulge this freedom:

• We can move the goalposts, raise the bar, and redefine success. We can make the requirements for others harder than what they were when we first started.
• We can make exceptions to rules, bend them for ourselves or friends. Soften the penalty, or give someone a second chance because we like them. Under the guise of expediency, we can fast track hires, or skip due process to put someone we want in the role.
• We can make decisions behind closed doors, or ad hoc, on the fly, not making the rationale or criteria for the decision transparent, leaving people guessing what drives outcomes.

But whenever we skip due process, we do so at our peril. Because positional power is effective only when its deemed legitimate. And legitimacy rests on perceptions of fairness, not simply on legal correctness or formal authority. When a facilitator lets the same voices dominate, when a promotion looks like favoritism, when the same person gets praised in public more than others, when a referee makes bad calls against one team, and ignores the other teams’ behavior…. power feels unfair.

If stakeholders sense bias or believe the game is rigged, the leader’s legitimacy, and the voluntary compliance that comes with it, erodes. People comply, but only grudgingly. They resist, disengage, or demand more proof. They do the minimum, but don’t give their best effort, don’t contribute meaningfully. They resort to passive resistance, slow walk projects, delay or miss deadlines. They go “off-channel” to solve problems. They work around the boss, and their loyalty shifts to their peers instead of the leader.

And this is a major problem for leaders. Without legitimacy, they are backed into a corner. They have to use rewards and punishments, warnings and threats of consequences, and micromanage with a heavy hand. But relying on reward and coercion further undermines trust and destabilizes the system.

Fairness is not just niceness; it’s the bedrock of legitimacy, and without legitimacy, the only option is force. So while rigging the game may provide short-term advantage, it sets in motion a self-reinforcing spiral that weakens your authority, and ultimately threatens the stability of the system itself.