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E74: Zombie leadership - old ideas that refuse to die · Safe As Podcast

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  Leadership advice is everywhere. Great leaders change history.
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  Hire the best leaders, and everything else follows.
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  But what if a lot of what we're told about leadership is built
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  on ideas that should be dead but aren't?
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  Researchers call this zombie leadership not because leaders
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  are evil, but because certain leadership beliefs keep walking
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  around long after the evidence against them has piled up.
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  Good day, everyone. Welcome to Safe as I'm Doctor
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  Ben Hutchinson. Today's study is from Haslam ET
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  al 2024, titled Zombie Leadership Dead ideas that Still
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  walk among us, published in the Leadership Quarterly.
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  What is zombie leadership? It's a cluster of assumptions
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  about leadership that feel intuitive, sound inspiring, and
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  are endlessly repeated but quietly distort how
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  organisations work. The paper identifies 8 core
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  axioms, axiom being something people believe is true or
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  accepted. But these axioms orbit 1 deeper
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  belief that leadership lives inside special individuals
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  rather than emerging from groups.
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  So zombie leadership assumes only leaders can lead.
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  Leaders possess rare superior qualities.
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  Group success should be credited to leaders.
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  Well, history is mainly the story of great individuals.
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  This frames leadership is heroic elite and that framing has
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  consequences. These ideas survive because they
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  simplify complexity and legitimise hierarchy.
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  If success comes from leaders, then pay and power at the top
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  seem justified. Ordinary contributors fade into
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  the background. Failures can be blamed on bad
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  leaders instead of systems. The problem isn't that leaders
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  never matter. It's that over, crediting
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  leaders systematically erases the group.
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  Instead, the authors point to decades of social psychology and
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  organisational research showing that leadership is relational.
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  It only exists if others accept influence.
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  Followership isn't passive. Groups actively shape what
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  leaders can do. Distance damages leadership.
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  Elevating leaders above the group often reduces trust,
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  motivation and performance. In experimental studies, groups
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  with formerly selected high potential leaders have sometimes
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  performed worse than groups with no leader at all, largely
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  because members disengage. When leadership becomes
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  something done to people rather than done with them,
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  participation drops. Zombie leadership doesn't just
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  misunderstand leadership, it creates harm, according to the
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  paper. It fails to recognise and reward
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  ordinary contributors, alienates group members and reduces
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  effort, encourages lead to narcissism and complacency,
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  lowers collective productivity and well being.
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  Ironically, by glorifying leaders, it often makes
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  leadership less effective. So what is leadership then?
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  The authors return to a precise definition.
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  Leadership is the process by which people motivate others to
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  contribute to shared goals by shaping beliefs, values and
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  understanding in context. 4 Implications follow Leadership
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  is grounded in relationships. Without followership, leadership
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  doesn't exist. Influence works best when people
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  want to act and four, leadership is fundamentally a group
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  process. Leadership isn't something you
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  have, it's something that happens between people.
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  So what can we make of the findings?
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  If you're designing leadership programmes, managing teams or
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  selecting leaders, then the paper offers guidance. 1 Analyse
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  your language and systems for zombie assumptions like our
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  success is always attributed upwards, leaders described as
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  exceptional or separate, our team's framed as dependent.
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  If yes, zombie leadership is already at work. 2 Anchor
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  leadership development around shared goals, not personal
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  vision, collective influence, not positional authority.
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  Three track what zombie leadership hides.
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  Whose work goes unrecognised? Where does disengagement emerge?
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  How often do leaders stop listening?
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  4 Prioritise approaches that treat leadership as a shared
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  process. Strengthen leader group
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  connections. Develop influence skills at all
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  levels. Leadership development shouldn't
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  just build leaders, it should build groups capable of leading
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  together. It's as much about leadership as
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  followership. That's it.
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  On Safe As. Please like and subscribe and
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  check out safetyinsights.org for more research.
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  And if you want to support the channel then links are in the
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  show notes.