Latest / Safe As Podcast / E22: Zombie ideas of leadership - time to exorcise the deceased concepts?

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E22: Zombie ideas of leadership - time to exorcise the deceased concepts? · Safe As Podcast

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  We're all drawn to comforting ideas, especially around
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  leadership. Heroic actions from leaders
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  steering the organisation from collapse.
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  One of these highly valorized ideas of leadership, A more
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  myth, Zombie ideas that won't die and ultimately helping to
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  reinforce outdated power structures.
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  Good day everyone. I'm Ben Hutchinson and this is
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  Safe as a podcast dedicated to the thrifty analysis of safety,
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  risk and performance research. visitsafetyinsights.org for more
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  research. Today's paper from Haslam ET al
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  2022 is titled Zombie Leadership Dead Ideas that Still Walk Among
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  Us, published in the Leadership Quarterly.
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  They explore the concept of zombie leadership ideas, which
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  are a residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have
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  been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely
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  refused to die. It's taken from another concept
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  called zombie economics. They say that the zombie ideas
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  are prevalent in the business world because the stakes are so
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  high, and if you can control the narrative of leadership, you
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  control one of the principal engines through which power and
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  privilege are understood and reproduced.
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  Leadership ideas that are hard to kill are those that simplify
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  really complicated social processes while legitimising
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  privileges of their social elites.
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  So it's like a complex ego boosting set of personal
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  coaching, expensive development programmes and glossy business
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  magazines. Before moving on to zombie
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  leadership axioms which they cover in this paper, they
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  discuss 3 mechanisms, what they call the Hollywood narrative of
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  leadership. The narrative assumes that
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  masses of people are incapable of looking after themselves
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  without a leader at the top of the hierarchy.
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  It implies that leaders deserve their exalted position because
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  they are special individuals who have distinctive qualities that
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  set them apart from the masses. And it attributes success of a
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  group to the actions to the leader marginalising other group
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  members. In their words, zombie
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  leadership constitutes a powerful cocktail of ideas that
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  removes the masses from the running.
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  A society legitimates the prevailing social hierarchies.
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  It provides those in positions of power with a justification
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  for their sense of superiority that covers some core
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  foundational principles of leadership.
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  I'm not going to cover all of that, but at its most basic
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  level, they say that leadership isn't a solo process but in
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  itself has to be grounded in relationships and connections.
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  You must have followers in order to lead, because leadership is a
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  social process. It's more about getting people
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  to want to do things than about making them do them.
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  They also discussed the role of power, knowing that leadership
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  is less about power over followers and more about power
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  through them. Now they present a number of
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  accents. I don't have time to go through
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  each of the actions in depth, but I'll just tell you right now
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  what they are. So one, leadership is all about
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  leaders. 2, There are specific qualities that all great leaders
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  have. There are specific things that
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  all great leaders do. Four, we all know a great
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  leader. When we see 15, all leadership
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  is the same. 6 Leadership is a special skill limited to special
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  people, 7 leadership is always good and is always good for
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  everyone. And eight, people can't cope
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  without leaders. So let's discuss some of the
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  actions right now. So people are often more attuned
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  to and affected by leadership of their immediate supervisors than
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  they are to the distant, more senior leaders or, as they say
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  in the paper, the leaders. One study found that across
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  sports athletes that when asked who was doing the leadership in
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  their own teams, they generally indicated leadership activities
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  less by formal leaders and more by rank and file team members
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  who had taken on informal leadership roles.
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  They say that these findings contrast zombie leadership fads
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  that, in a sense routinely singles out high profile
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  leaders. Also from the paper, they argue
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  that there's a tendency to fetishize leaders, creating a
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  hubris. Leaders can be caught up in this
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  syndrome and the leadership trap they call where group success is
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  overly credited to leaders rather than to the followers.
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  This can feed the ego and narcissism of leaders and also
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  disheartened followers. Another axiom relates to the
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  principle that leaders are born, not made.
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  Similarly, leaders have qualities that none leaders
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  don't. On this myth, they observe
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  there's probably no positive ability or quality that has not
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  been linked to effective leadership at some point or
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  another. They also point out research on
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  the social characteristics of leadership and how it can often
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  lay more in the perceptions of followers than in specific
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  qualities of a leader. They say that the fact that
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  being assassinated or simply being dead is a powerful
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  predictor of a leader's charisma and perceived greatness.
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  Because of this, it alerts us to the fact that what leaders are
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  like will sometimes not matter at all.
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  Another axiom relates to charging into the large change
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  programmes and leading the pack instead.
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  They say leadership is as much about stable phenomena as it is
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  about change. Stable stuff like resolving
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  conflicts, bolstering morale, reproducing culture, ethics and
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  more. They say that the aura of a
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  champion of change also frequently ignores the failures
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  associated with leadership. In any case, they argue that it
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  remains impossible to reduce leadership success to a simple
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  To Do List because group context is critical.
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  They also challenge an idea that even if a leadership isn't
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  always grand, then surely it's always good.
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  But they disagree with this concept.
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  Leadership, as in discrete, heroic, hierarchical leaders,
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  isn't always necessarily and won't always lead to better
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  outcomes. It's just the romanticised
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  vision of what a leader is and should be.
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  That Hollywood idea of a leader. Moreover, they say a large body
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  of research highlights the different forms of collective
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  and distributed leadership. Where the leader role is shared
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  can also lead to high performance.
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  I've skipped a lot of the findings just due to time.
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  How can we defeat zombie leadership ideas, these ideas
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  that just won't seem to die? They provide a number of ideas.
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  Again, I can't go through all of it, but one is recognising the
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  components of zombie leadership meta theory.
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  For instance, these myths that only leaders can lead or leaders
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  have qualities that set them apart from ordinary people.
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  We need to move on from those two, they say, return to the
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  definition of leadership. It's a process where one or more
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  people motivate one or more other people to contribute to
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  the achievement of collective goals.
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  And this is by shaping beliefs, values and understandings in
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  context. Four points here, they say is
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  leadership is grounded in relationships and connections.
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  Without some form of followership, there can't be any
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  leadership. Leadership is more about getting
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  people to do things rather than about making them do them.
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  And leadership is a group process and ultimately about the
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  activities and collectives, not just the individuals.
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  Recognising the cost of zombie leadership, I say there's four
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  key costs. One is a failure to recognise
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  and reward the efforts and achievements of ordinary people.
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  They say the zombie leadership ideas can alienate group members
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  and reduce their willingness to contribute.
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  It can also damage leaders by inducing narcissism, complacency
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  and unwillingness to learn. And four, championing
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  theoretical and practical alternatives to zombie
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  leadership. They say there's four key
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  priorities. Champion approaches that broaden
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  our understanding of leadership beyond the leaders.
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  Champion approaches that see leadership as a process to which
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  everyone can and needs to contribute.
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  Champion approaches it recognise that success really depends upon
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  connections between leaders in their group and champion
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  approaches to leadership development that prioritise
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  these objectives. That's it on Safe as I'm Ben
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  Hutchinson, please help share, rate and review and check out
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  Safety insights.org for more research.
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  Finally, feel free to support Safe As by shouting a coffee
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  link in the show notes.