Zombie leadership is driven by destructive ideas about leadership that refuse to die. One of these ideas even concerns the very definition of leadership. These undead ideas plague organizations around the globe, consuming employee engagement, institutional trust, and organizational efficiency. In fact, zombie leadership arguably affects institutions at every level of society. We aren’t likely to solve the world’s problems with the wrong leadership, which is why getting leadership right is imperative.
Alexander Haslam, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Queensland, recently coauthored a paper about the axioms of zombie leadership.1 The research offers some insight to reduce the influence of zombie leadership's myths.
What Is Zombie Leadership?
The concept of zombie leadership was inspired by Zombie Economics by John Quiggin.2 Quiggin observed that the field of economics is full of ideas that have been refuted academically but still influence the decision-making of policymakers and other economists. Disproven ideas also persist in leadership practices. To describe the philosophy of zombie leadership, Haslam and his coauthors compiled eight core axioms, expressed as absolute statements that research has debunked:
- Leadership is all about leaders.
- There are specific qualities that all great leaders “have.”
- There are specific things that all great leaders do.
- We all know a great leader when we see one.
- All leadership is the same.
- Leadership is a special skill limited to special people.
- Leadership is always good, and it is always good for everyone.
- People can't cope without leaders.
According to Haslam, the golden axiom of zombie leadership is that leadership is all about leaders. "We're fixated on leaders and their character, but leadership as a process is about a relationship between leaders and the groups they lead. Fundamentally, it's proved by the followership of others," Haslam said.
As the axioms demonstrate, the characteristics of successful leaders are not one-size-fits-all. Successful leaders vary in skills and experience. Haslam pointed out that individuals shape their context and are shaped by it. This dynamic, he says, gets lost when personality is treated as fixed and predictive. Leadership itself depends on others choosing to follow, not on a leader's individual traits.
Zombie Leadership vs. Effective Leadership
So, what keeps zombie leadership alive? It's a systemic issue perpetuated in the leadership-industrial complex, popular media, and society at large. Leadership development, for instance, is an $80 billion global industry that often makes assumptions about leadership qualities and behaviors.
To provide an example from the media, Haslam pointed to team sports commentary to show how the zombie model of leadership informs our views of coaches and teams. After a significant victory or outstanding performance, the press typically wants to lionize the coach for the team's achievement. “People who are good at leadership recoil from that,” Haslam observed. Instead, they direct recognition to the team's effort.
How does the zombie-type coach respond? “Yes, it was me. I'm actually rather good, aren't I? Thank you very much,” Haslam quipped. He called out self-aggrandizement at the expense of the team as a red flag.
When people gain power, their influence can become destructive. In fact, nearly everyone who has ever had a boss knows the chaos and unhappiness that can ensue when a leader uses power to prioritize personal interests above those of the group. People don't want to follow leaders like that.
Although organizations continue to select leaders who seem charismatic or leaderlike, effective leadership is the ability to build and maintain a team that performs well relative to its competition. Leadership depends upon the team's willingness to follow; the act of leading necessitates others who choose to follow. Haslam said the assumption that leadership resides in the individual is unrealistic. “You need that group process for leadership to manifest itself,” he explained.
The Usness of Leadership
Haslam described leadership as the process of influencing group members to contribute to the group's goals. Under this definition of leadership, widely held in similar forms throughout academic literature, a leader's power stems from the actions of others, not from their own achievements. When successful, this process of influence often takes the form of shared decision-making, responsibility, and relationships—far from dictatorial orders.
When people gain power by accomplishing work through others, the leaders are more effective and their followers more successful. “Leaders are people who create, advance, represent, and embed a sense of us. Leadership is all about usness,” Haslam said.
Hogan research supports Haslam’s ideas about leaders, teams, and usness. Our global data show that a huge gap exists between the characteristics people want in their leaders and the leaders that organizations promote. This underscores how zombie leadership skews organizations toward the wrong leaders, as opposed to leaders that teams actually want to follow. According to Haslam, "We want people who take care of us, inspire us, motivate us, make us feel good about what we're doing, and help us to be better.”
Individuals in power may resist this idea because it requires them to change. They would rather hold on to zombie leadership because it serves their self-interest. Haslam told a story about colleagues who spent years researching effective leadership in a certain organization. When they presented their findings and recommendations to the C-suite, the CEO pushed their report aside and proceeded to lecture them on what leadership was. (Spoiler: It was zombie leadership.)
How to Challenge the Zombie Leadership Narrative
Zombie leadership continues to affect organizations around the globe, wherever people still believe leadership is about leaders. Academic research on leadership has remained disconnected from real-world practice. Rather than focusing on leaders as individuals, leadership research should place leaders in the context of team dynamics, assessing leadership according to team performance. Likewise, leadership development programs should focus on how to build and maintain high-performing teams. “What you want leadership development to do is to direct people towards the people that they're trying to lead,” Haslam said.
Understand Leadership Effectiveness
Haslam criticized top organizational leaders who single-mindedly pursue influence, money, and status: “I don't think those people are doing leadership. They're not interested in influencing or shaping the group.”
Organizations must stop selecting leaders based on confidence and charisma. They must evaluate leaders based on the performance of their team. A leader whose team has high morale and engagement, understands and feels good about the purpose of its work, and produces results—this leader leads their team well.
Celebrate Effective Leadership
Leadership doesn't only take place in corporations; it happens everywhere that people share a common goal. To counteract zombie leadership, we need to broaden our view of who can be an effective leader. We need to celebrate leaders who run organizations that aren't based in boardrooms.
From families to clubs to classrooms, effective leaders make teamwork happen. Haslam suggested that a rule of thumb for identifying a good leader is someone who treats their team members with the respect and consideration they would show family members: “Fundamentally, good leadership is a democratic process in that it's shared and distributed and we all have a role to play. We should start to run the world the way we want to run our families. If your family is functional, you're not doing zombie leadership.”
Challenge Assumptions
Using the axioms of zombie leadership, let's evaluate leadership effectiveness in the groups to which we belong. Question the assumptions that inform who leads and how they lead. “The organizations we're members of are the ones that we can change,” Haslam said. “We desperately need to challenge this narrative because it's hugely destructive.”
When others see the benefits of doing things differently, they'll begin to support effective leadership practices. They will challenge the leadership models of more groups. Even if those who adhere to leadership myths push back, ask the difficult questions anyway.
Stay Hopeful
Better leadership—even if it's a ten percent, five percent, or one percent improvement—will make a better world. Imagine the cascade of positive change if more leaders worked to serve their teams rather than themselves. These are not easy myths to bury, but as Haslam said, “It's not going to happen without our effort.”
This article was adapted from episode 155 of The Science of Personality.
References
- Haslam, S. A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S. D. (2024). Zombie Leadership: Dead Ideas That Still Walk Among Us. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2023.101770
- Quiggin, J. (2012). Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Princeton: Princeton University Press.