Ep 428: Debunking Zombie Leadership

heard used before. And what the author says basically is that there are things that we have thought are true about leadership that have that have happened over years where we just start thinking these things about leadership and the practice of leadership and the qualities that leaders have, these kind of things that we just assume are true, and

we've thought they were true for a long time. But yet there has been significant evidence over the recent years to debunk those things and and say no, this is not right. There's a lot more to it than this, this is not accurate. But yet for some reason, we still hear them today. We still hear people talk about these things today as if they are gospel, when in fact,

not only are they're not gospel, they've been debunked. There's there's they've been we can throw them out now because we know they're not true and yet people still quote them and bring them up and believe they're true. So you know, first thing I want to talk about really is why do you think we do this? Why do

you think we hang on to these things? Even you know we're smart people, we have this new evidence, and yet we for some reason it's just so much easier to hang onto these old ways of thinking.

to leadership. You hear things that are stated as fact or that have always been there, and so you start to like, you subscribe to those things, You believe those things, you repeat those things, and then you assign those things to leaders that were successful. And then as you find success in leadership. You then to believe, you believe that those things are what got you there and therefore those

are the things that must continue. So like, I see that because a lot of times leaders don't take into account the fact that their style of leadership, the frameworks they build within their teams, their approaches to how they get work done, that not only are these things like the things that get the business going, but these actually become the pillars of the leaders that you're developing into

the future. So you have to be really conscious of that, and you also have to be willing to challenge some of these things sometimes or you know, talk about these things if they are adjusting, if they're no longer relevant

and stuff. So, but I think that to answer your question, like, over time, many of these leadership theories, many of these thoughts and approaches that were kind of assigned over a couple of decades or have been taught over the years, they just feel like, well, yeah, that's how it has to be, because that's how it's always been, versus kind of going deeper to understand, like no, actually, even if we say it worked for a time, maybe it didn't even work in that time, But we have to get

away from these as we learn more and more about each other, about leadership, about how people like to be led, but also like there are things that we have to hold on to that are real pillars of leadership that have you know, kind of sustained over you know, you know, hundreds of years of not thousands of years, and I think a lot of times we want to smash some things next to those that probably shouldn't be there.

But yeah, it just it didn't feel right to think that we did something that just never worked, but for some reason we gravitated towards it in order for this to happen. At some point, someone saw some results, right, Someone saw some positive, some positivity outcomes results from doing things a specific way, or by by lending credence to a certain leadership style, a way of thinking, and that had to be widespread enough to lead people to believe

that this was the this was the case. I think a lot of it is, you know, kind of chalking it up to you know what, uh, you know, all the things that we're gonna we're gonna talk about on this episode are related to focusing on the people being led as opposed to the leaders themselves. And and I like that, And I think that's because the the the differences between what's important to the people being led are more prone bounced now than they might have been thirty,

forty or fifty years ago. The differences in the tea like just from a just from a diversity and inclusion standpoint, you know, if you fifty years ago, the you know, teams probably looked more like each other than they did wherever that team happened to be. And there's so much differentiation between people now, and that includes a differentiation of age, which means, you know, different stages of life and what's

important to them. And so you can't just focus on the leader because the leader that assumes that all of those people want the same leader, when in actuality they may want different things from their leader. So I do like that kind of subtle but slow and deliberate movement towards you know, what is important is really defined by

the people being led as opposed leaders themselves. So you know, the first one that I want to go over here is you know where it talks it talks about this axiom of zombie leadership is that leadership is about all leaders and it's the preserve of those who occupy the former leader formal leadership roles, and it can and and that leadership can be understood by focusing on leaders alone.

And the problem with that, as stated by the article, is that leadership is proved by followership and it requires us to study and understand followers. And yeah, I again just what I said. I believe that wholeheartedly, and I think it's getting more and more so like that as time goes on.

of amazing and great leadership. And you can google and there's articles about all types of leaders in all types of ways. But the reality is is it wasn't just that one person, like, there was teams of people people surrounded that person, people that also influence people that influence that person to be that way. Like there's so it's

so much deeper than that. And I think when we get into those spaces where we think that it's like, wow, what an amazing leader and they really are doing this work, then what we also will realize over time is like with everyone in anybody, you're going to have strengths, and you're going to have opportunities, you're going to have things that you over use, You're going to have things that you have yet to learn yet in life, and and and what happens is when you put all of that

time and attention into a singular leader, when they make a mistake, that mistake echoes through everything and it becomes much harder to recover and repair because everybody was kind of assigning to this kind of one idea that it's just this one leader. So I think that, yeah, it absolutely there are amazing leaders. There are amazing individuals that

did amazing things. But I have yet to find any one single who, a single individual who did it all themselves and there were no examples of others around them that have helped to shape the work that they did and the results they get that they gathered.

not been with the with the organization before. And because myself and my peers knew our jobs really well and we were committed to doing quality work, it allowed this leader to not have to focus on the minutia of what each of our roles were and just focus on leading at a macro level. So none of us feel

felt micromanaged. We all felt like we were allowed to, you know, do our jobs the way we wanted to do them and and kind of be left alone but still supported, and that the performance that we accomplished as a team got this leader kind of I don't say promoted, but they were asked to kind of go to a different location to fix things that were that were that were wrong. And I felt really bad when this happened, because this this person failed miserably at that at that

other place. And it was because they they did They did it the same way they did it for us, which was to not micromanage and allow people to just show and do their jobs and try to just lead them. But because they didn't have a team of people reporting to them that were as committed to doing great work and knew the job as well, it required a lot more of them in terms of what their role became as a leader, and it was a skill that they didn't necessarily over index on on very much. And and again,

same person, same leader, different set of followers. Obviously, you could if you just looked at them as in silos by themselves, you would think, oh, this was a great leader over here, and this was a terrible leader over here. But it's the same person, and so if the difference is the the outcomes can be can be you know, determined by who the followers are and what they need. Yeah, of course you can't just learn about leadership and about

what good leadership looks like by studying the leaders. You have to study the followers. I think it's it is a it's an almost it's almost a duh kind of thing, but it but it it emphasizes the importance of making sure that that when you when you promote a leader or hire person in that you can't just look at the qualities of of the of leadership that you're looking

for in the context of who this leader is. You have to look at the team that this leader is being hired to lead and think about, Okay, what does this team need right now? And and and that can that should impact your hiring or promotion decision. It might even it might even come out looking like of the person who was more qualified for the job didn't get it and the person who was less qualified for the

job did get it. But in actuality, the person who got it is the one who that team needed in that moment, and and that that should be that should impact those decisions, which means they were the most qualified, right, I mean on paper versus like looking at the nuance. No, you're right, yeah, most qualified.

then what does this leader bring? And to be quite honest with you as well, like when you're talking about selecting leaders of leaders, selecting people that are going to, you know, like look to influence through a team or create positive work dynamics, things like that, I'm gonna be

honest with you. Sometimes sometimes there's things that are like like less things on a resume are actually what you need, like you need less like less maybe like structured experience where somebody may feel like this is the only way to do something, versus someone walking in being wide eyed and open to be like, oh, I have confidence of what I can do, but also like I'm wanting to learn every day, right, Like I and I have an element about my personality where I'm very you know, I

have a lot of transparency with the team and can say, hey, I know a lot of things, but I don't know that, so would you mind teaching me so that I can better serve you as a leader, versus the person who says, oh, I've done that, I know how to do that. I'm very confident there's a way to do that. Like, sometimes your team needs that. So when you're when you're building leadership teams, you have to find ways to select talent that gives you those things that your team needs over time.

So I want to underline your point there, because it's more than just experience in a resume. It's more than just the job. If you're looking at qualified candidates, that means somebody can do the work that you're looking for. You know, as as as the job is described, it doesn't necessarily mean who's had the most experience doing it, who's had you know, the most differences in their careers.

It doesn't know who's done these jobs longer than this. Like, those things are important as you're assessing the leader's capabilities, but when it comes to selection, you take all of that into account along with what does this team need, what's going to help them to move forward faster? And not only the team that they lead, but the team that they're on, what about their peers, what's a piece of this that their peer group may be missing or can utilize or may need in the room when they're

building strategies and whatnot. So there's a lot a lot to it when making those types of decisions.

And you can see this in organizations. There are some organizations out there that will hire somebody and they won't work out, and they'll hire somebody else and they won't work out, and they'll hire somebody else and they won't work out, and there's this massive turnover over a very short period of time. And there are other organizations where where you notice, like a role stays empty for a while and you wonder why, why is the role empty. And it's it's not a lack of a of a

talent bench. It's it's a we we know that this team where they are, they're a high performing team, and we know that just having a person there because we want to say this role is filled, will cause more damage than not having a person there to begin with.

So we're gonna let the team go and do their thing, and we'll check in on them and we'll make sure that that they're supported, but we're not going to put a person in this role until we know they are the right person for this And and the fact that that has been successful that way for for organizations really underlies that fact that leadership is not always necessary if you have teams that know how to do their jobs. Well, I'm not saying that they will never need a leader again.

They may not be able to go forever without leadership, but for a short period of time, not having a leader in place is better than having the wrong leader in place.

what good leadership looks like for for other people. And then I want you to look at that list that you wrote down and think, why do I think that, Like what has led me to believe that this was good? What has led me to believe that this is part of what good leadership looks like? Or why why do

I believe these specific things? And really pick those things apart to figure out if, if why you think that, if it's evidence based over like a broader context, or if it's just your own individual opinion about what happened to you and your experience, and whether or not it

could be applied elsewhere. Ask other people to look at your list if you want to, to see if they would agree with that situation, to agree that this is what makes a good leader, or not, see if they want to contribute something differently, If whenever you find a lack of consensus between you and somebody else about what makes a good leader. I don't mean they can't fill

in more of the list. I mean where they say something and you think, no, that's not important at all, or you say something and they think that's not important at all. Figure out why that is. Because if you disagree on something and you both genuinely believe that you're right, it means that your own lived perspective has influenced that and not influence to the other person the exact same way.

The more you can dig into this and figure out what things are are real when it comes to what good leadership looks like, and what things are just made up or that you heard and that felt right to you in the moment, the better equipped you're going to be to be a good leader as you move up through your roles, because you're not going to bring with you things that you just think are correct, but because they just happen to work correctly this one time, but

they're not correct and they will derail you later on.

There are again I said this earlier, there are some really clear pillars, and I would tell you things like honesty, integrity. You know, these are things that once you lose them, or when people don't have that, they don't have trust, and then you're not leading anybody with anything. So like that, there are things that really will always be a major

component of leadership. But there's a lot of approaches and theories and ideas that over time we've learned more about, we've adjusted, we've built on top of, or we've eliminated completely.

So I think it's good to constantly think about how your leadership has been shaped, how you want to shape leaders but also hearing from other people and how they perceive some of these thoughts and approaches, because that's only going to help to sharpen your perspective on how you want to impact people as you continue your role in leadership capacity.

if they talk about qualities that they bring. See if they talk about this is what the team needed at the time. See if they can talk about how the learnings they had over time about how they had to change your leadership style for certain people or certain teams

versus others, Do they have the staying power? Because if your person has moved up in different leadership roles throughout their career and taken on more and more responsibility leading people who are higher and higher up in their careers, there's no way to do that without being able to change your leadership style. You can't carry one style with you for thirty years of a leadership career. You have to be able to alter those things because of the

changing needs of your team. So talk to people who've been able to do that and find out why they did that or what led them to believe that it was important, because that will give you more perspective on why that person was successful, because chances are the success that you see from them is based on whatever style is working for them at the moment and doesn't take into account the evolution of them as a leader over time.