Zombie Leadership: When Old Leadership Models Refuse to Die
I read an interesting article from the Association for Business Psychology in at the end of last year, and the term ‘zombie leadership’ stopped me in my tracks. Possibly even had me running scared.
Zombie leadership (Haslam, Alvesson, & Reicher, 2024) describes management practices that have been thoroughly discredited by research and experience — yet somehow continue to roam freely through organisations, influencing decisions, structures, and behaviours long after they should have been laid to rest. Like the undead, these models refuse to die.
What Does Zombie Leadership Look Like?
Zombie leadership isn’t usually dramatic. It doesn’t burst through the door foaming at the mouth. It shuffles. It feeds on psychological resources and drives psychological safety into hiding. You see it in:
Demotivating performance review systems that create anxiety rather than growth
Rigid hierarchies that slow decision-making and choke innovation
Command-and-control management that treats people as resources rather than contributors
These approaches drain energy, suppress learning, and undermine adaptability — especially in knowledge-intensive organisations where creativity, judgement, and collaboration matter most.
And yet, they persist. Which raises an uncomfortable question: If we know these models don’t work, why are they still being used?
The Hidden Damage: Fear, Silence and Knowledge in Hiding
Having been unnerved by the idea of zombie leadership, I looked into the research, which tended to use the term destructive. The research is surprisingly thin. In fact, only a small fraction of studies directly examine leadership that actively harms organisational functioning.
What the research does suggest is this: destructive leadership appears to operate by destroying the very conditions that regenerative leadership builds. When leadership becomes tyrannical, disengaged, or purely transactional, it:
Depletes psychological resources
Destroys psychological safety
Drives knowledge into hiding
On an average day this can stop people speaking up, sharing unfinished ideas and challenging weak decisions. This isn’t a reflection of care or buy-in, but rather it’s a function of safety.
Zombie movies have a rule: don’t make noise unless you want attention. Zombie leadership creates the same effect.
Regenerative Leadership: The Antidote
If zombie leadership drains, regenerative leadership renews. Here, the evidence is much stronger. Studies consistently show that leadership approaches such as:
Servant leadership
Transformational leadership
Empowering leadership
Inclusive leadership
Humble leadership
Distributed leadership
…all work through a common mechanism: psychological safety (which I wrote about recently).
Psychological safety (Edmondson, 2018) is the shared belief that it’s safe to speak up, take interpersonal risks, admit uncertainty, and contribute ideas without fear of embarrassment or punishment.
Where zombie leadership creates fear and silence, regenerative leadership creates:
Learning instead of hiding
Dialogue instead of compliance
Adaptation instead of decay
Different leadership styles activate this in different contexts:
Empowering leadership reduces conflict in hierarchical environments
Servant leadership enhances wellbeing in service-oriented settings
Humble leadership unlocks creativity in innovative teams
Distributed leadership strengthens collaboration in project-based work
Different paths — same destination.
A Final Thought
Zombie leadership rarely survives because it’s effective. It survives because:
It feels familiar
It looks “serious”
It mimics control
However, in knowledge-driven organisations, control is not strength: learning is.
The real risk isn’t that organisations are led by bad people. Rather that they’re led by ideas that should have died years ago. Unlike in the movies, there’s no single dramatic moment where the threat becomes obvious. Just a slow shuffle, a quiet loss of voice and a creeping sense that the organisation is alive — but no longer thinking.
Where might zombie leadership be hiding in your organisation?
References
Abdullah Javed, Rafique Ahmed Khoso, and Atif Nadeem. “Servant Leadership and Its Role in Promoting Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, Employee Wellbeing, and Workplace Trust in Service-Oriented Industries.” Inverge Journal of Social Sciences, 2025.
Ancona, D., Isaacs, K., & Backman, E. (2015). Two roads to green: A tale of bureaucratic versus distributed leadership models of change. MIT Leadership Center.
Anna Rogozińska-Pawełczyk. “Inclusive Leadership and Psychological Contract Fulfilment: A Source of Proactivity and Well-Being for Knowledge Workers.” Sustainability, 2023.
B. Joo, S. Yoon, and Diane D. Galbraith. “The Effects of Organizational Trust and Empowering Leadership on Group Conflict: Psychological Safety as a Mediator.” Organization Management Journal, 2022.
Daryl Mahon. ““Because My Team Disagree with Me on a Daily Basis” the Role of Servant Leadership in Fostering Psychological Safety in a Social Care Organisation.” Mental Health and Social Inclusion, 2025.
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Eleni Papadonikolaki, and B. Morgan. “Leading Psychologically Safe Digitally Enabled Project Teams.” Project Management Journal, 2025.
Jielin Yin, Zhenzhong Ma, Haiyun Yu, Muxiao Jia, and G. Liao. “Transformational Leadership and Employee Knowledge Sharing: Explore the Mediating Roles of Psychological Safety and Team Efficacy.” Journal of Knowledge Management, 2019.
Maohong Guo, Osama Khassawneh, Tamara Mohammad, and Xintian Pei. “When Leadership Goes Awry: The Nexus Between Tyrannical Leadership and Knowledge Hiding.” Journal of Knowledge Management, 2024.
Napthine, S. (2025) From Zombie Leadership to Regenerative Practice: Why Old Models Won’t Die and What Actually Works. The Association for Business Psychology. Available at: https://theabp.org.uk/from-zombie-leadership-to-regenerative-practice-why-old-models-wont-die-and-what-actually-works/ (Accessed 24 December 2025).
Priyanka Vallabh, Swati Dhir, and Pawan Budhwar. “Does Psychological Safety Matter for Innovative Behaviour in Hybrid Workforce? The Role of Proactive Personality, Inclusive Leadership and Affective Climate.” The International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 2024.
Shikha Sharma. “Psychological Safety as the Imperceptible Foundation of Transformational Leadership in Organisations.” International Journal For Multidisciplinary Research, 2025.
Yanfei Wang, Jieqiong Liu, and Yu Zhu. “Humble Leadership, Psychological Safety, Knowledge Sharing, and Follower Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2018.
