Safe As week in review:
E22: Zombie leadership … being “dead ideas [about leadership] that still walk amongst us”. Zombie leadership is covered by several axioms: images 1 and 2.
These dead ideas, being already dead can “absorb all kinds of damage and keep lumbering on towards their targets”; that is, difficult to slay.
Zombie leadership takes at least 3 forms – called the “Hollywood narrative of leadership”:
1. The first narrative assumes people en masse are “incapable of looking after themselves and require a hierarchical society with strong leaders at the top“
2. Second narrative implies “that leaders deserve their exalted position because they are special individuals who have distinctive qualities that set them apart”
3. Third narrative is that it “ attributes any success that a group might have to the actions of its leader, thus marginalizing other group members in terms of both the responsibility and the acclaim”.
E23: This explored a Safety-II inspired debrief tool (image 3) focusing on elements like: unpacking work, variability, adaptability, flexibility, workarounds, near misses, what creates success and barriers, and more.
One participant remarked that “this tool added much value to depth of our debriefing”.
E24: This article challenged the scientific and conceptual basis of leadership styles.
They observed how ‘style’ by definition, implies the specific behaviours, strategies and decision-making processes leaders employ to achieve goals.
However, as they show, leadership styles as they’re studied and applied also include variables not related to the leader’s actions. That is, a style includes assessments of the leader by followers, and other characteristics.
Hence, they challenge the basis of ‘styles’, arguing it has “engendered such a “mess,” conflating leadership behaviors and evaluations of these behaviors, and thereby leading to causal illusions”.
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Refs:
Images 1 & 2: Haslam, S. A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S. D. (2024). Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), 101770.
Image 3: Bentley, S. K., McNamara, S., Meguerdichian, M., Walker, K., Patterson, M., & Bajaj, K. (2021). Debrief it all: a tool for inclusion of Safety-II. Advances in Simulation, 6(1), 9.
Fischer, T., Dietz, J., & Antonakis, J. (2024). A fatal flaw: Positive leadership style research creates causal illusions. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), 101771.
SafetyInsights.org 