Zombie Ideas in Agricultural Leadership
by Eric Kaufman -- A few months ago, The Leadership Quarterly published an article on “Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us” (Haslam et al., 2024) . The article focuses on the “strong residual commitment to an older set of ideas which have been repeatedly debunked but which nevertheless resolutely refuse to die” (p. 1). For example, one of the axioms of zombie leadership is that “leadership is a special skill limited to special people.” This belief persists, despite “mountains of research” that highlight the detrimental effects of leadership approaches based on elitism (e.g., focusing on “high potentials”). These zombie ideas are problematic because they limit the potential of leadership development. As noted in the article: “By only looking for leadership amongst leaders we only find it there and bury all signs of leadership from below. By only recognizing, training, selecting and nurturing a few in positions of leadership we ensure that only a few develop the