You may recall some recently published research on Zombie Leadership.
“the ideas about leadership that prove particularly hard to kill are those that simplify a knotty social process while at the same time legitimizing the privileges of social elites and the leadership industrial complex that supports them — a complex of self-aggrandizing personal coaching, expensive development programs, and glossy business magazines.”
And less than 2 months later we have another shotgun blast to the face of zombie leadership discourse. Some researchers in Switzerland looked at whether the concepts of positive leadership styles - e.g. authentic, ethical, or servant leadership - actually mean anything. So they ran some studies to see how test subjects responded to some leadership-type stimuli. Could you manipulate people’s ratings of leaders in ways that positive leadership theories say shouldn’t work? Well it turns out you can. When you ask people to rate leaders based on these theories do they actually do so? No.
What does this mean? Well on the one hand, it’s pretty damning. The researchers conclude:
“Researchers must disentangle conflated positive leadership style concepts, and practitioners are not likely to get what they are promised when investing in allegedly evidence-based authentic, ethical, or servant leadership training.”
But on the other, it will probably little impact on the leadership industry. These theories are not sold on their scientific validity. They are sold because they are easy to understand and flattering to their buyers.
But every little helps.