From Zombie Leadership to Regenerative Practice: Why Old Models Won't Die and What Actually Works
By Sabrina Napthine.
Walk into most organisations today and you'll encounter a peculiar phenomenon: leadership practices that should have died decades ago continue to shamble through management structures. Researchers have termed it "zombie leadership" – outdated approaches that persist despite overwhelming evidence of their ineffectiveness (Haslam, Alvesson, & Reicher, 2024).
Outdated practices lurk in performance reviews that demotivate rather than inspire, in hierarchical structures that stifle innovation, and in command-and-control management that treats humans as resources to be optimised. They drain organisational vitality, yet they refuse to die. Why? And what does truly effective leadership look like in contrast?
Understanding Zombie Leadership
“Zombie leadership” identifies eight core axioms, three of which are particularly pernicious (Haslam, Reicher, & Alvesson, 2024):
- Leaders have special qualities separating them from followers
- Only those formally identified can lead
- Group success depends solely on these designated leaders' actions
These practices provide the illusion of control in complex environments. They're familiar, reducing cognitive load for managers already overwhelmed. They align with hierarchical power structures that benefit those who have succeeded within them. And they reflect deeply held assumptions – that people are fundamentally lazy, need external motivation, and can't be trusted without surveillance.
The Regenerative Alternative
While zombie leadership drains organisational life, regenerative leadership does the opposite. It cultivates conditions where individuals, teams, and entire systems can renew, grow, and thrive. The term "regenerative" is borrowed from ecological and agricultural contexts, where it describes practices that restore and enhance system health rather than merely extracting value (Hutchins & Storm, 2019).
Regenerative leadership represents a fundamental paradigm shift. Whereas old styles of leadership see organisations as machines to be controlled, regenerative leadership recognises them as living eco-systems (Hardman, 2010).
This isn't simply "nicer" management or humanistic rhetoric grafted onto existing structures. It's a different operating system entirely, one that aligns with contemporary research in organisational psychology, complexity science, and human development.
Leadership as Facilitation
At the heart of regenerative leadership lies a reconception of what leadership is. Rather than directing, controlling, and disciplining, regenerative leaders facilitate. They create containers for meaningful work, remove obstacles that prevent people from doing their best, and cultivate environments where capability and creativity can flourish.
This facilitative stance requires a different skill set. It demands:
- Sophisticated listening
- Holding complexity without forcing premature resolution
- Distributing rather than concentrating authority
The regenerative leader's primary work becomes sensing what the system needs, connecting people and resources, and asking powerful questions rather than providing all the answers.
Research on psychological safety demonstrates why this matters. Edmondson's (1999) seminal study found that team psychological safety – a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking – is strongly associated with learning behaviour and team performance. When people feel genuinely safe to speak up, experiment, and occasionally fail, team performance increases dramatically. Psychological safety was seen as "by far the most important" of the five dynamics that make teams effective. However, psychological safety cannot be mandated from above. It must be cultivated through consistent facilitative practices which demonstrate that people's ideas and concerns are genuinely valued (Edmondson, 2018).
Leadership as a Movement
Perhaps the most radical departure is understanding leadership not as a role or position, but as a collective capacity that flows through organisations.
This movement-based conception aligns with research on distributed leadership, where leadership functions emerge from networks of relationships rather than hierarchical positions (Ancona, Isaacs, & Backman, 2015). A 2015 MIT study comparing two firms implementing sustainability initiatives found that organisations engaging in some distributed leadership capabilities – including relating, sensemaking, visioning, and inventing – fared significantly better than those using command-and-control models (Ancona et al., 2015).
Regenerative approaches do not eliminate formal leadership, they fundamentally redefine it. Those with relevant expertise lead in their domain. Senior leaders become stewards of the whole system rather than controllers of individual parts. Their authority comes not from position but from their ability to sense, connect, and catalyse collective capability.
When leadership is a movement rather than position, it activates agency across the organisation. People no longer wait for direction from above. They develop leadership capacity by exercising it. The organisation becomes more adaptive, resilient, and capable of navigating complexity.
Why Zombies Persist
Regenerative leadership outperforms zombie practices, but is genuinely more challenging. It requires greater psychological sophistication, more comfort with ambiguity, and the courage to relinquish control even when control feels urgent. Zombie practices – for all their dysfunction – are simpler to implement, and align with existing power structures.
Zombie practices can also show short-term results; a performance rating system produces rankings quickly, command-and-control can drive immediate compliance, disciplinary management can create the appearance of order. Regenerative approaches often take longer to bear fruit, requiring investment in relationships, culture, and capability development before their benefits become apparent.
Yet the research is clear: in our complex, fast-changing environment, organisations need adaptability, innovation, and resilience. Zombie practices may limp along, but they cannot generate the collective intelligence required for contemporary challenges.
The Transition Challenge
Moving from zombie to regenerative leadership isn't a simple substitution. It requires fundamental transformation in organisational culture, power dynamics, and underlying assumptions about human nature and organisational purpose.
The most successful transitions involve parallel practices – not attempting to kill zombie leadership practices directly, but growing regenerative alternatives that gradually become more compelling. As people experience the energy, engagement, and effectiveness of facilitative leadership, zombie practices lose their appeal.
Conclusion: Choosing Life
The persistence of zombie leadership represents a choice to prioritise control over vitality, short-term predictability over long-term resilience, and individual authority over collective capability.
Regenerative leadership offers a different choice: to create organisations that enhance rather than deplete human potential, that generate rather than extract value, that build capacity to face an uncertain future with creativity and courage.
For Business Psychologists, this represents both a challenge and an opportunity – to help organisations understand why these practices persist, to provide evidence for regenerative alternatives, and to support the developmental journey required to bring truly alive leadership into being.
The zombies may be persistent, but life, ultimately, is stronger.
About the Author
Sabrina Napthine is a Regenerative Leadership Consultant and founder of Onebeing Consultancy and Soap for Life. Drawing on her experience in sales at New Scientist and ten-year social work career, she brings a deep understanding of human behaviour, motivation, and systemic wellbeing to Business Psychology. Sabrina integrates principles from psychology, systems thinking, and ecology to help organisations evolve into living ecosystems—where people, purpose, and planet thrive together. Her work invites leaders to move to regenerative, human-centred approaches that foster resilience, connection, and collective flourishing.
References
Ancona, D., Isaacs, K., & Backman, E. (2015). Two roads to green: A tale of bureaucratic versus distributed leadership models of change. MIT Leadership Center. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325733146_Two_Roads_to_Green_A_Tale_of_Bureaucratic_versus_Distributed_Leadership_Models_of_Change
Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999
Edmondson, A. C. (2018). The fearless organization: Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning, innovation, and growth. John Wiley & Sons.
Hardman, J. (2010). Regenerative leadership: A model for transforming people and organizations for sustainability in business, education, and community. Fielding Graduate University.
Haslam, S. A., Alvesson, M., & Reicher, S. D. (2024). Zombie leadership: Dead ideas that still walk among us. The Leadership Quarterly, 35(3), 101770. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2023.101770
Hutchins, G., & Storm, L. (2019). Regenerative leadership: The DNA of life-affirming 21st century organizations. Wordzworth Publishing.