The archetypes and myths that build stories… and businesses

Myth and archetypes contribute to the universality of the stories we tell, about ourselves, our organisations and our missions.

Joseph Campbell saw four essential functions of mythology:

• “The first and most distinctive — vitalising all — is that of eliciting and supporting a sense of awe before the mystery of being.”
• “The second function of mythology is to render a cosmology, an image of the universe that will support and be supported by this sense of awe before the mystery of the presence and the presence of a mystery.”
• “A third function of mythology is to support the current social order, to integrate the individual organically with his group;”
• “The fourth function of mythology is to initiate the individual into the order of realities of his own psyche, guiding him toward his own spiritual enrichment and realisation.”

The third and fourth of these functions can rather more prosaically be termed ‘team-building and culture’ and ‘leadership development’.

Strategy is nothing without leadership and as Peter Drucker famously put it ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’. That is to say, you can’t execute any strategy without a common mythological framework and these are established via storytelling and ritual.

In groups, ritual and myth have been used since ancient times to bring people together in a common cause, and can be used very powerfully in organisations and teams.

Equally, they help individuals understand where they are on their own journey and how they can become the most fulfilled version of their own characters, in their own narratives.

What are archetypes?

An archetype is a universal prototype, usually one that we all recognise because it displays common patterns of behaviour, thought and role across cultures. Archetypal characters in literature and in art include the hero, the villain, the mentor, the fool, the mother and the the damsel in distress.

When addressing business issues we can cast ourselves and others in these roles to elicit universal truths and universal solutions from the particular narratives we find ourselves in. Admittedly, some archetypes are more appealing. The hero is a lot more popular in business than the tragic hero for instance.

Unless we’re consumers of Silicon Valley failure porn, we usually don’t like telling downfall stories in business, particularly not about ourselves, but sometimes they can help us understand where we’ve come from or why others have made the decisions they have. After all, not everything goes as we would like it.

As leaders we often find it useful to cast ourselves in the role of the hero, not because we have grandiose visions of ourselves but because heroes are usually the central character in a narrative and after all, in our own lives, we are the central character.

Heroes usually come from a good place (the have virtue and a kind heart), they are often cast apart from others (many are orphans), something that echoes our experience of our own interior sense of selfhood. Heroes do battle with malevolent or negative forces (in the realm of organisations these can be business problems or struggles with people) and they succeed in restoring fairness and balance to the world. Getting people to understand difficulties within a narrative arc of heroism adds great power to how they tackle their problems.

Artists are vital intermediaries in helping to direct people to understanding their ‘hero journeys’. Joseph Campbell wrote: The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly. What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.

We find that as well as heroes, senior leaders find value in occupying the skin of other archetypal characters. The mother for example, offers guidance, comfort and advice. The mentor does the same but from a place of great wisdom and experience (wizards like Gandalf or Merlin are archetypal mentors).

Those who see their role as sense talking or exposure of pretension see value in the archetype of the fool, whose function is to provide comic relief but who may also elicit sympathy and speak veiled truths.

The villain is an easy role to cast — it’s the problem you face, market conditions, your main competitor or the personification of a personal battle. Either way, the villain is there to stop the hero succeeding in his or her quest.

Archetypal stories — our beliefs are founded in the stories we tell

To understand archetypal leadership is to understand shared experience and belonging, how we develop models for behaviour, how we learn, how we share moral and practical lessons and how we understand where we are on our own journeys as leaders.

Bruce Lincoln defined mythology as “ideology in narrative form”. We could express this another way: our beliefs are founded in the stories we tell.

Much of our understanding of archetypes is drawn from the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. His view was that there are certain innate and universal psychological forces that we share as people. As such, there are certain stories we continue to tell over and again.

In 2004, Christopher Booker wrote a book called The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories, a Jungian-influenced analysis of stories and their psychological meaning. While the work was criticised for being reductionist in its simplification of story types, I believe it is useful for us to understand Booker’s point, that there are some universal stories with which we can all identify.

Firstly, there’s the overarching meta-plot which begins with anticipation, where the hero is called to the adventure to come. Next follows the dream stage where the adventure begins and the hero enjoys some success and feels illusory invincibility. The hero is thenfrustrated, confronts his enemy and loses his sense of invincibility. Next, the nightmare stage during which the plot climax occurs and all hope seems lost. However, the story finally resolves itself and against the odds, the hero triumphs over adversity.

Organisational narratives — recognising the archetype in our own stories

Booker felt that such a hero journey could be etched on seven basic plots and I believe each has a parallel in business:

Overcoming the Monster — in this story the protagonist sets out to conquer an antagonist who threatens the protagonist and/or their homeland. Daily, businesses face threats from competitors and substitutes, there are countless monsters out there and the arc of this story is helpful in framing a story around defeating them.

Rags to Riches — from a low base the protagonist acquires things such as power and wealth before losing it all and gaining it back when they have grown as a person. In a business context we prefer not to focus too much on the ‘losing it all’ bit, but upon scratching the surface we realise that all success comes with failures along the way. Thefailures usually contribute to the learning that informed the subsequent success. The rags to riches story is frequently salutory rather than back-slapping. It encourages business to treat success with humility and learning.

The Quest — The hero (leader) and some companions (colleagues and stakeholders) set out to acquire an important object or to get to a location, facing obstacles along the way. Research and development is a daily quest, as is new product development. Business life is full of quests and collaborating with others to overcome obstacles a vital part in succeeding.

Voyage and Return — the protagonist goes to a strange land and, after overcoming the threats it poses to him or her, returns with experience. These stories emphasise experience and learning: vital commodities in a globalised marketplace. Commerce is conducted across new frontiers, where we need to meld home-grown experience with the wisdom of new voices and cultures.

Comedy — The protagonists are destined to be in love, but something is keeping them from being together, which is resolved by the end of the story. Mergers & acquisitions, departmental restructures, consolidation of product lines — these big changes can bring with them lots of fear and resistance. If the story is framed as an inevitable match however, the plot can proceeds with a lot more gay abandon.

Tragedy -The protagonist is a villain who falls from grace and whose death is a happy ending. Thankfully, in business we don’t tend to end up dead, centre-stage. Nevertheless we have plenty of grand failures from which to draw. One need only think back to the banking crisis of 2008/9. Tragedy offers the opportunity for redemption, to learn from failure.Tragic stories help us to move on from disaster. They are retold and remembered in order to warn us of what might go wrong and to direct us where to go next.

Rebirth — The protagonist is a villain or otherwise unlikable character who redeems him/herself over the course of the story. Organisations and people all change whether by their own will or by circumstance. Some people never recover from change because they don’t have the narrative tools to put what’s happened to them in a context they can understand and move on from. Stories of rebirth are very important in helping us to move on.

Archetypal leaders — fitting the leader to the story

As well as archetypal stories, we can view leadership through the lens of archetypes. Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries wrote quite powerfully in this area. His view is that leaders are driven by narrative and they are defined by their “inner theatre (including relationships with authority figures early in life), significant life experiences, examples set by other executives, and formal leadership training.”

De Vries’s argument is that different leadership styles are archetypical and that each style is suited to a different setting. As a leadership training organisation, Darling Arts combines archetypical stories with archetypical leadership styles. Frequently, we align one of the story types above with one of de Vries’s eight archetypal leaders, which are:

The strategist — these leaders operate as if in a game of chess. They give direction and vision to the organisation, can think creatively and are adept at dealing with developments in the organisation’s environment.

The change-catalyst — when faced with a mess, this leader enjoys turning it around. We operate modules around change management and argue that it needs to be undertaken artistically, otherwise victims abound.

The transactor is a negotiator and a deal maker, who enjoys identifying and creating new opportunities. We teach people how to transact effectively, by getting leaders to understand the skills of persuasion and rhetoric and the depth processes of rank and status at play in any transaction.

The builder is an entrepreneur, a creator and a dreamer. They are innovators and have the power to bring others with them to make a dream come true. Through our innovation portfolio, we help leaders to create visions, and see them through to realisation.

The innovator generates ideas. In a world that needs good ideas, the innovator thinks of new ways to solve difficult problems. Arts can teach you how to see more possibilitiesand build a creative orientation where ideas are allowed to emerge.

The coach develops people, and knows how to get the best out of them. Our modules around creating high performance cultures are designed to create environments and conditions where individuals and teams can flourish.

The communicator conducts leadership, literally, as if from the stage using incredible communication skills to have an impact on those around them.

Finally, we have the processor who sees leadership in terms of efficiency. We don’t train processors — we leave that in the capable hands of the business schools and universities. Many of our organisation’s leaders are processors having been schooled in techniques that make organisations run more smoothly.

Archetypes in practice

In reality, our stories borrow from multiple archetypes and our strategic styles combine traits from across the different ideal types outlined above. The interesting thing to observe is that much of what we consider universal, enduring and central to our shared stories resides in the skills of the arts, not the sciences.

As a parting thought, I would say that mythology and the use of archetypes should come with a health warning. As well as being put to good, it can be misappropriated when people try consciously to generate mythology, what Tolkien termed mythopoeia.

As practitioners therefore, like purveyors of any super-power, we need to ensure the hero uses their newfound power wisely. As Campbell writes: “There are two pathologies. One is interpreting myth as pseudo-science, as though it had to do with directing nature instead of putting you in accord with nature, and the other is the political interpretation of myths to the advantage of one group within a society, or one society within a group of nations.”