The Hero’s journey the myth for leadership transformation. In essence, leadership is an upward cyclus of re-defining purpose and overcoming our ‘pain’ and fear in relation to our purpose. The result: double power:
- as a leader feeling inspired by purpose and working through your pain, reclaiming new powers; transformational growth:+ accelerating results:
- Often an increase in business skills – formulating a strong competitive advantage, focusing on adding high value strategies and influencing important stake holders
- And self-leadership skills – feeling inspired, true to your values, balancing vulnerability and strength and understanding how to constantly break through your habitual patterns
As Joseph Campbell: where you fear lays, there lays your task.
This is the highest level of leadership change (Bateson) and involves working with our unconscious levels. Most leadership programs don’t operate from this level. Successful leaders close these loups – mini hero’s journey’s – more often than average leaders. This is transformational leadership. All great movies influence you with this concept: The Matrix, Lord of The Rings also Fight Club.
Do you want to watch how the hero’s journey works? 11 min on YouTube, you”ll never forget it and cannot not see it in the world.
Examples of transformational leadership are rare.
The enemy of greatness is being busy. Sometimes all the energy goes to leading without periodically reflecting on re-aligning your purpose and activities and what personal ‘pain’ are you avoiding or should work through? Great Netflix examples are Billionire Logan Roy in succession. His game is power and accumulating wealth and he’s avoiding so much. Bearing pain.
Learning only lower leadership concepts. Concrete leadership concepts such as vulnerability, delegating and the ability to influence help us shape our daily actions and thus results. You can do it tomorrow and in the case of vulnerability you might have you first results. Purpose and reflection on the pain you’re avoiding is a high concept. It requires time to understand to get clarity but the influence on your motivation, inspiration and resilience can be enormous. This often, happens when leaders are unconsciously too driven by goals and success.
The key of success for leaders lies within the speed of transformation: closing loops.
Capitalism is more lineair while leadership transformation is cyclical but upwards. We define a purpose and determine our task, after a certain period of time, we close the loup and the next one arrives.
An example was a man in a leadership position managing several international teams although his fears were in ‘rocking the boat’ and offending people that influence his visibility. His teams had difficulty seeing his, his vision and getting clarity what is one of the greatest performance drivers for leaders.
I’m writing this article for you, and I’d like to remind that this is a high level of consciousness. You might need some time to see how this operates in your live and where you stand. It, however is the most potent for leadership development and is worthwhile the investment to master.
As they say the righteous rise from strength to strength [working from a purpose, feeling inspired and working with humility trough their patterns]. If not now, when will you join them? Today’s decisions are tomorrows growth. I’m putting my money on you.