“We don’t need another hero.” ~ Tina Turner
“Happy is the land that does not need heroes.” ~ Bertolt Brecht
If you are a leader in an organization, you will have heard it said, “You only need to focus on what you can control.”
It is not that simple, though. We cannot wall ourselves into a space where we are in control. And even if we could, that is not where the action is. Or fun. Or people. Or relationships. Or reality.
Learning to let go of control and lead from that space is not antithetical to leadership. Quite the contrary, when we know how to be out of control, we cease to be at war with reality and become better not only at making things happen but also at letting things happen as we participate in dynamics larger than the circle we have drawn around ourselves.
Control does matter, obviously, and we aim to get control of the shared reality by creating models, frameworks, and maps that help us manage what we think is going on.
“All models are wrong,” wrote statistician George E. P. Box back in 1976, “but some are useful.” We move to better ways of making sense when the previous ways become less useful in helping us predict, manage, and work with and through the new complexities we face. When a model does not work anymore, we move to those that work.
Myths that Work
One of the most powerful tools for living with complexity is choosing the myths we live by. Myth is a timeless truth poured into a story, armed with our values, and cemented into our experience.
We humans used to think we were above them. Fortunately, we have been coming to terms with the fact that we have over-reached in our myth-free confidence. We are not living in a merely complicated machine we can learn to control, but in a constantly changing system managing physical, psychological, organizational and other forces that we cannot bring under control. Life and, with it, change, is too wide and too deep to master.
There is always far more happening than what we can fully grasp. So, we have to relate to the unknown, befriend it, even delight in it, get things done in the middle of it, and get others to get things done. That is where the myths come in.
Myths that work hold our worlds together.
They are larger stories that hold smaller stories. Whether true or false, myth is a necessity for any meaning we hope to have as humans. Without the myth, we are all whirling subatomic particles, becoming aware that we are nothing, a realization that is itself a myth.
Now, the most crucial function of myth is to provide us with a perspective, and in today’s world of excess information, perspective is everything, or almost everything, depending on how you look at it. Myths we hold, whether we are aware of them or not, are that perspective.
Good Old Myth
There is a myth we are all quite familiar with.
Even if you don’t know it by name, you know it in substance. It is a pervasive and recognizable story format in the West, particularly in the United States, that has gone global. If you are unaware of it, use this ChatGPT prompt: Tell me about the Hero’s Journey. Then brace yourself.
You might also be familiar with the powerful work of Joseph Campbell, who brought the Hero’s Journey to public awareness. If you are a movie maker, marketer, coach of any sort, organizational psychologist, leadership trainer, management consultant, officer in the military, entrepreneur of any kind, or work in any industry that uses the power of the story, you are probably already overdosed on the Hero’s Journey. It is ubiquitous. So, I promise you, the rest of this article will not be just another Hero’s Journey drill and praise fest. We will go beyond.
First, a quick summary. (Feel free to skip this paragraph if you think, ya, ya, ya, I’ve heard this a hundred times already.) The Hero’s Journey is an archetype, an original and recurring motif or symbol behind many ideas and stories that shape our lives today and have also shaped the lives of humans since the dawn of human civilization. Campbell traced the Hero’s Journey through 17 universally traversed steps across culture and time. In its most fundamental form, the journey comprises a three-part cyclical structure: Departure, Initiation, and Return. The hero leaves the ordinary world responding to a call to adventure (Departure). The hero then enters a liminal space, where they face trials and achieve a climactic victory or revelation (Initiation). Finally, the hero returns to their ordinary world, transformed, and often with knowledge, power, or healing to share with others (Return). This cycle, we are told, represents a universal process of growth and integration that resonates across people and eras.
The Hero’s Journey has obvious advantages. It provides a framework for personal growth, fosters empathy for the experiences of others, and offers a roadmap to navigate life and leadership challenges, among other benefits. Its explanatory power has been felt by many of us. Do you remember the rush when, in the middle of a troubling life challenge, you first thought, “Is it possible I’ve been on a Hero’s Journey all this time? Is it possible I am on one right now?”
Living In a Monomyth
While Hero’s Journey is part of the truth, it is also less than the truth. It has its limitations, which, as we move into a world where our stories are colliding with one another, are becoming quite obvious and grave.
Our imagination has been taught to look for it, and now we see it everywhere. Often, it is the only thing we see. It is what we are told we want and what we learn to want.
When I engage with leaders who question this myth, the majority become defensive from the start, forcing every alternative idea into the existing perspective. They have experienced the monomyth’s power and now use it to construct the same explanations for new experiences.
However, life and leadership bring new experiences, and these are arguably the only forces capable of loosening the grip of our knowing and opening up possibilities for new explanations.
As poet David Whyte would put it in his corporate leadership training, we tend to name our experiences too early. We leaders, he argues, can find our way forward by first stopping the conversation we are having. By conversation, he means the tired and tiring ways of naming and reassuring ourselves, telling the same old story over and over again.
Stories, like humans, are alive. One model or myth gives way to another. That is how we change. As all living beings, our stories exist in ecosystems. In every complex system, whether biological, cultural, or organizational, a monoculture eventually, and always, spells devastation.
Historically, we humans are all exposed to the tyranny of one story. Like the former head Rabbi of the UK, Jonathan Sachs, argues in his book The Dignity of Difference, the more perfect we become as humans and the better we become as a global society, the more varied we will be in the way we see, understand, and experience the world.
Let that land. The more perfect we all are, the more different from each other we will be.
The drive to find the best way to finally get control over complexity, uncertainty, and volatility will sooner or later end in violence, he argues. Universality breeds death.
We have been driving the Hero’s Journey for so long, and so far, we are in danger of finding ourselves on the depleted soil of a monomyth.
Let's examine three constrictions of the Hero's Journey so that we can open ourselves to new experiences, explanations, and stories that might help us liberate ourselves from the monomyth's grip on our leadership.
Constriction 1: Hero's Perspective Only
The Hero's Journey requires tricking our perspective. It is the story told through the eyes of the hero and limited to the way the hero sees the world. It suffers from solipsism, a self-centered lack of awareness, and a single perspective to the exclusion of other perspectives.
Humans tend to suffer from the main character syndrome. We believe the main story is about us. We see our story, the story in which we are the protagonist, as the story. We have all met leaders who suck up the majority of the oxygen in the room and expect all participants to contribute to the story they have already written for themselves in their heads.
I am not being judgmental here. I am still in recovery from it myself.
In reality, where we actually live, there are other stories at play. If I see myself as being on a Hero’s Journey, however, I need others to play the roles I need them to play.
You know what happens next, right?
In a world where a hero monomyth shapes our imagination, everyone expects to be at the centre of the story. Even when there is every reason to agree, use opposing views to find a solution, or play only a supportive role to create a better world, we do not choose to do so. We are conditioned to feel like we are somebody only if we focus on our opinions.
We are drowning in opinions.
Not clarity, not inspiration, not shared values, but nauseating contrarianisms. It is a pyramid scheme of heroes. Heroes are taking over the heroes, who are taking over the heroes, where we eventually all lose—a contrarian hell.
But, deep inside, we know: other stories don’t exist to serve ours. To love and lead, we let others have their own stories in which they see us differently. Perhaps we are a villain in their story. Or a victim. Or, even better, we both live in a story that is different or larger than heroes colliding with villains, in which the same villains see themselves on Hero’s Journeys of their own.
As a human, I have the capacity to realize that my perspective is not the only perspective. My story is not the only story. Who I am is not only about me. It is also largely about how I am seen and experienced by others. As Spanish poet Antonio Machado puts it, "An eye is an eye not because you see it; an eye is an eye because it sees you."
There is nothing wrong with telling a story from the hero's point of view. A lot is cut out, though. Too much. Nigerian author Chinua Achebe says, 'Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.' Everything, literally everything (including our planet), but the hero and his beloved story is expendable.
Constriction 2: Villains Wanted
Another limitation of the Hero's Journey is the way it creates tension in the story. Every story that commands our attention and draws our hearts needs a conflict or, at the very least, a contrast. Without a conflict, there would be no story. The issue here is how Hero’s Journey creates the story's conflict.
When leadership work becomes difficult or overwhelming, we have a favourite starting point: a villain. Someone, somewhere, is doing this to us. To regain control, we need to identify and vanquish the villain. We believe our world would be better without it.
Notice how in the Hero's Journey, the villain is expendable. There is neither redemption nor a future for the villain. There is an evil, a mistake, or a problem. It is the other. We do not have to understand, live with, or certainly not learn from the villain. God forbid we find the villain in ourselves.
And in the world where everyone wants to be a hero, everyone needs a villain of one kind or another. Stories in which the roles of heroes, villains, and victims are the only roles available push us apart and antagonize us. While everyone loves a hero, who wants to be the villain?
Or the victim? In these kinds of stories, victims are story extras or, to name them more directly, passives. Think of employees, consumers, the public, or the planet. They have to be conquered, saved, served, or entertained. The story offers them no agency.
“Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy,” writes F. Scott Fitzgerald. The monomyth has left us in a perpetual cycle of conflict. Sometimes, it seems as if we live in a Groundhog Day scenario. The villain and the hero play a zero-sum game to the bitter end, setting the stage for the next cycle in the spiral of destruction. The result is an exhausting and increasingly tedious repetition of establishing the next king of the hill, cage-fight champion, or a winner who takes all. In many ways, modern history is a story that repeats itself over and over again, with heroes' departure, initiation, and return becoming three stages of not changing.
What if the world beyond the walls of the village is not villainous? What if that world just is? Like our world. What if the dark underworld is troubling but also kind and cooperative? What if the wild we fear is not evil or ungodly, and what if it does not need our hero to tame it or save it? What if the unknown is not only a source of danger but also a source of new and better questions and solutions we have been looking for all along? What if the unknown is reaching out to us in friendship?
Constriction 3: Superpowers Distraction
Over time, Hero’s Journey has become too predictable, a shortcut, really. One of the earliest and most notorious problems with ChatGPT has been how quickly it will make you into a hero. A hero has now become a tourist, with a curated journey into a liminal space. And that tourist now wants, nay, expects, a superpower.
In the Hero’s Journey, heroes used to be regular people who, among other things, discover their unique power. They stumble on it, or a mentor gives it to them, or they win it.
In the monomyth world, that is far from enough. We are all now talking about superpowers. Superpowers break the laws of ordinary life. They pull out an extraordinary sword and other feats that break the physical and every other aspect of our ordinary lives, but the ordinary life is where we all actually live. Superpower shrinks our larger, complex, and natural human abilities into a fetish. In other words, our pining for a superpower distracts us from what I would call commonpowers.
Commonpowers are powers that come from having an aware, curious, and courageous human experience. Coping, connecting, creating, relating, and contributing, to name a few. They are skills of human maturity. In other words, our ordinary lives can teach what no specialized book or training (even those on the topic of leadership) can. Developing our common powers is the most direct way to increase our leadership range, repertoire, and results.
We believe that superpowers will solve our problems “once and for all” and give us a sense of control. If we can wield fire at will, we can just incinerate those bastards attacking our walls. If we can make people laugh, we can bypass feeling uncomfortable by simply cracking a joke. You get the drift. Superpowers are a distraction.
Power is much more common. You have what you need, and others have what they need for us to do what we need to do. Hiding in plain sight, these powers are potent and available. If only we could let go of our paralyzing fascination with what we don’t have, and recognize what we already do.
I know, something is deflating about this.
You have probably walked away from a superhero movie exhilarated to face your own situation, only to realize there is no superpower in sight. Realizing that you are a common person, led by common people, who in turn lead other common people, can be a downer.
But if you stay with that difficult feeling long enough, the weather inside of you will change. You begin to feel the strength of something real arriving. Your ordinariness becomes a door into everything. To embrace yourself as ordinary is the way (perhaps the only way) to discover and live out one’s singularly unique calling in the world.
That deflating feeling is the experience of moving from fantasy (someone else’s journey) to a dream (of what is actually yours to do). Superpowers are for stories of control. Commonpowers are for stories of something greater: reality. And reality is better.
Done Pretending
As I came of age, I had three posters on the wall above my bed. The most idolized guru of my youth was David Bowie. Now, forty-five years later, I find his epic song “Heroes” prophetic. That anthem took me over the threshold of allowing myself to be different from other people and live a life I can call my own.
I remember singing it back then with my freshly colored turquoise hair, fantastical purple pants, and newfound freedom to be myself. His soaring voice declared, “We can be heroes, just for one day.”
Notice his qualifier, however, “Just for one day.”
That is it. Have your turn to be a hero, for a day.
That is plenty. More than that, would that really be sustainable for you? For others?
Okay, take a year, or, if necessary, ten years. But then go on with the task of finding stories other than the hero’s story you have inhabited for so long, no matter how awesome that story might have seemed when you first encountered it. There are different ways to see, experience, and act in the world.
What if you are not on the Hero’s Journey? What journey are you on? What else is out there?
The invitations to the good old myth will keep coming to each one of us from all directions: “Become the hero of your own story!” I hope that now you know, and cannot un-know, that for that to work, you need to pretend that your story is the only one that matters to you.
But we are done pretending. When we stop and think about it, we cannot, and we don’t want to, control the world, even the corner of the world that we lead. We want to discover, be turned around, and right side up. Leadership, at its best, is not a matter of control but of surprise, including the surprise of finding ourselves in a story we have never imagined before.
Don't Lose Heart
These are the times of myth-famine. Both religious and scientific myths have been steadily deteriorating, losing their potency to inspire and ground human thriving. Communism is dead. Its longer-living twin brother, capitalism, is on the deathbed, pretending to be the greatest hero ever. You might have a global myth that you see to add to this list.
The truths behind many of these myths no longer ring true. There is no timelessness and boundlessness to them. They are not useful anymore, too small to inspire and ground us.
Yet, in my daughter’s generation and among people from around the world, I notice that people come alive when someone tells a story that interrupts the tired patterns of symbiosis, ecology, revolution, friendship, pilgrimage, and magic, even in the stark worlds of business, economy, and politics.
When I immigrated to the United States, the most popular American phrases I encountered were startlingly violent. “You killed it.” “You are dead in the water.” Then there were also empowering (and less boring) ones, such as “You got this.” It assumes that you already have what it takes and witnesses to you that you are not alone.
So, let’s not lose heart.
We got this. While the loud and powerful are falling asleep at the wheel of imagination, in the clandestine places invisible to unsuspecting people like many of us, new and better myths are being born, like new stars. These myths in the making are so new, tender, and powerful that we cannot even recognize them yet. As our disoriented hearts are taking the necessary time to grieve the myths that are dying, away from our sight, new ways of being kind, strong, and wise are being discovered and practiced in thousands of communities of young, old, divergent, and inexplicably good and resilient humans in every corner of the world.
(originally published in Developing Leaders Quarterly, August 2025)
💎 LEADERSHIP TOOL 💎
Are you stuck in hero mode?
This is a 2-minute self-check—a mirror, not a metric. Ten quick prompts help you spot “hero-mode” reflexes, then pick one tiny 48-hour experiment to try.
Use it solo: notice your patterns, reduce control-anxiety, and make one purposeful shift.
Use it with your team: create shared language, defuse hero-vs-villain loops, and align on one small experiment everyone tries.
NOTE: It’s available to read below for paid subscribers of The New Glossary. A printable PDF that includes both the tool and this article is attached.