Chapter 12
For this exercise, you will need:
- A whiteboard or flip chart with the Hero's Journey framework drawn on it in advance
- Sticky notes and markers
This is a continuation of the previous tool, Fractal Narratives. It is called out separately here because of the significance of this robust construct. To fully appreciate this process, you should review that previous chapter first.
Joseph Campbell was an anthropologist who studied the narratives that have defined cultures across the ages, and he identified the elements that were common to all of them. His resulting construct, the Hero's Journey (also known as the monomyth) represents the grand story that humanity keeps telling and living, over and over. It is a tremendous intellectual contribution to our understanding of what it means to be alive in this world. It is the underpinning of the world's great narratives, from religions to cultural touchstones, such as the Greek myths, that have defined civilizations.
But it's also a supremely intimate story. It is the journey each of us takes through this brief life as we struggle to become self-actualized beings.
Campbell wrote his classic book The Hero with a Thousand Faces1 in the 1950s, but it became a cultural sensation in the 1970s, when one of his young protégés—a filmmaker by the name of George Lucas—lifted the construct verbatim to become the outline for a science fiction film that he called Star Wars.
Today, Campbell's construct is massively influential, and is a staple of Hollywood screenwriting programs. (And, some criticize, it is responsible for the strong sense of sameness that plagues the plot lines of so many Hollywood blockbusters.)2
As the interest around organizational storytelling has grown, it has been only natural for people to look to the Hero's Journey or monomyth as a template for leaders to follow. Surely a model so timeless and so universally irresistible should be a model for leaders to emulate in their storytelling, right?
But as some leadership story practitioners have found, it doesn't work. Not quite.
The reason is that the Hero's Journey is the very definition of an epic. It is a massive story, and—unless you are compiling a detailed business history (as in the classic book Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco)—in practical leadership contexts it is not normally appropriate for stories to be scaled to such an all-inclusive arc. My experience of leadership storytelling is that it is often brief: short bursts of narrative that are contextually situated around a certain outcome, often just a few minutes in length. Most leadership stories have time for only a single pass through Freytag's dramatic arc of setup, action, climax, and conclusion. (See the description of Freytag's structure in Chapter 4, “Capturing Fire.”)
But it takes Star Wars, for example, more than 2 hours to cover all the chapters of Campbell's model. (If you're counting all three films of the original trilogy, 6, and more than 12 hours if you add in the prequels.)
As a result, some story practitioners have struggled with the big, unruly Hero's Journey for leadership applications.
But there is tremendous value here, and the Hero's Journey is an ideal framework for story mining. Here's how you can use it.
The Manager of a Thousand Faces
First, let's take a look at the Hero's Journey, and then we will come back to the leadership implications. I'm going to make my description exceedingly brief; furthermore, I am going to use the truncated version Christopher Vogler advocates in his classic Hollywood tome to screenwriting, The Writer's Journey.3 You will likely wish to go deeper, and many resources are available for you to plumb the depths of Campbell's vital work.4
As we walk through the steps of the journey, you may notice how quickly your mind is able to string the elements together and visualize them as a dramatic narrative, with easily recalled images from Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and more. (Even better, notice how these archetypal story elements have recurred in your own life and leadership.)
Broadly speaking, the Hero's Journey follows the adventures of a protagonist—who may be Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, or you as a leader—as he or she moves through a sequence of experiences that begins in an ordinary world and pulls him or her into an extraordinary world (also referred to as the underworld) that will be full of trials and tests that will require the hero to do exceedingly difficult things. Ultimately the hero prevails and returns to the ordinary world—but the hero is forever transformed by the experiences.
An Introduction to The Hero’s Journey
The Call to Adventure
It starts with a message. A recorded hologram of a beautiful princess saying, “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope,” or a magical owl carrying a special invitation to a young Harry Potter, who is locked under the stairs of a townhouse on Privet Drive. The call comes from an unfamiliar world, shakes us from our comfortable reality, and impels us to action and change.
Refusal of the Call
As the implications of the call start to dawn upon us—“We could die out there!”—we may hesitate or even experience fear. As the stakes become more evident, we may find ourselves clinging to comfort, like Bilbo Baggins looking for excuses to ignore Gandalf's invitation and hunker down in his hobbit hole in Bag End: “We [hobbits] are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!”
Meeting of the Mentor
The hero won't be alone. He or she will have support. He or she will be accompanied by a wise mentor (think Gandalf, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Dumbledore . . .) who can lead the hero to greater self-awareness, and provide resources and knowledge needed for the journey. But, ultimately, the mentor cannot take our place; we are ultimately destined to face our trials alone.
Here the Hero Crosses the Threshold and Enters the Special World (or Underworld).
As the hero finds his or her way about this very different world, he or she must learn new rules and adopt new ways of thinking. He or she will also encounter new personalities and will have to make tough judgments about their allegiances and agendas.
Approach
It becomes increasingly clear to the hero that he or she will have to ultimately face a difficult test: a Darth Vader, a Voldemort, or another force that will require the hero to summon enormous inner strength and courage. There must be a period of preparation for the coming ordeal. (Recall Luke Skywalker in training with Yoda.)
The Ordeal
Ultimately the hero will have to come face-to-face with his or her greatest nemesis, putting all of his or her deepest vulnerabilities to the test. There may be dark moments where it appears that all is lost.
The Reward
Just as Indiana Jones grabbed that golden idol from the Mayan temple, the successful navigation of the ordeal will lead to treasure, or something precious and valuable that the hero will take with him or her.
The Road Back
The story isn't over. There is a long path that leads back to the ordinary world, and the hero must traverse this road—often with the demons in hot pursuit.
Resurrection
Right on the precipice of home, the hero will encounter one last severe test—one that will purify him or her of any remaining weaknesses and liabilities. This may require a sacrifice, a moment of devastating loss that will be necessary so that the hero may experience rebirth and salvation.
Return with the Elixir
The hero returns home, but he or she is fundamentally changed. Nothing can ever be the same again. However, the hero now occupies his or her ordinary world with an elixir, a potion, a treasure, or perhaps a deeper truth or heightened awareness that will elevate the quality of existence for his or her community.
As you reviewed the steps of the Hero's Journey, did you find it easy to connect it to movies you've seen? Did you also recognize how those elements have been recurring themes in your own life and leadership?
The Hero's Journey is the story of you, your team, your future, and the difficult things that you are trying to create together. As such, it is a powerful construct for making sense of your experiences.
And it is a powerful construct for mining stories. Similar to the fractal constructs suggested in the previous chapter, it provides a framework for helping your team members or colleagues identify the most compelling stories that they should be telling. Similar to the process described there, we will use the Hero's Journey as a metanarrative to shape your team's experience.
Here's how to do it.
Introduce the Hero's Journey
Before the session begins, draw the Hero's Journey on a flip chart or whiteboard. You may use my image on the next page for inspiration.
After you have brought the team together, begin the process by describing the Hero's Journey. For many people this is a new set of ideas, and it requires some explanation (much like I just presented above). This is actually a benefit of the process. The Hero's Journey is unique in its power to fascinate, and when I describe the different steps, I find that it effortlessly draws people in. It's easy to understand, and it's fun. And people love the idea that their story of leadership may borrow from Hollywood's secret recipe for stories.
Connect Stories to the Stages of the Journey
Now it is time to begin the story mining. As always, you will need to frame how you ask the question. What is the bigger story or journey that you want to capture a series of smaller stories around? In framing the dialogue, you should provide a theme and a timeline.
Here are some examples of things that you might say to frame the dialogue. Notice how each of the following statements frames the specific journey and timeline:
Just think about everything that has happened since we started Project Epsilon 18 months ago!
Two days ago I brought you to this mountain retreat to talk about the future of our team. Tomorrow we return to our ordinary world. What a journey it has been!
Things have been challenging since the layoffs in January. Today we're going to talk honestly about what has happened since then.
We created this organization eight years ago with a big vision. Today we are preparing for our initial public offering (IPO). A lot has happened to lead us here!
Have participants first work individually and brainstorm stories for each of the steps. Working quietly and individually, they will think of a story or two to go with each step and then write a compelling title for that story on a sticky note.
Tell participants that they probably won't think of stories to go with every stage, and that's okay. Certain stages will jump out at them and they will recall important stories. Those are the best stories to capture.
As team members share their stories, they will gain a strong appreciation for the greater journey they are on . . . especially the future “chapters” that haven't happened yet.
Then bring them together, and have them place all of their sticky notes on the appropriate part of the model.
You'll probably have clusters of stories. Some stages may have no stories, and others will have a lot. That's not a problem. Your purpose here is not to bring every step of the monomyth to life but to recall the stories from your experience that matter most.
Depending on the time and the amount of sticky notes, you may choose certain titles—perhaps based on how compelling the title is, or how much urgency the teller feels to tell that particular story.
It is possible that participants will identify stories that are not directly related to one another. That's okay. The stories are not going to line up in a perfect series of chapters that build on one another. Within the timeline that you defined, there were multiple story lines, multiple mentors, and multiple ordeals, and they happened on different timelines. On the old TV westerns, they used to cut away from the main hero and say, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch . . .” to show some parallel action or secondary story line. Narrative is a flexible container that can accommodate all of these concurrent story threads.
As the facilitator of the storytelling, you can call out the similarities between these stories. “Wow, so there wasn't just that one big ordeal with the lawsuit. We were actually being tested from the very beginning!”
Option: Ordeal Storytelling and Prophesying Your Ending
The Hero's Journey construct can serve to reorient the team and create awareness of their bigger story. This can be an especially powerful exercise if the team is in the middle of the ordeal, if the work is becoming so challenging that you fear the team may be losing hope. In that case, the ending of the team's story hasn't happened yet. So, make the story session reflect that!
Before the team begin brainstorming individually, say to them: “We are in the middle of our story. We are in the ordeal. So only brainstorm stories for these first six stages—starting with the call to adventure up through the ordeal.” (Or you may choose later stages if you would like to include stories up through, say, the resurrection. You decide. You're the narrator, remember?)
The power of this is that it orients and changes the meaning of the current challenges, and gives the team a prophetic look into its future. Where does our story go next? We won't stay in the ordeal forever! We may survive this, or we may emerge battered and barely standing—but we will at some point return to our ordinary world with the elixir!
Where Do I Go from Here?
The Hero's Journey is a powerful construct for articulating your organization's strategy. Turn to Chapter 15, “Strategy Is a Story” for ideas on aligning your people to action within the Hero's Journey.
If you have prophesied the ending as described in the option above, you may choose to begin telling some future stories. So, what do that reward and return with the elixir look like? Spend some time defining this future using Future Story Spine (Chapter 9) or Creative Tension Pictures (Chapter 14).