Years ago, when I was reading one of my favourite business books, The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge, I came to a halt as a shock of realisation hit me. I was reading the introduction, and a specific sentence caught my attention immediately. It had something profound in it that made me stop and think. The sentence was written by W. Edwards Deming, and it was:
“Our prevailing system of management has destroyed our people.”– W. Edwards Deming, American management theorist
The book was published in the nineties, and in my experience, our prevailing system still has this flaw. Certainly, we have made progress in the field of management, but in all honesty, we keep destroying our people. The signs are everywhere around us. Our jobs are becoming more demanding and only a few organisations fully support their people. It’s becoming the norm that people burnout sooner or later in their careers.
As I think about these things, the more I’m convinced that something essential is genuinely missing. There is something invisible in organisations and the way we communicate that is destroying us. An organisation is nothing more than a group of people in communication – hopefully with a sense of direction. And yet, even when we follow the best management guidelines, we end up with conflicts and stagnation. Eventually all organisations fail to keep everyone happy and empowered. The honeymoon will be over.
You may argue that when organisations grow, discontentment is a natural consequence. We grow out of the tribe – just too many people. Yet this problem occurs even in smaller groups. Sometimes, even leading yourself in daily life becomes a management problem. The size of the organisation doesn’t matter – you matter.
Connecting the Rotating Cogwheels
Leadership starts with you – the individual – and then, through our relationships, we affect others. Organisations are complex adaptive systems in which the relationships between people are dynamic, and a single person’s behaviour doesn’t necessarily affect the behaviour of the whole. The inner and outer effects of these kinds of systems are impossible to predict. More or less, the actual power of a single human being is dependent on the prevailing culture. Either it supports or diminishes it.
I love systems theory because it helps me see the relationships in context and in a broader view. It gives a perspective on how to look at things and understand the intrinsics of how things operate. Eventually, all systems are connected to larger systems and, thus, even larger systems. This can go almost indefinitely depending on how we define the overall system's layers, resembling enclosed cogwheels rotating in different phases.
Throughout history, we have seen how movements can be tracked down to a single individual who started it all. Every individual carries a lot of power within, which can be used to affect others around them. And this is why mythology is crucial for us on the leadership path. It helps us to find that inner power, and at the same time, it shows how to lead without destroying ourselves in the process. If we learn to lead ourselves, we can lead others.
The Hidden Source of Destruction
We have been granted great mental powers, but without the proper practice, we are bound to create destruction within and around us. Life around us is in constant ebb and flow, and we are bound to face moments of hardships. In these situations, the hidden self comes out of the shadow. The conditioning we have inside will make us act in the most senseless ways. Emotions are complicated to put into words, and we are governed by them. That’s just the way we are built. We react to situations by our emotions. Yet our emotions are misleading. Our emotions have been moulded by our experiences – the memories we carry.
Ultimately, we need to recognise the right course of action. It is hard to intuitively always know what to do. When we lack the strength to push forward, we surrender to the power of our unconsciousness. If you are not calling the shots, you don’t have authority over yourself - and you won’t have authority in the eyes of others, either. True authority comes from the integrity one has within, and this is reflected in one's outer behaviour. Authority keeps the cogwheels rotating.
This is the moment we have the wisdom of the past to guide us. We need to communicate within ourselves through metaphors. Mythology and its symbolism are the grammar used to develop that language. It opens our understanding in a way that our everyday language cannot. Only through the right metaphors can we understand the inner wisdom we have. We need metaphors to bring knowledge to the surface – to our consciousness. We must change the language to change how we think and see the world.
Giving Meaning to Metaphors
An essential part of understanding mythology is to have real-life experiences to which you can relate the hidden symbolism. Joseph Campbell has called this “living the myth.” When you can see the connection between the myth and its symbolism in your life, you can use the metaphors to guide you. The union of gnosis (spiritual knowledge) and experience is the key to wisdom.
If you think about the Yin and Yang symbol, it represents the equilibrium and ultimate harmony of things that are all present in nature. It is that harmony we are also seeking to achieve within. It can be manifested as the harmony of work-life balance, or it may represent the masculine-feminine polarity in you. The symbol is there, and you make the connection that resonates. The symbolic meaning helps us to create order where there was no order before. The Yin and Yang symbol goes even further; look closely, and you will see that both sides encompass the other, and this is the higher meaning. This symbol guides us beyond logic – and when we are ready, we will understand its wisdom.
You may be thinking about how this can work, and the answer is quite simple: we humans share quintessentially the same emotional and psychological experiences even though the outside premises would differ. Our unique personal experiences are fundamentally the same as those people have shared collectively for thousands of years. Myths deal with these experiences from a psychological point of view, providing symbolism that we translate into our inner language. We need this language to guide us in taking the right action.
Leadership of Right Action
Leadership is defined by the actions we take. Thinking, saying, doing, and even breathing are forms of activity and, thus, actions. These actions are regarded as the karma we carry or set forth, and we have to take responsibility for the consequences of our actions. We are bound to live by our karma – our actions.
Seth Godin mentioned in his brilliant book Tribes that: “[leadership] is about creating change that you believe in.” The sentence points out two critical things. Firstly, belief is a crucial element of leadership. If you have belief, you will have the power to change things. Secondly, as leaders, we want to create change. Change is built in our world, and we want to be active members of the change.
The power of mythology is sometimes presented by artists who draw their inspiration from the depths of the collective unconscious. It’s not surprising to find the same wisdom presented in the arts, which is later discovered by others.
“When the spirit is strong, only a little is needed to create the world.”– Juice Leskinen, Finnish singer-songwriter
This quote from Juice Leskinen has the same message for leaders as the one by Seth Godin. Instead of belief, we have the word “spirit”, which translates to faith. Faith suggests a deeper trust and confidence than belief. Thus, faith has more power than belief. Believing is like venturing into the unknown, whereas faith is knowing the unknown. The last sentence points out the same theme of creating change, which was also found in Godin’s words. This is the path of action.
Leskinen has also underlined the fact that the strength of the faith makes creation easier – and this is a crucial thing to understand. His use of words opens a new perspective on the essential thing that mythology tries to teach us: finding that inner power that can affect the world around us. The power of your actions comes within, and things around you will align with your actions.
Here, we need a good moral compass to guide our faith and actions. The actions and morality always correspond with one's true self and the ego. When we connect to our true selves and comprehensively understand our psyche, we will inevitably take the right actions. This is also one of the central teachings of Bhagavad Gita, in which young Arjuna seeks Krishna's advice to take proper action in war against his relatives.
Weaving Everything Together
We started with the problem of management and how communication is the key to successful leadership. This entails leading organisations and yourself. The first thing is to start within oneself – the first cogwheel. We must build the correct language to deal with our psyche to excel in this. We simply lack the right metaphors. Metaphors are needed to create the language, and mythology provides the key to unlock that language. This leads to understanding oneself better. We need to understand ourselves to take the right action. Actions create the path – taking you where you want to be.
You may ask, what is the aim of mythology? In simplicity, it is to free our mind and bring awareness where there is unconsciousness. Becoming more aware of one’s mind has interesting effects. As mentioned before, it grants authority over yourself and, thus, others also. We start to understand the cause and effect of our actions better, and we can focus our minds on not repeating those harmful actions. This is the moral compass that we have built-in. Bringing awareness to one’s mind will always lead to morally right decisions as we start seeing ourselves as an integral part of nature. We cannot act against nature if we are conscious of our actions.
“Aho mitakuye oyasin” is a phrase used by the Lakota people of North America. It translates to “all my relations”. Lakota people have already understood the same principle that systems theory tries to teach us – it is the importance of relations that counts. Without relations, there is no system. What is also important to understand is that this short sentence is used as a prayer to heal and improve these relations – the relations within you and with other people. This is the power of mythological wisdom; it can be used in practical ways to teach us to be better human beings.
In this journey, we need to have the proper guidance. We want to avoid the painful work that Sisyphus was condemned to do. Pushing boulders up the hill for an eternity is not something we want to end up doing. The knowledge passed down to us through mythological stories and symbols can guide us so we don’t get stuck with ourselves. We are inherently free, and we need to learn this again.
I hope you have enjoyed this article which serves us as an introduction for the upcoming mythological themes and their relation to leadership. We will unveil these stories and teachings together, and hopefully they will show us the wisdom we seek.