Hi folks.
I took my son scrambling up the Tors of Dartmoor the other day. And have you ever noticed, like when you have climbed trees when you were a child, that bit when you turn around to go down… and all of a sudden you regret how high you climbed! Remember that?
Going down looks harder than you realised. In the going up, we just kept reaching for the next branch – going down well, that can be a little trickier… Let’s call it the Return. And this is what Homer’s The Odyssey is all about. Winning at Troy was like getting to the top of the tree, that’s all he ever thought about. He has spent ten years climbing up, now he has to get down…
In his book the Hero’s Journey, Joseph Campbell, said that the Return is always tricky and fraught with danger. It’s difficult for a number of reasons:
- One, we don’t want to – once we have been off on an adventure, we find the magic of the other world, we reach our goal, and it feels so good and enticing that we don’t want to come back.
- Two, it’s difficult because we feel changed and we don’t know how we’re going to fit in when we go back to our old lives. Have you ever been on an extended trip overseas and found it difficult to fit in again?
- And, three, it’s difficult because the way we got there isn’t necessarily the way we’re going to get home.
All three of these themes show up in The Odyssey, which I revisited about 3 years ago when I was staying in central London and passed a bookshop called Judd’s. It cost me a couple of quid for Chapman’s version, written in 1616, so it was a bit of work as you can imagine. I am now on my 5th version – and they are all slightly different.* That is the thing about storytellers, they all have their own angle.
Take the Greek word “poutropon” or polytropic, which means “turning many ways”:
The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way wound with his wisdom to his wished stay. (Chapman)
Sing to me of the man, Muse, of the man of twists and turns, driven time and again off course… (Fagles)
Does this refer to just the journey, or to Odysseus’s character himself? From my view, it’s clearly both, yet we don’t see the latter so much in Nolan’s latest version. The trickster god Hermes, is also called polytropic… And this trickiness is central to Odysseus as it is both the cause and the cure of many of his troubles. But whatever version you like, there are many topics in The Odyssey that still resound, 2500 years later…
Where are you going?
For a start, you can’t have road-movie without a destination – even if it’s a metaphorical one. In the Odyssey, its Ithaca, Odysseus’s home, where the family he longs for sit patiently waiting for him. There are times when he weeps because he is at an absolute loss as to how to get home. But he perseveres. He bears innumerable hardship and escapes death about ten times by my reckoning. Yet he keeps going… That is some serious resilience. Having some version of an Ithaca can therefore be an essential ingredient to surviving tough times.
Do you have something that will make you bear the hardships that you will inevitably face? If not now, at some point in your life? What keeps you going? What is your “Ithaca”?
Facing impossible choices
Another of my favourite allegories from the Odyssey is the challenge where Odysseus has to sail between the Scylla and Charybdis. This is a story I’ve used many times in my leadership training as a provocation: What do you do when you’re facing no good options?
How would you guide your people through such a challenge? What is the right amount of information to share? In this case he has received some wise counsel from Circe, who has told Odysseus what is going to happen: He has to do is sail up close to the 6-headed monster Scylla, which has these giant dog-like heads – and they are going to probably eat 6 of his people. But if he doesn’t do that, he’ll end up in Charybdis, a giant whirlpool, and the whole boat will sink, and EVERYBODY will die. And then she tells him that if tells his crew, they will never make it because they will freak out and everything will be lost…
You wouldn’t really wish that choice on anybody.
These days, as things are in so much flux and uncertainty, leaders are having to make choices that aren’t necessarily great for anybody: Whether it’s layoffs, price rises, cutbacks, changes in the way things are done to meet regulation, or avoid scrutiny, or just the upheaval caused by AI. All of these things are leading people to make choices where something is going to be lost, or someone is going to lose out…
In The Odyssey, we realise these moments are not avoidable, and that one day we are destined to have to face them. So how will we face it?
- Will we run scared or avoid the decision altogether?
- Will we do the “right thing” and tell everyone all the facts and risk paralysis or stagnation?
- Will we charge full steam ahead, as if we were invincible?
No option leaves us unscathed. But to avoid the scars doesn’t necessarily help anyone. In fact, when we meet the weight of such challenges, I believe, we kindle our growth.
It is a similar way to finding power within the family constellations that I practice. For example, people who have had a bad experience with their family, often rebel and run away, or at least try to live a life in opposition to their past. Sometimes that can be useful. But what transpires when we do that, is that we’re actually still in connection, reacting TO our family of origin. This actually makes us the weaker party – for the past is still governing our choices. We can actually be trapped by that dynamic. One of the healing moments is to come back and be grateful and to own their parents – with all their flaws – for without them, they would never have been here. It’s kind of a minimum act that people can do to create release. When people do this, they find a kind of power – their past loosens its grip somewhat.
Now, what’s that got to do with Odysseus and the leader’s journey? Well, instead of trying to run away from these difficult moments in our life, or instead of trying to make things different from how they are, or live in the clouds and not make the difficult decision, we need to face them and make the hard choices. It’s an imperfect choice, and one that gives us more authenticity and trustworthiness. Because now we are able to turn into the difficult decision and embrace them. People know who we are.
Sometimes the choices that we’ve got to make are very, very difficult. And trying to make ourselves feel good about them can actually be a kind of sabotage. Sometimes we have to bear the guilt of doing things that aren’t great.
Yet it’s more powerful to bear the guilt of doing something that isn’t great. We’re not doing anything at all to avoid the guilt. Not avoiding the discomfort of the feelings of letting people down. It is a brave person who can face that. That isn’t to say we should behave abhorrently, only that we may face situations where we can’t be “the good guy.”
This is where I differ most from Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey in my interpretation of Odysseus. In his recent film version, Odysseus, and quite rightly from some points of view, is full of guilt. I mean, he’s done a lot of things, (a lot of things!) that he’d probably wish he hadn’t. But I’m not sure that’s Homer’s writing of him – because what good does his guilt do, other than make him a gormless martyr? How does it help him or anyone else going forward?
As a result, Matt Damon’s Odysseus is a kind of flattened character, like some sort of Archetypal “strong and silent” type male hero who bears things silently and does what needs to be done. His faults are diminished. But Homer and others paint him differently: Odysseus is actually conniving. He even tries to get out of going to the Trojan War in the first place by pretending he’s mad! I mean he’s a deceitful, tricky little wretch – not at all how he comes across in Nolan’s Odyssey.
And while there is something good in having examples of men who just do what needs to be done and bear it, I don’t think it’s authentic. I think what’s more important, especially for leader’s these days with all the chaos, is for people to see the nuances: In themselves and in the world. Embracing this complexity, we can learn to accept the uncomfortable dynamics and lean into them, not sugar-coat them or wish them away.
So how do we bear and make the difficult decisions in a time of disruption and chaos? Are we putting off hard decisions because we don’t like how the guilt will make us feel? In other words, are we putting our own comfort ahead of making the difficult decisions that need to be done. That’s one of the themes I’ll be exploring in my workshop on The Odyssey.
What are you taking responsibility for?
The opening of the Odyssey, an irritated Zeus complains that humans like to blame the gods for everything, when actually a lot of their misfortune is of their own making:
What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own wickedness that brings them suffering worse than any which Destiny allots to them.[i]
But we’ve all been there, we’ve all liked to blame something or someone else when things go wrong. Even now, as AI starts to assume an almost god-like status in our culture^, we’re blaming it for all our woes. AI itself is starting to become a scapegoat:
“In February 2026, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the dynamic directly: companies are blaming AI for workforce reductions they would have executed regardless…”[ii]
See these other statistics from FounderReports (italics mine):
- 80% of organisations piloting or deploying autonomous business technology have reduced their workforce. Gartner found no correlation between those reductions and improved ROI.
- Nearly 6 in 10 companies admit they frame layoffs or hiring slowdowns as AI-driven when the real reason is financial.
- Employment for workers ages 22 to 25 in AI-exposed occupations has declined about 13% since late 2022, while employment for older workers in the same fields held steady or grew.
There is no doubt AI is having an impact on jobs, especially at entry level, which may have repercussions down the line. However, it’s not necessarily as clear cut as people think. And we’re blaming AI for a lot more than actually it’s causing – just like the Gods in The Odyssey… This reveals another theme running throughout the story – What is, and what isn’t, within Odysseus’s control? Framing it for us: In place of the gods or fate in our lives, what we do have control over and what don’t we? Especially as we face such a tumultuous world? What are we to take responsibility for?
Being a good host
Finally, there is one theme that sits at the heart of The Odyssey, from the suitors in the Palace to the many islands Odysseus lands on – that is Xenia: Welcoming others and being a good host to the stranger. How do we look after people we don’t know?
This has its relevance today: From the political, like immigration and who’s welcome on our shores, through to the social, how do we speak to the Deliveroo rider or greet each other on the streets? How do we welcome new joiners, or clients into our organisations – do we make them feel welcome as a person first? Or just a transaction?
In Homer’s time, this was the mark of civilisation – that we treat strangers as we would like to be treated. A version of the Golden Rule. And all the different versions of how that can be done, or not, are played out in the Odyssey.
In summary, the key themes of the Odyssey that I have touched on here for leaders include:
- Finding home: What is your Ithaca? Do we have something close to our hearts that will make us bear the hardships that we will inevitably have to face, if not now, at some point in our lives
- How do we make choices when none of them are good? And how do we communicate about those choices in a way that’s justifiable, motivational, and effective? And beyond that, how do we inspire our people when they’ve been exhausted? And what is it about Odysseus that makes his men so loyal to him?
- How do we welcome others and respect their humanity? Indeed, some of us may need to do that with ourselves, whom we left long ago as we stormed the beaches of our conquests…
- What are you taking responsibility for? And what do you need to let go of because its out of your control? In Homer’s time, the gods were thought to walk among us and this was a humbling experience, for we knew our own fallibility. Is that the same for our leaders today?
- And a for a bonus: When has your ego got the better of you? There’s a moment of classic hubris— I mean Odysseus is hubristic, he’s a big ego-ed boy, and he can’t help but yell out to the cyclops, Polyphemus, “I am not nobody. I am Odysseus of Ithaca. So as the son of Poseiden, the god of the sea and the earthshaker, Polyphemus gets Odysseus and his crew cursed – and so begins their ten year journey home… So, yeah, in some ways the whole thing is his fault. It’s all down to his ego. But we all make mistakes. We’ve all been there. And how do we live with them?
These are just some of themes within The Odyssey. There are many more to be explored. But for now, I’ll end with that same bit I began. The Odyssey is about that return journey – how do we find our way back when we have given up our lives for a battle that is no longer relevant? Many of us have climbed our careers, become really successful at something. Now we turn around, and realise we’re completely unprepared for the next step. As AI, geo-political turmoil, longer droughts, just to name a few shake the foundation of our systems, how do we navigate it? Like the tree we climbed as kids, we don’t know how to go down – especially when everything was different when we climbed up.
So that’s one of my takes on The Odyssey. Stay tuned to explore this, and more when my workshop drops this autumn.
I can’t wait to share it with you!
*Footnote: I’ve absolutely loved reading it and rereading it. I started off with the Chapman version from the 17th century, which was you interesting and I still like the attempts at rhyme – even if the Greeks hadn’t done this. I’ve listened to it many times, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Stephen Fry’s version as well as E.V. Rieu’s, prose version. And I am currently grappling with Lattimer’s version – there’s a lot of different stuff out there. I’ve even read a few pages of Emily Wilson’s – it was a very heavy book, and as I was going on holiday and didn’t want to put that in my case, but I might get around to it as well. Happy exploring!
^This blog was not AI generated, all the writing is my own.
[i] p26, EV Rieu, The Odyssey, Penguin, 1966
This is a little rich of Zeus, given the whole Trojan war was caused by the gods interfering when they gave Paris a golden apple and asked him to choose which of three goddesses he favoured most… Would you want to piss off two of the most powerful beings in the solar system? Talk about a poisoned chalice!
[ii] https://www.techtimes.com/articles/318466/20260616/tech-layoffs-hit-1115-day-2026-companies-cite-ai-cuts-fail-boost-returns.htm