Hubris and leadership : the role of, and warning signs in, storytelling and mythmaking

Management scholars and psychologists have puzzled about how best to define and identify and measure hubris and hubristic tendencies, with only partial success. Such attempts try to help us see what lies behind the analogy to the ancient vice of hybris and its modern re-conceptualisation. In this chapter we explore how the processes of making metaphors work and how storytelling affects the teller and the audience. We examine what purposes storytelling serves, especially when its transformation achieves a mythic character. We do this by exploring where aesthetics and literary theorising intersect with evolutionary psychology, and by connecting that to management studies. This approach guides us to observations about the nature and practice of leadership that might signal hubris-in-the-making. That might just help us see when the dark side of modern hubris snuffs out its bright-side potential, and perhaps how to prevent it happening. Doing so may help leaders learn when and how not to believe their own storytelling (or press releases).