Hubris and Leadership: The Role of, and Warning Signs in, Storytelling and Myth-Making

Management scholars and psychologists have puzzled about how best to define, identify and measure hubris and hubristic tendencies, with only partial success. Such attempts try to help us see what lies behind the analogy between 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 achieves a mythic character. We explore where aesthetics and literary theorising intersect with evolutionary psychology, and by connecting that to management studies. This leads 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 doing so. This may help leaders learn when not to believe their own storytelling (or press releases).