The Evolution of Archetypes
7 New Archetypes for Taking on Entrenched Power
Identity is the oldest existential hunger. It is a feeling unique to humans. We were born as a species and as individuals with a desire to know who we are and why we matter. It is from this drive that mythology, religion, and philosophy were born.
Carl Jung was a pioneer in blending mythology with psychology. After splitting with Freud, he dedicated his work to mapping the collective unconscious, the shared psychological substrate where humans across cultures keep finding the same characters waiting for them. He found the same figures in every tradition: the Hero in the war stories, the Sage in the wisdom traditions, the Mother in the creation myths, the Trickster in the folktales, and the Shadow in the nightmares. Jung argued these figures live inside us as patterns of psychic energy, and whether or not we recognize them, they are a key driver of our identity and personality.
Then, business consultants got their hands on Jung’s archetypes.
Sometime in the late twentieth century, somebody figured out that Jung’s archetyping model made for excellent personality marketing. Consultants pulled the archetypes out of their psycho-spiritual home and repurposed them as products. Then Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson published “The Hero and the Outlaw” in 2001 and paved the way for personality assessments to become an industry. Suddenly, every consultant had a deck of twelve archetypes for sale. Brands became Heroes or Magicians or Caregivers. Leaders became Rulers or Sages or Visionaries based on a quiz score.
The Shadow quietly disappeared, because the Shadow was bad for business. When you ignore the Shadow and also strip the spiritual function out of an archetype, what remains is a sales pitch. The frameworks went corporate, and once they went corporate, they began doing what corporate things do: they became institutionalized. They began protecting their own existence. They began selling stories of change while secretly serving the people who benefited from not changing.
Three archetypes that are the root cause of suffering.
Most of the leadership archetypes still in circulation are either institutional, meaning they exist to keep things the same, or extractive, meaning they exist to take more than they give. Three particular archetypes are so obviously obsolete that celebrating them serves as a kind of moral/ethical clarity test.
The Predator (case study: Donald Trump). The Predator treats every human encounter as a transaction with a winner and a loser. He has been the dominant business archetype in American capitalism since the late 1800s. The Predator created the cultural permission for ordinary cruelty to be acceptable and even admirable.
The Maximizer (case study: Jack Welch). The Maximizer treats human beings as inputs in a profit equation. Welch ran General Electric like a rendering plant for two decades. His doctrine of ranking and yanking the bottom ten percent every year produced a generation of executives who confused brutality with rigor. The Maximizer’s worldview still dominates the C-suite of most publicly traded companies in America, which is one reason most publicly traded companies in America seem morally vapid. This archetype may have produced the financial returns it promised, but at enormous spiritual cost.
The Solo Visionary (case study: Elon Musk). The Solo Visionary treats his instincts as more reliable and more sacred than the people who build the things he takes credit for. Every credible study of how breakthrough work happens has discredited the myth of the lone genius. Yet, the Solo Visionary archetype persists because it flatters the egos of men who refuse to tolerate being one of many. Not coincidentally, it is the modern Solo Visionary that has the most fascist tendencies.
I’m not saying the older archetypes are useless. The Sage and the Outlaw, for example, still speak to genuine human capacities and could evolve to fit the era we are now in. But the three archetypes I mentioned above still determine the large majority of business orthodoxy, and until they are truly gone, we will struggle to change any institutionalized system.
Everything evolves.
In an earlier piece, I opined that spiritual life has to evolve with the life you are living, or it dies. As I put it then: “spiritual practices are alive. They either fit the life you are actually living or they atrophy, and atrophied practices leave the interior unguarded.” The same logic applies to archetypes. A psychological model frozen in 1955 fails to describe what humans need to become in 2026. Such a model has nothing useful to say about climate collapse, oligarchic capture, AI-mediated reality, and the mass spiritual desolation that gave rise to all of them.
We need archetypes that have evolved past extraction and domination; archetypes that point toward a future we have a chance of building rather than preserving a past that only a few benefit from. We need archetypes that are pro-human and anti-power. We need archetypes that are heart-centered; hierarchies that utilize wisdom and intuition, not archetypes that are reliant on hierarchies and resource-hoarding.
Seven Proposed Archetypes for Modern Life
Over the past year, I have been pondering, researching, and defining a set of archetypes. They were formed out of this question: What archetypes do we need to evolve as a species? Or less eloquently, what archetypes do we need to blow shit up? As mentioned above, these archetypes are heart-based and rooted in the traditions of wisdom and intuition. As such, they tend to be more feminine, not necessarily in gender but in energy.
From a structural perspective, I based them on the same pillars I built “F the Formula” on:
Ontology
Axiology
Systems Thinking
Spiritual Intelligence
The Revealer
We live in the Too-Much-Information Age, where data has overwhelmed the truth so thoroughly that the human capacity for discernment has begun to collapse. The Revealer cuts through all of this to reveal the “hidden obvious”: the things that people fail to see because they are looking in the wrong places and/or have a subconscious incentive to not see it. The Revealer can identify the root cause of a problem, but her real gift is being able to align a root cause with a readily available solution that doesn’t cost an organization more money or resources, but does cost them their ego and addiction to perpetuating problems to justify their existence.
My friend and client, Nathalie Trouillot, is a Revealer. She can see how power dynamics create blind spots, how conflict-avoidance is creating unnecessary drama, and how a CEO’s ego is subconsciously perpetuating solvable problems.
The Activator
The Activator is a complexity scientist with the skills to know where to push to activate change in a system. The Activator sees the interconnectedness of systems and understands that change doesn’t happen through a singular source or “hero”. The Activator understands that systems protect themselves, and that lasting change requires interrupting the protection mechanism rather than addressing symptoms. The Activator has the gift of tapping into the collective intelligence of an organization or community, which makes her dangerous to leaders who hoard information.
My partner in all ways, Dr. Virginia Lacayo, is an Activator. She teaches leaders to think from a systemic perspective so they stop reacting to symptoms and start noticing patterns, especially related to where power concentrates and who benefits from things staying the same.
The Curator
The Curator reframes ancient wisdom for present conditions. Wisdom is never lost, but it is often forgotten. Or it is assumed that if it is old it is no longer relevant. The Curator reminds us that we are part of a long lineage and that our problems, while novel in their particulars, are the same problems humans have been solving for thousands of years. The Curator’s gift is more than just the recovery of wisdom; they are also skilled at reframing it to modern times and circumstances in a way that is accessible and non-exploitative.
Ryan Holiday is the master Curator of Stoicism, reintroducing the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, et al to modern life. My friend, G. Brian Benson, is also a Curator. I refer to him as this generation’s Mr. Rogers because he curates gentleness, kindness, and optimism in an era of deep cynicism and manufactured reality.
The Skeptic
The Skeptic is the “red teaming” archetype. He challenges assumptions, especially the ones held by people with the authority to silence dissent. The Skeptic reminds us that proximity to power degrades the quality of thinking, and that an organization’s confidence in its own conclusions tends to track inversely with their accuracy. The Skeptic’s gifts are how to use critical thinking and a deep knowledge of cognitive biases to cut through the fog of bullshit that inevitably gathers around power centers and clouds reality.
My friend and frequent collaboration partner, Bryce Hoffman, is the master Skeptic of corporate strategy. He is the only civilian ever to graduate from the U.S. Army’s elite Red Team Leader course and is the founder of Red Team Thinking. They help clients stress‑test strategies and plans, uncover hidden biases, threats and missed opportunities, and strengthen decision‑making in complex, uncertain environments.
The Connector
Most leaders chase outcomes and treat the people involved as a means to those ends. The Connector believes the exact opposite: relationships come first, and everything else follows from them. He believes in the Law of Reciprocity and gives without keeping score, trusting that the right outcomes will come from people who know him and trust him. The Connector’s is borrowed from The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann, the book that established the principle that your influence is determined by how generously you serve others, and that giving without expectation is the most reliable path to receiving.
Steve Harper is a master Connector, but more than that, he created an operating model for being a Connector. He calls it the Ripple Effect, a methodology and philosophy that puts generosity and authenticity above any networking technique.
The Doula
This archetype pays homage to the spiritual lineage of the midwife, the guide who stands in the crease between the mystical and the material and helps makers bring something new to the world. The Doula in leadership and creative work is exactly that: a guide who works at the threshold where the maker’s interior vision crosses into form, and whose role is to keep the passage open while the new thing arrives. The Doula’s gift is the ability to tune in to the maker and suggest the right move and the right moment. The Doula reminds us that the power to create is already inside the maker.
Rick Rubin is the canonical Doula. Artists come to him because he has a kind of spiritual “perfect pitch”. He listens to what they are trying to bring into the world and makes it sound more like the artist than they ever could on their own. He has crossed the rubicon between the mystical and material many times, but has never become a formula or a cliche. My friend, Shaun Tinney, is also the Doula archetype, working with entrepreneurs and creators to close the “knowing–doing” gap with small, repeatable practices that gradually reshape your life and leadership His book, Practice Everything: The Art of Realizing Your Potential, teaches that life itself is a creative practice and invites you to meet resistance, self-doubt, and distraction as raw material rather than obstacles.
The Heretic
The Heretic questions everything that allows an institution to maintain its power. Her gift is the courage to ask these questions out loud and in public, in front of the power centers that want to crucify her. The Heretic calls out those benefiting from keeping things the same, including the enablers. The Heretic is not a contrarian because by asking these questions, she is revealing a new path forward. The Heretic reminds us that great leadership is measured by the questions a leader is willing to ask, not by the answers they defend.
Reshma Saujani is the Heretic archetype. She broke with mainstream corporate feminism by directly challenging Sheryl Sandberg’s “lean in” philosophy that placed the burden on women to fix themselves while leaving the system unchanged. Her message was simple but heretical: stop fixing women, start fixing the system. Saujani turned her heresy into action with Moms First, a federal policy campaign that mobilized over a million people to advocate for paid leave and affordable childcare, positioning both as essential economic infrastructure rather than personal benefits.
No One’s Calling Is to Keep Things the Same
To feed the desperate need for identity and differentiation, new pseudo-archetypes are constantly popping up.
The “change agent” has changed nothing. He has a slide deck based on his last CEO gig in 2017 and a few retainers that pay his mortgage.
The “disruptor” became the incumbent, sold his business and his soul to a PE firm, and now keynotes about work-life balance.
The “thought leader” has one thought. He repeats that thought across three books his ghostwriter wrote and a podcast with guests who owe him a favor.
The “guru” sells a meditation app, a supplement line, and a plant medicine retreat - with NDAs his last three women team members signed on their way out.
None of these people change shit. If any of them had, the Predator, the Maximizer, and the Solo Visionary would still not have so much power. If they had changed anything, organizational leaders wouldn’t be working on the same fucking problems. All they have done is figure out how to monetize the flaws in the current system without paying the cost of actually changing them.
An archetype is not a label; it is an identity. The Predator, the Maximizer, and the Solo Visionary have held power for so long because they went all in, even if all-in was manipulative, abusive, and ugly. That is the only lesson to learn from them. These seven new archetypes deserve the same seriousness and level of commitment. Whichever archetype you are drawn to has to be lived fully and defiantly, in front of people who can punish you for it. Otherwise, the archetype joins the consulting graveyard.
The only way to keep your archetype from becoming a cliché is to live it fully.
Love this. Sharing
Wow. Brilliant. Thank you. And very much needed.