The Origins of Leadership Archetypes

I recently sat down with Maria Campbell, VP of People at Griffin, to talk about the origins of the Leadership Archetypes framework and how it’s different from assessments like StrengthsFinder, DiSC, and Myers-Briggs. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

I'd love to know how you came to develop the Leadership Archetypes framework.

It was slow development and then really fast. I found the first archetype years ago when I was a Director of Career Development. I was working with this CEO, and I noticed he had this pattern where he would be focused on a 30,000-foot strategy or way down digging in the dirt, and everyone was like, "What are you doing? Please get out of this. Please stop trying to handle these things." I found it an interesting way of leading.

So that was the first one that I discovered. Over the years, I kept jotting notes about leadership styles. They were scattered about until 2020. I was working with tarot cards as a means of self-reflection, not predicting your future and all of that, but as a tool of introspection. I started thinking about Carl Jung's archetypes, because they're very connected to the tarot. From there the model started to take shape. That led to spending two days finalizing the model. So it was years of experience working with leaders and watching their patterns, and then it kind of flew out of me.

There's this kind of concept that there's one particular way to be leaderly, and yet your model has six ways. How do you reconcile the stereotype of leadership with having six different archetypes?

I think we look at leadership as there only being one way. We have this idea of what a leader looks like. The reality is that leadership looks lots of ways. When we say, "Leadership looks like this. This is what leaders look like," we actually do ourselves a disservice. One of the reasons I wanted to create the framework was to help people understand what other leadership styles look like because the reality is there isn’t just one that's successful. It depends on the situation, on the person, on a whole host of factors. When we say  "Leadership looks like this," we often mean the traditional stereotype of the tough, directive, and all of these sorts of very strong characteristics. This leaves out lots of different people and styles that are just equally as effective.

I feel that a lot. I remember getting feedback early in my career to be more “leaderly”, but no one could really describe what that meant. And I didn't see leaders who led in the way that I led. That stuck with me for a while.  When I saw the archetypes for the first time I felt really, really seen by them.

People do say "be more leaderly." Well, what does that mean? Did they describe to you what they meant?

No! I asked a lot of questions and they couldn't give me anything concrete to work with. I think a lot of the time, leadership is seen as this ephemeral quality that you either have or you don't. Like you know it when you see it, and there's only one way to do it properly.

What do you wish more leaders understood about their role in an organization?

Newer leaders, tend to struggle to make the transition from managing to leading, and what happens is they keep focusing down on their org. So they are focusing on their org and their people. I wish they looked across the org more. One of the biggest problems is leaders don't know how to navigate those peer relationships and work organizationally in a collaborative way. I think that's where a lot of problems really exist inside companies and leadership teams.

Yeah. I see that too. I see leaders who think their main allegiance is to the function that they lead, rather than to the organization as a whole.

Yep. They build relationships within their area really well, but they forget to build relationships outside their org that are so important for the work of leadership. This makes the work so much harder.

How do you see the interplay of archetypes working with your peers, rather than the function that reports to you? As a person designing a leadership team, how should I be considering balancing the archetypes?

It's interesting because people will say, "So I need to have one of every archetype? What's a successful team look like?" And the answer is, that it depends on what’s happening. We see a lot of certain kinds of archetypes at different phases. So let's say, at a startup phase, you might all be more similar because you're just trying to get this thing to be something concrete, find product-market fit, and a move towards revenue. But the task of leadership at a scaling company is quite different. So it really depends on what the team and company are trying to accomplish.

The other thing to think about is, if your team is really loaded with one archetype or one style of leadership, I think, well, what about the less prevalent styles? How does that interplay work so that you have a healthy balance? Because often what I find is a lot of people who are just trying to get things done in leadership teams. And maybe we have fewer of the folks who are thinking about that forward path, really thinking about the big challenges from a product perspective. Or we may have fewer people who are really thinking about risks and data and things like that. So it's all about, "How are we managing ourselves as a team?"

So it sounds like thinking about the archetypes in terms of what serves you at a particular space in your journey.

Yeah. The archetypes do work for the intrapersonal development of individual leaders but what they’re really aimed for is relationships between leaders and group dynamics of leadership teams. It's about how they work together and how we ease some of those problems at that layer. It's thinking about ourselves as an entity, as a leadership team, and, "What do we need now? What are the tensions? How can we leverage each other for better working relationships"

You talked about tarot earlier, we've talked about personality assessments, like Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinders and everything, as a lens to see the world through. And I think the Leadership Archetypes are really interesting because it's not like those, in a couple of key ways. But first I want to talk about, why specifically leaders? Because of Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinders, you can apply them to everyone that you work with. Whereas with the Leadership Archetypes, there's something kind of special there.

In my career, as a Director of Career Development, a consultant, and COO/Head of People I’ve had to take and administer all sorts of assessments. I have a complicated relationship with assessments. I like them and, they have limitations. For instance, StrengthsFinder. It's a powerful assessment for individual development. I use it with every leader I work with. It gives us a common language and helps me understand how they work.  It’s not just the top five you have but the interactions of those. For example, a former executive I worked with shared three out of the same top five but we were wildly different and people experienced us differently. So while StrengthsFinder is great for understanding yourself, it doesn’t really scale to the team level. There are 278,000 unique combinations of top-fives. This makes it difficult to use for teams.

I spent the last four years deeply thinking about the challenges of new leaders, understanding where they get stuck. Thinking about how their entrance changes the leadership team dynamic, helping them understand their style. There are assessments and frameworks on leadership for sure. None of them resonated with me. And I do think that the challenges of leadership are significantly different from the work that we do as a contributor, and also the work that we do as a manager. And time after time I saw new leaders struggle with working across the org with their peers, leaders in other areas. I wanted to give them tools to navigate that divide more easily.

The other issue is that as you go further in your career in leadership, there are fewer formal opportunities for feedback like we’re used to. We have to take learning on ourselves. I wanted to create some a framework to help leaders understand themselves, their interactions, and how all of that organizational morass comes together.

You said that you have all of your coaching clients do a StrengthsFinder assessment. Leadership Archetypes doesn't have an assessment. Why?

It does not. Let me offer a bit of background. I used to work at Gallup. I worked with the Chief Scientist for StrengthFinder . So every lunch I would pepper them with questions about the framework, the data they found, and how they used it. This highlighted to me how much data went into validating the assessment. So I knew I didn’t have data to validate my framework. But over time I realized that not having one was actually a positive. I want people to recognize themselves. It’s about introspection when we see ourselves reflected. “Oh, that’s me. That’s why I struggling with this person.” Those light bulb moments of self-discovery are important.

When we do this with a leadership team, what I call facilitated conversations, they interact outside their normal work. It builds relationships, gives them a common language. This, in turn, eases their interactions at work. It's the aha moments and the self-identification that is just as important as telling you who you are. It’s about the journey. So I don’t know that I will ever have an assessment.

I'd love to hear more about those aha moments. How do people respond to this kind of self-identification process, in a way that they don't when you do StrengthsFinder? Because I've done StrengthsFinder and Griffin has done Archetypes as a facilitated conversation. With StrengthsFinder, I was like, "Oh, here's my top five. Cool. Fine. I guess I'll accept that." Whereas with the Archetypes, it was a really different journey.

I love that you had that experience. Often people will tell me things like “Wow. I've never had anybody describe me so well before." Some struggle a bit to find theirs. Their journey is more of a slow, dawning recognition. Once they identify their type things seem to click in place and they gain a better understanding of themselves. I think it’s in part because we don't necessarily understand that we’re coming from a perspective. We just think that's the way the world is.  Some people are maybe are a little more introspective or observant or have worked through it more. And so that journey of awareness, even in the Archetype conversation, is different for everyone. My goal is that the archetypes enable self-awareness.

I think the problem with StrengthsFinder is, you have to have coaching on it. Someone said to me once, "This is just business astrology," when they looked at the results from their StrengthsFinder.  I said, "Well, let me talk through this." And once we talked through, because how they all interact with each other changes, as you know, and then they understood it. But I think it's a little bit harder to grasp. Whereas with Archetypes, the goal is that people recognize themselves and can grasp other types quickly as well.

Yeah. And you talked a bit about introspectiveness and self-awareness and how Archetypes take you on that journey. Whereas I find that a lot of the time with assessments, getting the right output from the assessment for you is predicated on you being self-aware enough to give the right input.

Well, right. StrengthsFinder is accurate, but it’s complicated. This makes it less easy to understand and put into action. I do think there's something too about, do we recognize ourselves? And do we come to that conclusion? Versus you saying, "Here's who you are. Here's where it is. This is what you're like." I don't like typing, honestly. I don't. It's really funny. I developed a framework that is reminiscent of typing but I don't really like boxes. I don't. I want room for people. I cringe a little bit when someone defines me, tells me who I am. For instance, I took Enneagram. Do you know Enneagram?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I took Enneagram , it told me that I was a certain type. I didn’t resonated with the type they assigned me. I disliked that assessment. Years later I took the test again focused on how I felt rather than how I thought I was supposed to answer and I came out with a different type. I was like, "Oh that’s me," and I finally got it. But I didn’t enjoy the process at all and I rarely reflect on my enneagram type. It just feels like someone's telling me who I am, rather than helping me discover myself. And so I think Archetypes, it's about the journey, not just the type that I think, I hope, is so powerful.

I think that mirrors really nicely what this leadership journey is like, as well. Because you're constantly developing, growing, and understanding more about yourself as a leader. And so to go on that journey with your archetypes. How do you see people's relationship with their archetypes changing over time?

It sort of depends. Some folks have one archetype, very strong, and another one that's kind of quieter. Some have two. I have two that are extremely strong.  It's hard for me to tell you which one's my primary. My partner is like that too. So those folks are often fairly balanced. Often someone has one strong archetype and they have a secondary one, but that first one has been so prevalent in their career, is so strong for them, that it overshadows it. So a lot of it is about, how do we find balance within our primary archetype and what can we borrow from other archetypes or styles, if you will, that will help us become even more effective? It's never about changing who you are. I don't think someone's going to go from one to another, radically, like something that you've never had. For instance, your archetype is just not me and I don't think it will ever be me and that's okay. But I can maybe borrow something from that archetype. So I think over time, it's like helping people grow and change and see, "Well, where is maybe my style limiting me? Or maybe what can I grow into and pick one or two things from another one?"

I can feel that with myself. The people in the leadership teams that I work with, who I really, really admire have an archetype that just doesn't at all feel like me, but I really admire seeing it in them and I want to borrow bits from it. And I'm like, "Oh if I could just do that if I could expand my range, I'd be so much more effective."

Mm-hmm.  And I tell people too, we don't want you to totally change who you are, or your personality. What we want to do is just borrow one component. How can you take one small thing?  The work I do comes out of the world of positive psychology, which was a reaction to the '80s trend in the field of wanting people to be "well rounded" and, "reduce your weaknesses." It was painful for, I think, a lot of people. What StrengthsFinder did and positive psychology says is, "Let's focus on where you're really good and let's expand that, and then shore up your weaknesses enough so that they're not making everybody angry and getting in your way." That's the world I come from. It gives people a chance to be themselves without having to be completely different to succeed. It goes back to what we talked about earlier about the stereotypes of leadership. Like, this is what traditional leadership looks like. It's like, "Well, let me contort myself like a cat in a little jar, to look like what you want me to look like." Who wants to do that?

And just have a horrible time and feel uncomfortable and gross. Like times when I've had to shift myself to be the right kind of leader for the environment that I've worked in, it's been really emotionally draining to have to be someone else and I'm sure I haven't been half as effective. And I've not felt good looking at myself in the mirror afterward either.

Whereas I feel like with Archetypes, it's very much like, "Hey, here's mostly your style, how you present in the world of work as a leader, and here are the great things about it. Maybe do more of those. And here are your triggers and how to recognize when you're not in a good space right now. But also here are other great things about other people, that you can borrow from." It doesn't feel at all like it's making everyone really well-rounded. It's like, "Let's sharpen our sharp edges and be able to use those more effectively."

Yeah. And trying to give information so that if I'm working with someone with a different archetype and I notice them getting out of balance, how can I help them? How can I support them? How can we partner up so that we ease some of the leadership team conflicts and those things that end up in organizational issues if we're not careful?

It's very easy to fall down that path, I think. And I think that's the same, regardless of whether you have conflicting styles or everyone has more or less the same style.

Yeah. 100 percent.

Do you ever find that people don't feel good about the archetype that they identify with, or see it as a negative? Is there much archetype jealousy?

I love that. Archetype jealousy. You know what's interesting? Jealousy does happen a lot in StrengthsFinder. Everyone wants to be a strategic and I'm like, "Well, strategic means something specific in this context." It goes back to language. I do see a little bit of jealousy but not much. gain, it's like, well, how introspective are you? And can you recognize your patterns? Rather than seeing it as the way the world is, understand that you have a lens and that your lens is no right or wrong, it's just different from somebody else's. And there are a couple of archetypes, there's one in particular where people struggle to understand their archetype more because they think that's just the way the world is, or they say, "Well, that's just the way I'm trained." I'm like, "But you're still acting that way. It's still a worldview." Often though, people will say, "Oh yeah, that's me. Mm-hmm. You described me perfectly." They feel understood which brings a sense of relief.

Some ask, "Is it like a journey, that you go through all of them?" No, it's not a journey. You will probably have one or two that will resonate but you’re not meant to go through them linearly. At the same time, I come from the growth mindset camp. I believe you can grow and adapt. I do hear people say, "Well, I've been this and now I need to be that." So I don't know if it's jealousy, but they're looking at, "Where am I at in my career, and what do I need to do more of?" Then we work on finding a few aspects of another archetype they want to take on.

Yeah. And going back to that there's a good way of being a leader in a particular instance, it feels like there's a little bit of that underlying it as well.

Yeah. Yeah. One other thing to notice too is that sometimes people will say, "Oh, well, you need to be X to be a (VP of Engineering, CTO, COO, etc)." Again, these tiny boxes. And listen, I get the boxes. I get it, why we think, "For this function, you need this." I think we're trying to find these boxes so we can make the task of leadership easier because it's hard. But it’s not true. You can do any role from any archetype.

Yeah. It's hard and it's messy and it's complicated. And so I feel like anything where you can sit down, even if we went to literal astrology, even that has got to make the leadership task easier. Because it's like, "Ah, I'm this one. Like this one, this is how I feel about the world."

Right. We need something to ground us.

I like that with Archetypes there's a small range of things, so you can kind of keep them all in your head at the same time and you can figure out where you sit within them and it's never assigned to you.

We’re so much more powerful when we own who we are. I feel like I've often slid through cracks of types and styles and all those things. Like when I took Myers-Briggs, I was a XNFX, which means I'm a strong NF but on the other ones, I'm right in the middle. It made me feel more lonely and away from myself. I found it more confusing than helpful.

I think with stuff like Myers-Briggs where you take it and you get an assignation out of the end of it, and if that doesn't feel like you, then there's this kind of sense that, "Have I done something wrong in the assessment? Am I a type of person that's not valid because there's not a clean label to it?"

Right. And in some assessments, there can be a result that almost feels like you’re wrong. I thought about using some of them in my practice. And I thought, "Well, I don't want to tell people they're wrong. That doesn't seem very positive or growth-minded, or helping people understand themselves so they can be a better expression.

Yeah, because "You're wrong" kind of feels like being more leaderly, where you're like, "Oh, okay, so there's a thing missing, but what is it and how do I get there and how are you going to help me get there? And how do I make that work?"

Right. Honestly, sometimes I feel like assessments feel like judgment. What's good, what's bad, and judgment about what you're doing. I don't think they're intended that way, but it’s how they get applied in the real world.

There's also a sense of concreteness, I think, with a lot of the assessments, where it's like, "This is who you are." Whereas whenever you talk about Leadership Archetypes, you talk about style rather than who someone actually is. It feels like it's a lot more, how do you interact with other people? How do you relate to yourself?

Well, right. What I tried to capture was just the complexity of human beings. They're such complex creatures. I absolutely think that typing has a place in the world and frameworks have a place in the world, but they need room to let people be the complex beings that they are.

Yeah. To look at the framework and go, "Oh, these bits work for me, but I'm also special and unique and a magical snowflake who is never going to be fully captured by anything. But actually, these are the ones that feel good."

Yeah. And you know what's interesting on that magical snowflake thing too, is when I've administered other assessments in jobs that I've had, that "I'm a magical snowflake," there are people who push against it and say, "Nope, I don't buy this. I don't like it. This isn't me." I haven’t encountered that with Archetypes. And that makes me feel really happy. Because I get the impulse to say, "It's not me," and do not like typing sort of assessments. And yet if we push away from them, we're missing the opportunity to learn more about ourselves and how we relate with our world.

I think that the shared language piece is really important as well. I think that's one thing that frameworks do really well, give you a shared language so that you know that you're talking about the same thing.

It's true. Right? Sometimes when we're fighting, it's like we don't have the same language. Having a common language can help leaders and teams work through conflict more easily. When there’s friction, this helps us understand each other rather than judge or make each other wrong. It’s like, "Oh, that's why you do it. Oh, okay, you're doing this. Oh. And I can interact with that. Oh, you're not trying to be rude to me. You're not trying to be dismissive of me. Oh, you're different from me." We work through obstacles to collaboration, find ways our styles can complement each other. So shared language is huge.

Yeah. And being able to say, "Hey, we just view the world through slightly different perspectives," I think is really helpful, both for identifying who you need to pull into conversations because you're missing that perspective, and also to be able to handle those conflicts.

And I think it also takes down the temperature of conflicts. "Oh, you're not coming for me. You're not judging me. You're just different." Right, wrong. Good, bad. All those binaries that we as human beings go to so much. I think that it can take down the temperature so that we can get to a place where we can have thoughtful conversations about, "We're really different. How do we work effectively together?"

What’s next for Leadership Archetypes?

I’ve spent the last year facilitating conversations with leadership teams. I'm also working on case studies of each of the archetypes, using leaders out in the world so we can understand what does this archetype look like in the real world? What’s the impact and the value they bring? As we do more of the facilitated sessions and I work with leaders on the archetypes, I'm continuing to tweak the model to make it even easier for folks to see themselves in the archetypes. I'd love to get an agent and publish a book about Leadership Archetypes.

That would be amazing. That would be such a good way to bring this to everyone. Because there are so many leaders that I've worked with where I've been like, "Oh hey, if you just understood that we have different styles, that would be fine." So just getting this into everyone's hands would be awesome.

Thank you. I really want to change the way we see leadership. I want to change the conversation that we're having about leadership. I don't think anyone who knows anything about my work is surprised. I talk about emotions and the messy parts of leadership. And so I hope it gets out more in the world so that we can have different conversations about leadership. My ultimate goal is because I want to make better working environments for everyone at the company. Focusing on leaders is a big way for us to get there.