The Odyssey
Nobody Trained Them to Come Home
A leadership programme for navigating a world that has changed
Odysseus won the war. Then came the difficult bit: getting home.
The world he returned to was not the world he had left.
Today, leaders are facing their own return journey. AI is changing the nature of work, old assumptions are being challenged, and difficult decisions rarely come with easy answers.
The Odyssey gives us a different way to explore these challenges — using one of the world’s great stories to think about leadership, change, uncertainty and the choices we make along the way.
Some Encounters from the journey
The Return
Coming down can be harder than going up.
What happens when you’ve achieved what you set out to do, but the world you return to has changed?
Ithaca
What are you moving towards?
In times of uncertainty, having a destination — and a reason to keep moving towards it — matters.
Scylla & Charybdis
What do you do when there is no good choice?
Leadership often means navigating competing priorities, risks and consequences.
The Gods
Where does responsibility sit?
When circumstances are difficult, how do we distinguish between what is beyond our control and what we still have a responsibility to address?
The Cyclops
What happens when ego gets in the way?
Odysseus is a flawed hero. His intelligence and confidence are strengths, but they can also become liabilities. How do you manage your own strengths and weaknesses?
Xenia
How do we welcome the stranger?
The ancient Greek idea of xenia — hospitality towards the stranger — offers a fascinating lens on belonging, culture and how we treat people who are different from us.
Whether its toward those inside or outside the organization – or even toward ourselves – are we capable of seeing the potential in our relationships?
A story people can remember...
The aim isn’t to turn The Odyssey into another leadership model.
It’s to give people a story they can use.
A shared language for difficult things. A different way of looking at familiar challenges. And a set of memorable characters, places and choices that can continue to prompt conversations long after the session has finished.
Sometimes it is easier to say, “We’re facing a Scylla and Charybdis decision” than to articulate everything that makes the situation difficult.
The One-Day Workshop
From Story to Practice
The Odyssey is primarily a one-day workshop for leadership teams and organisations navigating significant change or uncertainty.
Using the story as a shared starting point, we’ll explore the themes that resonate most strongly with your organisation and apply them to the challenges you’re facing now.
The workshop is practical, experiential and shaped around your context. The aim is not simply to understand the story, but to use it to see your own situation differently — and identify what you might do next.
The Keynote
Nobody Trained Them to Come Home
I will also be bringing The Odyssey to life through a special keynote event, bringing together leaders and representatives from different organisations for a shared exploration of the story and its relevance to the world of work today.
This is designed as a one-off invitation event — an opportunity to experience the thinking behind the programme, meet others facing similar challenges and explore whether The Odyssey could be useful in your own organisation.
More than a story...
Stories stay with us.
The hope is that The Odyssey gives your people more than an enjoyable workshop. It gives them a language, a set of questions and a different perspective they can take back into their work.
The journey may be ancient. The challenges are very much our own.
Interested in exploring The Odyssey for your organisation?
If you’d like to discuss bringing the one-day workshop to your leadership team or organisation, let’s talk.
You can also explore case studies, resources, and my blog to see how these sessions have worked in real organisations.