Stop having heroes. Be one. For someone else.

I want to dispel a myth about heroes.

Heroes aren’t necessarily super. They’re people. People like you and me.

And this matters because the way we think about heroes shapes the stories we tell—and the roles we ask other people to play in them.

The hero isn’t you. It’s them.

Heroes are often thought of as courageous, strong, and exceptional. That isn’t wrong. But for those of us raised on Hollywood superheroes, this is only one version of the story.

The extraordinary, deeply flawed hero—Batman, Supergirl, or the protagonist of the latest Marvel movie—takes it upon themselves, sometimes with the help of an equally quirky team of misfits, to save the day and, usually, the world.

This is the hero-as-savior myth.

But there is another way to think about the hero.

At its most basic, a story gives us a flawed person who wants something, encounters obstacles, and faces consequences if they fail (Storr, 2020). The hero wants something. They fear something. Something stands in their way. And they have to change, act, struggle, or persevere if they hope to get where they want to go.

In that sense, heroes aren’t so different from the rest of us.

Why we see ourselves in the hero

We care about the hero because we see ourselves in them. The hero becomes an avatar for the audience. When we’re watching, reading, or listening, that’s us.

Their aspirations become our aspirations. Their fears activate our fears. Their obstacles become ours, also. We follow them through setbacks and uncertainty toward either the thing they want—or, in tragedy, toward the fate they were trying to avoid (Storr, 2020).

And that’s where storytelling becomes strategy. The same principle that makes a story work can make—or break—your message.

If you want to be heard, recast your story.

If you have a story to share, a message to communicate, a product to sell, or an idea you want to spread, this matters. Because if you really want to be heard, you have to give up the starring role.

The hero isn’t you. It’s them.

The person you’re trying to reach has hopes, fears, problems, and aspirations of their own. To reach them, don’t tell a story about yourself as the hero. Understand the story they’re living.

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework makes this distinction explicit: the customer is the character with the problem. The brand is the guide (Miller, 2017).

If you cast yourself as the hero, you’re asking people to care about your journey. If you cast them as the hero, you ask better questions:

What do they want, and how can I help them get there?

Help them.

We all have heroes in another sense, too—role models, teachers, mentors, people we admire. But the best of them don’t live our story for us. They help us see what might be possible in our own.

Maybe you can do the same.

Maybe you have something figured out that the person you’re trying to reach desperately needs. So think about them. What do they want? What’s standing in their way?

Then help them get where they’re trying to go.

That’s the role of the guide: understand the hero’s problem and help them find a path forward (Miller, 2017).

This is leadership as storytelling. It’s also marketing. More fundamentally, it’s how people work.

And the most important part of this title is “for someone else.” I’m not asking you to become somebody else’s superhero. I’m asking you to make yourself useful in someone else’s story.

So stop trying to be the hero.

Help someone else become theirs.

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References

Miller, D. (2017). Building a StoryBrand: Clarify your message so customers will listen. HarperCollins Leadership.

Storr, W. (2020). The science of storytelling: Why stories make us human and how to tell them better. Abrams Press.