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Find your people to lead your people

Writer's picture: Irene Salter, PhDIrene Salter, PhD
43 minutes ago7 min read

It’s been nearly 8 years since I renewed the photo wall in my house. As I put new pictures into old frames this weekend, I realized that these 8 years have been a gradual shift from a “stand on your own two feet” mindset to a “find your people” mindset. It’s the difference between Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and Maureen Murdoch’s heroine’s journey, and for me at least, it’s a far more wholehearted way to live, love and lead. 


STORY: Find your people to lead your people.

READ MORE: Videos and articles to make leadership (and life) less lonely.

BOOK STUFF: We’re discussing The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan, March 27, 2025, at 4 pm PST. 

GOING FURTHER: Only two weeks left to join the Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat! Enrollment closes March 21.

  • April 9, May 21 - Women’s Leadership Collective

  • April 25-28 - Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat 


STORY: Find your people to lead your people

As you wind up the staircase in our house, there’s a gallery of photos. Family. Kids. A handful of best friends. I haven’t updated the photo wall since 2017 so photos of my middle schooler were from when she was in preschool and photos of my high school senior were from elementary school.


Yeah. Kinda embarrassing. 



This weekend, when I (finally) got around to choosing new pictures and replacing the old ones, I noticed a theme: there are a whole lot of new faces in our lives these days. 


When I look at the old photos, it captures the mentality of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. In that framework, a lone hero ventures forth, battles evil with sharp pointy things, and returns transformed. We see this in stories like Star Wars, Die Hard, and James Bond. You could see it in my photos with lots of single portraits of people and a limited set of faces, mostly immediate family.


My parents were private people. They rarely had friends over, hardly knew their neighbors, and raised me to “stand on your own two feet!” Thus, I’d always had a hard time delegating and asking for help. With group projects in school and well into my career as a science educator, I could hear my parent’s voices: “If you want something done right, best to do it yourself.” And American culture kept shouting “success is earned, not given.” I cared deeply for others and expressed that through trying to single-handedly save the day and shoulder other people’s burdens. 


The Hero’s Journey may be inspiring, but it was lonely and exhausting.


The Importance of Social Support

Humans are a uniquely social species. Our ability to cooperate, show compassion, and form lasting social bonds has helped us survive both individually and as a species. It’s precisely those qualities that are hard-wired into our brains. 


And it’s precisely those qualities I could see in the new photos that I was adding to the stairwell: pictures of new family members (my brother-in-law and 5 year old niece), my COVID bubble pod (five families who are my chosen family, game night buddies, travel companions, and best friends), Leadership Redding classmates, my husband’s Rotary friends, folks from my book club, an “authentic connections” group, and so many more. 


Most of all, I’ve found best friends at work. Genuine best friends. People who save me just as much as I save them. People whose strengths are different than mine, yet complementary. Partners in crime.


Enter the Heroine’s Journey—a different narrative that emphasizes connection, collaboration, and joint resilience over solo triumph. Authors like Maureen Murdock and Gail Carriger describe how the Heroine’s Journey values asking for help, community, and leaning on others. 


You don’t have to go it alone. What a novel concept.


Once you understand the Heroine’s Journey, you can see examples of it everywhere: 

  • Heist stories like Oceans 11 and the Italian Job

  • Sports stories like Boys in the Boat and Moneyball.

  • SciFi stories like the Martian and Star Trek

  • Superhero team stories like Guardians of the Galaxy and the Incredibles

  • Most sitcoms, pretty much every single rom com, and a whole lot of Young Adult.


The scientific literature shows that good relationships make doing hard things way less stressful. Consider this study by researchers from the University of Virginia, James Coan, Hillary Schaeffer, and Richard Davidson. Married women were invited into an fMRI machine. When a big red X appeared on the screen, there was a 20% chance that a mild electric shock would follow a few seconds later. If a big blue O appeared, they were safe. The shock was far less stressful when the women could hold their husband’s hand, compared to a stranger’s hand or no hand at all. And in their brains, areas like the nucleus accumbens which flags threatening (or rewarding) events and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex which regulates emotions show less activation when holding a spouse’s hand. The stronger and better their marriage, the greater the protective effect. Those with weaker, lower quality relationships showed increased brain activation in the anterior insula, superior frontal gyrus, and hypothalamus, all regions linked to threat detection and the release of stress hormones.


Other scientists have extended these findings in fascinating ways. Having a beloved pet nearby during a stressful situation keeps your heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance in check. Getting more hugs makes you less likely to get sick after being exposed to a cold virus. Physical affection in the home reduces cortisol levels and keeps levels low, particularly amongst people with lots of work-related stress. 


Spouses, children, pets, parents, teachers, friends, family, kind neighbors, church communities, book groups, volunteer teams, gym buddies, office mates (the nice ones), great schools, service clubs. Good relationships protect us, make us happier, healthier, and help us thrive. 


The opposite is also true: loneliness kills.  Loneliness kills. For adults like me, loneliness is worse than obesity or smoking half a pack a day, increasing your chances of dying by 26 percent. For young people like Carolyn and Owen, loneliness increases the likelihood of depression, anxiety, and suicide.


Find your people

One of the hardest things for me was to let go of the Hero’s Journey narrative and embrace a Heroine’s Journey style. Here’s three things that changed that for me that you can try:


  1. Find a best friend at work. It may seem silly, even weird, but “Gallup has repeatedly shown that having best friends at work is key to employee engagement and job success. Gallup data indicate that having a best friend at work is strongly linked to business outcomes, including profitability, safety, inventory control and retention.” Identify someone with whom you share common interests or values. Then gradually, increasingly, spend time together both at work, and outside work. When you’re with the person, be authentic. Being yourself allows others to feel comfortable and open up, which is crucial for building a close connection. As the Conscious Leadership Group likes to say, “you can only be as connected as you are revealed.” Tutti, Tessa, Hope, Robin, Christina, Sammy, Emma… thanks for being my work best friends.


  2. Reframe your thoughts. The voices of parents, teachers, and social norms may have ensured your survival in your formative years but may not serve you well as an adult. Cognitive Behavior Therapy often uses a strategy called cognitive reframing (or cognitive restructuring) to challenge and modify negative or unhelpful thoughts. Step one is to notice the unhelpful thought when it arises. Next, challenge the stories underlying the thought (Is this thought realistic? Do the facts support it or do they support a different thought? What might be possible if this thought no longer existed in my mind?). Finally, choose a replacement thought.


  3. “Stand on your own two feet” became the African proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”


  4. “If you want something done right, do it yourself” became Margaret Mead’s saying: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”


  5. “Success is earned, not given,” became Maria Eitel’s quote: “Contrary to popular belief, the best way to climb to the top of the ladder is to take others up there with you.”


  6. Make time for social connection. Especially for us pleasers and servants, it’s easy to spend time checking tasks off the to do list and much harder to spend time on the things that fill our souls. The only reason I now have a bubble pod of chosen family is by holding Friday nights sacred for seven years. The only reason Tutti and my friendship and partnership is so strong is by calendaring weekly hour-long meetings and giving ourselves connection time before sitting down to business. The only reason I love my Leadership Redding classmates so much is because we prioritized time together over other things. 



READ MORE: Videos and articles to make leadership (and life) less lonely

Learn more about each of these 3 strategies to find your people:


To better understand the Heroine’s Journey:


And take this into your leadership with these resources:

  • Collaborative Leadership for Thriving Teams I wrote this guide with team of other school leaders in partnership with Education Evolving. We offer reflection questions for leaders, conversation starters for teams, and tips & tricks to avoid the most common challenges. Although it was written specifically for schools and their leaders, if you substitute the word “leader” for “administrator”, “employee” for “teacher”, and “client” for “student” the guide is readily adaptable to most organizations.

  • A Guide to Collaborative Leadership by Lorna Davis. In her TED talk, she does a fantastic job contrasting collaborative leadership from the classic “heroic” leadership style we see more often.


BOOK STUFF: We’re discussing The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan, March 27, 2025, at 4 pm PST. If you are not yet subscribed to join us and would like to please do so at https://www.irenesalter.com/bookclub-signup and Tessa will get you added to the calendar reminders.


GOING FURTHER: Only two weeks left to join the Heroine’s Journey Women’s Leadership Retreat! Enrollment closes March 21. To learn more and register before we close enrollment take a look here!


And if that doesn’t work for your time or budget, please join the free, in person Women's Leadership Collective, next month! Wednesday April 9 fro m 5-6:30pm, we gather at Art Hunger/IOOF Hall, 1504 Market St for another engaging conversation on women's leadership. We will explore the essential topic of Mentoring in the Modern Workplace 


This meeting is all about breaking down what great mentors do, then practicing those skills with one another. If you join us, you will receive:

  • The opportunity to be live-coached by Irene or Hope.

  • A list of behaviors, attitudes, and words that great mentors use.

  • Time to practice mentoring skills with a partner. 

  • Peer-support with a professional challenge you are currently facing.


Finally, if you’re in Shasta County, consider joining Leadership Redding. Applications are open through the end of March.



 
 
 
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