Following are two sample archetype descriptions. The first is from the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator® instrument, which measures the archetypes active in an individual's personal life. The second is from the Organizational and Team Culture Indicator™ instrument, which measures archetypes active in an organizational culture.
If the CREATOR is active in your life, you assume what can be imagined can be created.
At your best (now or when you fulfill your potential), you are highly imaginative and even inspired, and your skill level allows you to create with ease. You have moments when the ideas just flow and creativity seems effortless. You have a wonderfully developed aesthetic sense and surround yourself with things that reflect your taste. You have the potential, moreover, to create your own life as a work of art, so that you avoid the ordinary, the shallow, and the mundane, opting for more satisfying ways of life, even if this means that others do not always understand why you live the way you do.
When problems arise, you seek inspiration to develop a clear vision of how you want to remedy them, to decide what you want to create to put in their place, or to choose what other innovative steps you might take. Or, you divert yourself by undertaking some satisfying creative project, believing, often correctly, that the answer to how to handle the problem will come to you in the process.
You tend to notice the need for new inventions or interpretations. You also focus on the resources that help you innovate and on ways to enhance your skills. You know that if you open your eyes wide enough, you will find what you need to be successful. You also have a highly developed critic and generally notice every flaw in what you and others do, which could lead you to feel inadequate to the task and dissatisfied with life.
You may want to guard against the Creator's tendency to reduce life to raw material for art (as in a cartoon depicting a writer who keeps one hand on the keyboard while he makes love with his sweetie), robbing life of the joy of felt experience. The Creator also may become overwhelmed as a result of taking on so many projects. Like weeds that kill a garden, too many projects can sap the joy out of an otherwise great life. When the inner critic gets out of control, Creators may undermine their own confidence and that of others.
You like and live stories involving the many guises of inspiration and their unpredictable consequences such as Alice Walker's The Color Purple, in which a character changes her life, in part because she starts to write about it and hence understand it. In Fried Green Tomatoes, the creative act of telling a story becomes a life-changing force in the life of another character. You also may relate to stories of artists, inventors, or entrepreneurs who have the imagination to envision something admirable and then the skill to make that vision a reality. Unless you have wealth, you may empathize with the difficulties (often portrayed in literature) faced by artists who live in poverty because they will not compromise their standards or allow their creativity to be co-opted by others (as in the film Amadeus).
As a leader, you are (or could be) entrepreneurial, innovative, and unorthodox.
You want to be seen as grounded, practical, and having the ability to create something the world needs, so you may avoid doing things that make you seem like a stereotypically wild-eyed, crazy artist.
Others may appreciate and even envy your imagination and taste. However, they may have no idea how much dedication and hard work is involved in creating anything of real worth, minimizing what the outcome costs you. They may even see you as elitist or eccentric, perhaps even immoral (you know those artists!) and someone not to be trusted.
You may (or do) benefit from:
- Taming your inner critic so that you become less critical of others and yourself
- Remembering that anything worthwhile takes time
- Moving from an ego-oriented focus on whether what you do is good enough to an attitude of service or being a channel for the muse or the vision to be expressed
- Balancing artistry with being a responsible, thoughtful person (avoiding the trap of excusing self-indulgence)
- Balancing the virtues of the Creator with those of the Destroyer
Excerpt from Introduction to Archetypes, by Carol S. Pearson and Hugh K. Marr
If the RULER is active in your life, Power is not everything; it is the only thing.
The Royal Court
The prototype for the Ruler organization is the royal court, the United Nations, or the White House. Power is wielded in the service of citizens or a constituency, and the people in charge engage in processes to ensure that they continue to have the support necessary to govern.
Key Elements
Models: Governments, regulatory agencies, financial institutions, insurance agencies, and other fields where a small mistake may have major consequences because these organizations wield real power.
Structure: Often these organizations have systems of policies and procedure to cover most situations. They are hierarchical, and status may be obvious from nuances of dress and by who has the corner office. They may have elaborate systems of checks and balances with every key stakeholder weighing in on important decisions so that no one can be a loose cannon. Progress is slow.
Brand and identity examples: The United States or any government, the Internal Revenue Service, American Express, Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth, the Pope, and most prestigious products or services.
Values, Strengths, and Weaknesses
Values: Power, a sense of social responsibility, the ability to make things happen, orderliness.
Strengths: These organizations understand power, image, status, and financial affairs; and they are wonderfully able to put complex processes in place that coordinate the work of many people (and sometimes many cooperating organizations).
Weaknesses: An organization that expresses the Ruler may be overly bureaucratic; elitist; slow to move; bogged down in catch-22 situations; and focused too much on internal and external politics, forgetting the needs of the customers, clients, or constituents. In fact, customers may be faced with long lines, frustrating voice-mail systems that fail to give you the option you need, and employees who seem more interested in enforcing company policies than in serving the consumer.
Perspective
Underlying assumptions: People want orderly, fair processes and like to know someone is in charge.
You are admired if you evidence political savvy, know how to wield power, galvanize support, and get things done in complex and highly politicized systems.
You do not fit in if you are a loose cannon who fails to follow protocol or if you ignore hierarchy.
Ruler organizations tend to notice the trappings of power, responsibilities, ways that ill-considered actions can hurt many people, and the political process needed to get things done.
Ruler organizations may not notice ways to get problems solved quickly and directly and how rules may create catch-22 situations or disadvantage members, customers, or clients.
When problems emerge, Ruler organizations often create more policies, procedures or systems; they may also analyze which structures failed and try to figure out how to make them work better. They may also utilize contacts to get help from powerful places.
In the Ruler's happy ending, the Ruler organization is respected and beloved for creating a peaceful and prosperous kingdom for all.
Virtue is gained through a sense of responsibility, self-confidence, decisiveness, authority, and willingness to care about the good of the whole.
The Ruler's weaknesses are ameliorated in cultures with a high presence of the Magician archetype, as the Magician works across hierarchical boundaries to get things done with more dispatch and allows vision to motivate the shifting of anachronistic structures.
