Ancient Wisdom for Modern Mission: What The Odyssey Teaches Nonprofit Leaders About Home, Resilience, and Renewal

is a writer, filmmaker, mythographer, and longtime explorer of the role of mythology in ancient and modern life. He has published more than forty books, written or cowritten more than thirty documentary films, and created television and radio scripts. His work has been shaped by mentors including Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, Alexander Eliot, and Joe Falls. Cousineau was cowriter and associate producer of the award-winning documentary The Hero’s Journey and edited its companion book. His widely translated The Art of Pilgrimage reflects his lifelong interest in sacred travel, story, meaning, and transformation. For decades he has led mythology- and pilgrimage-based travel programs around the world and consulted on myth and story for major studios and cultural organizations.

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, I had the pleasure of speaking with Phil Cousineau, the author of The Wisdom of the Odyssey: 24 Life Lessons from Homer ‘s Epic. Our conversation delved into the timeless themes of Homer’s Odyssey , exploring how they resonate with the challenges faced by nonprofit leaders today.

Phil shared his personal journey with the classics, highlighting how stories from Homer and other great authors shaped his understanding of life and leadership. He emphasized that myths are not just ancient tales but sacred stories that provide ethical guidance and reveal truths about the human experience. We discussed the importance of enduring through challenges, much like Odysseus, who faced numerous trials on his journey home.

We also explored the significance of characters like Penelope and Telemachus, who embody resilience and the importance of mentorship. Phil articulated that the Odyssey serves as a guide for modern leaders, reminding us to stay true to our vision and values, especially in times of uncertainty and conflict.

As we wrapped up, Phil offered a powerful message of encouragement for leaders feeling far from home: “Follow the love.” He reminded us that our passions can guide us back to our true selves and our purpose. This episode is a rich exploration of how ancient wisdom can inform and inspire our work in the nonprofit sector today.

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou

Well, welcome. Here I am again. This is Hugh Ballou, and of course, you know, you’re at The Nonprofit Exchange. This is where we explore leadership ideas that help nonprofit leaders strengthen mission, build healthy teams, and serve their communities with courage and imagination. Today, we are joined by Phil Cousineau, author of The Wisdom of the Odyssey, 24 Life Lessons from Homer’s Epic. This is not simply a conversation about an ancient poem. It is a conversation about the human journey of disruption, longing, suffering, memory, responsibility, restoration, and homecoming, themes every nonprofit leader recognizes. Phil invites us to revisit Homer’s Odyssey as a living wisdom story. The manuscript frames the book as an accessible companion to Homer’s epic that illuminates lessons on change, resilience, and the search for home. It also asks questions that reach directly into modern leadership. How should we live? How do we transcend suffering? What does wisdom require of us? And how do we keep on going? Phil Cousineau is a writer, filmmaker, mythographer, and longtime explorer of the role of mythology in ancient and modern life.

He has published more than 40 books, written or co-written more than 30 documentary films, and created television and radio scripts. His work has been shaped by mentors, including Joseph Campbell, Huston Smith, Alexander Eliot, and Joe Phelous. Cousineau was co-writer and associate producer of the award-winning documentary, The Hero’s Journey, and edited its companion book. His widely translated The Art of Pilgrimage, which was the book when I first got acquainted with Phil, reflects his lifelong interest in sacred travel, story, meaning, and transformation. For decades, he has led mythology and pilgrimage-based travel programs around the world and consulted on myth and story for major studios and cultural organizations. So, Phil, why The Odyssey? Why have you written this book? And welcome to The Nonprofit Exchange.

Phil Cousineau

Thank you, Hugh. What a wonderful introduction, very thorough. You make me think deeper about my own work, so thank you. Why? That’s always the pertinent question, isn’t it? Well, first, I grew up, as they used to say, on the knee of Homer. It’s a wonderful old phrase to suggest how some of us were blessed with being read to by our grandparents. Our parents may be a great teacher somewhere along the line. But the classics, from Homer, but also all the way up to, let’s say, Mark Twain. Someone older than us took it upon themselves to try to share something not just contemporary or trendy, but timeless. So I grew up in Detroit in the 1950s. The family television broke one night. My father spent maybe 10 minutes trying to fix the TV and then kicked it down the stairs into the basement and turned around and dramatically said, Philip, we are now going to read together as a family. And we did that for years, Friday and Saturday night. We read from Homer, Grimm’s fairy tales, Don Quixote, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson.

And those stories got into me, that they weren’t something that we should just honor without thinking about something that came to us from the past, a reflexive way of honoring our ancestors, but instead, we’re revealing something to us that stands outside of time and space. So I’ve always loved the classics, so much so that when I left college, the University of Detroit, I went to Europe and ended up spending a lot of time in Greece. And I went to some of the Homeric sites, ancient Olympia, Delphi, Ithaka, and I felt the hair on my head and my arms stand up. You know that feeling when you are in a numinous place, in a numinous time. And I have spent decades now taking other people from around the world to these great Homeric sites to have sometimes what’s called the thrill of recognition, when you are standing in a place you have read about. It’s exciting. It’s wonderful. It really massages the soul, so to speak. A couple of years ago, I discovered that Christopher Nolan, the great film director, was about to make a movie about the Odyssey.

And I thought, of all things, that this was a time to write a book about this, because there is a phenomenon of people buying hundreds of thousands, if not millions of books on a topic, and then getting stuck the first 10, 15, 20 pages of the book and not knowing why. Why am I reading this? So I have compiled over the last year or so something called The Wisdom of the Odyssey to help people re-engage with this timeless story and even understand the movie a little bit better. Why did the tickets for the screening of the Odyssey, which is about to premiere in July, why were tickets sold out a year in advance? This is a flabbergasting question. It means that there was something in the Odyssey that still speaks to us today. And that’s why I wrote The Wisdom of the Odyssey, this book, because if a book doesn’t tell you how to live, If it’s not a guide for actually living your life today, what good is it? I happen to think that the great art, from painting to even opera, poetry, the movies today now, are inexhaustible when they talk to you as if Quixote is alive today, Odysseus is alive and well, and they can help us live a deeper and more authentic life.

Hugh Ballou

It’s fascinating. Most all of us read this a long time ago. For me, I’ll be pushing 80 this year since elementary school and high school, reading it a couple of times, I’m sure. So the important works in history and music, literature, poetry, whatever, have a timelessness to them. And I love that you read so many authors. I remember the quote from the composer, British composer, conductor, Ralph Vaughan Williams, who said, music did not reveal all of its secrets to just one person. So you could change the word music to the topic here. There’s a lot of wisdom in this. So we’re talking to nonprofit leaders. Some of them are struggling. Some of them are challenged. Some of them are disheartened with things. What’s the difference between treating a myth as old entertainment and treating a myth as a guide for living and leading today?

Phil Cousineau

Great, great question. One way to think about it is that myth is a sacred story. It’s sacred because it shows people how to live ethically, morally, how stories can be a foundation for your family, for your neighborhood, or for your business. So they stand outside of time and space. And this element of something that was true before is true now and will be true in the future is quite intoxicating. This is something my friend, Huston Smith, the great historian of religion, again, once told me. If it wasn’t true in the past, if it isn’t true now, and it’s not true tomorrow, what good is it? That’s the danger sometimes of losing sight of our destination. I would posit then that when Odysseus in the Iliad is asked, I think it was Agamemnon, to address the soldiers who are getting extremely discouraged about the war at Troy, now going into nine years and 10 months or so. They want to go home. Odysseus, tell them, tell them to keep fighting. What Odysseus does there is very germane to political and I’d say business leaders today. Odysseus stands up and says, let’s remember why we left home in the first place. We left home because we felt betrayed.

We left home because we all agreed to defend the sanctity, the beauty of marriage, Helen, who married Menelaus, the great king of Sparta. Let’s remember why we came. We came to save Helen. We came to save the pride of Greece itself. We came here for each other, a band of brothers, as now we call soldiers who fight together. And the men were so roused that they went on and continued to fight and defeated Troy. That kind of speech is similar to what business leaders might address today. Sports coaches do this all the time. Film directors. Let’s remember why we began, why we left home, and what is the greater good? I think that phrase in English now is at the heart of the Odyssey. What’s the greater good? Not just my personal glory, not just my personal bank account, not just the personal success, but what is the greater good of the family, the neighborhood, the culture at the time? And in that sense, how do you keep going? I think the operative word throughout the Odyssey, it’s used again and again by Homer, endure, keep going, don’t give up. I have tracked down one, even two examples in the Odyssey, which are kind of shocking: they are the first examples in literature of suicide.

There are two instances in which Odysseus is, after nine and a half years of trying to get home to Ithaka, is ready to give up. He wants to let go of the raft that he is drifting on into the famous, it’s a metaphor now, Scylla and Charybdis. It’s the monsters and the whirlpool that want to devour him. Psychologically, that’s what happens when businesses are flailing. It’s a great Odysseus image. And instead, what I think happens is Odysseus remembers his wife. He remembers his son, who he left behind when he was an infant. He remembers the land of Ithaka itself. And these are three ways to think about love. Love is what pulls Odysseus home and to his authentic life.

Hugh Ballou

So Odysseus is one of the key players. Who are some of the other ones that have, we can learn later, so from Penelope, Athena, who are some of the others?

Phil Cousineau

Well, Penelope, I’m about to lead another tour to Greece in the footsteps of Odysseus and Penelope, because as we’re learning, there are many female writers now, women, who are writing about Circe, the sorceress, Calypso, Penelope herself, as a way to say, hey, we have neglected these women in this story. What was it about them? So Penelope, I feel, and I’m writing this in The Wisdom of the Odyssey, is every bit as cunning and strategic as Odysseus, but she has to do it in the confines of their small palace on this small island off the coast of Greece, Ithaka. itself, and she has to learn how to navigate. Again, to use that great verb, Odysseus navigates as a sailor in a general Penelope is being haunted and taunted by 108 suitors who keep saying, your husband is dead. There is no way he is ever going to get home again. Think about the strategies in business of taking over, what do they call it? A corporate takeover of a business. That’s what the suitors are trying to do. They’re trying to take over the palace so they can have the palace, the land, all the animals and Penelope has to be strategic.

She taunts him again and again with various tricks to put them off until her husband gets home again. It’s a beautiful sense of strategy. So I think of her walking around the rooms of the palace, putting off the suitors until Odysseus gets home again as a way of saving home. Think of it as saving the business. What can I do to hold on to the family business long enough to get maybe one more loan, someone to come in and help me save the family pride again? Telemachus is their son, and there’s a wonderful etymology. Hugh, you know I’m a word guy. I love etymologies, word origins. Telos Machia. Every name in the Odyssey, by the way, is full, rich of meaning. Telemachus means the end of struggling, the end of war, and it’s the function in the Odyssey, in Homer’s poem, to have the main character who takes care of the son, the prince, when Odysseus goes off to war. His name happens to be mentor. That’s where the word comes from. It’s the odyssey. In Greek, it means mind maker. It’s the role of the old friend of the palace to take care of this young man to become a priest, to become a prince when his father is away at war.

Think about the implications of that in our world in which so many men are really married to the business. and not just their family. What happens to your kids if you have devoted most of your waking hours to the business and not being at home? So Telemachus, there’s a whole parallel story of the son and the father that goes back and forth. Homer is the first filmmaker. He uses time back and forth, flash forwards, flashbacks, because he wants to show you what’s at stake when you neglect your family. in lieu of your business or the glory you have in the popular world. So that’s a marvelous story. It’s a cause exemplar for mentorship. If anybody wants to think about mentorship and its roles in business, read the Odyssey.

Hugh Ballou

Let me remind our listeners, you don’t think you’re running a business. You’re running a nonprofit business. And everything he’s talking about, we need to learn from business principles, because we, in effect, are operating a tax-exempt business. So these are universal principles. So, Phil, you talk about the myth is not only there and then, but also here and now. So, looking at our audience of nonprofit leaders, how do they put that in the context of their leadership?

Phil Cousineau

Well, yeah, that’s my idea of myth is that it’s a story that never happened, but it’s always happening. It’s a beautiful paradox. Take that in. I want your listeners and viewers to dwell on that for a moment, because what it means is, it’s a story, of course, that comes from the imagination. So the Iliad and the Odyssey are loosely based on historical events, way back in the 12th century BCE. But every scene, every character is a metaphor for something that is still happening now. when you consider the element of lust that is rife throughout both books, the longing for home, the longing for a leader who does not fall asleep at the wheel. These are all wonderful metaphors to think about what it takes to be a good leader and the price that is paid by those around him or her in the business, the families back home, the neighborhood, the countryside around you. If you fall asleep, Odysseus and his crew fall asleep again and again, which means you’re not paying attention. You are distracted by worldly events or maybe other business potential, right? Every time Odysseus or the crew falls asleep, a monster appears. Think about the metaphor possibilities there.

The monster appears and devours the crew. Again and again, it happens. Think about what happens when nonprofit leaders get distracted by profit, by glory, by pride. The businesses are devoured. They sink. I love this old verb, transmogrified. They’re turned into monsters. It’s a wonderful word. Wow.

Hugh Ballou

Wow. This is fascinating. So there’s some parallels when we read the lectionary in the Christian Bible. You know, there’s all these Old Testament lessons, and it’s history in one’s reading, but it’s also current events. And that’s kind of what you’re placing this as. And if you subscribe to the New York Times 100 years ago, it’s pretty much the same stories as we’re reading today. So remind us: when was this written?

Phil Cousineau

Yeah, the story itself takes place about 3,000 years ago. There was an attack on the west coast of Turkey, which is where Troy is established, and it was probably a fight over the rights to the passage all the way into the Black Sea. Like, we are fighting for the rights to get through the Hormuz Strait right now. This was fought over 3,000 years ago, in the passage between Greece, Turkey, and what is now Russia, coincidentally, right? And Troy, because it established rights for the ships to go back and forth. Think of how timely this is now. They became the richest city in antiquity, and Greece lusted over the riches there. And so this story is probably a parable, an allegory for what happened, that constant, timeless struggle, the way we fall prey to greed. the way we will go to war for more money, for the lust for filthy lucre, as I think it’s called that in the Bible, filthy lucre. So the story then was told for centuries until the eighth and seventh century, when wandering storytellers like our poets today, our filmmakers today, always looking for a good story.

Along comes this fellow named Homer, who lived, actually was born on the west coast of Turkey, just maybe a day’s horse ride away from Troy. So he would have grown up with this story. And my theory in the book, you know, The Wisdom of the Odyssey, is that he went to Troy, like so many others, including Alexander the Great, by the way, went to the ruins of Troy. Homer, the early Homer, would have been fascinated by this story and then traveled all around the Homeric sites that he heard about in the tavernas, on the seashore, by wandering sailors. And then was invited to palaces, to athletic competitions, theater competitions, to tell the story again and again, like filmmakers do today, like novelists and journalists do today, polishing it, polishing it, until he told a story, here’s the big point, until he told a story that everyone recognized. the desire for beauty, the seductive qualities of beauty, the lust for glory and fame in this beautiful Greek word called kleos, what we will do to be remembered forever. As we see in the interest of building memorials to our vanity today, we see this happening in countries all around the world.

This is the cautionary tale between the Iliad and the Odyssey. Are you doing this for the sake of the business, the family, the neighborhood, your culture, or are you doing this act out of sheer vanity? Slowly, Homer polished, polished the story. until roughly 650 BC, writing came into Greece. There are some theories that I love that writing was finally codified as we know it today in Greece in the 7th century in order to take the oral tale the Iliad and the Odyssey and finally put it on paper. Isn’t that an incredible thought? The story was by far the most popular because it had everything. Lust, war, love, enchantment, geography, beauty, art ethics, the origin of law, the origin of astronomy and navigation. This was the Bible for antiquity. What you needed to know to lead an ethical life was in the Odyssey. So it was so important that the writing that came in probably from Phoenicia, modern Lebanon, was used to write down Homer’s tales. That’s how important it was. And the book was then slimmed down by the writers in Alexandria, the famous Alexandria library, and then written in English, Latin into Italian, and finally into English during the Renaissance.

And the book has not been out of print for 2000 years. Why? because every character, every plot line in the book speaks to us today, not only about war and greed and glory and so on, but the element that I am so fascinated by that is tragically poignant today. Odysseus has been at war for 10 savage years, and he is a wounded warrior. and it takes time for our warriors to heal. You just don’t come home, as we’re learning after all of our conflicts today, and say, hello, honey, I’m back. Hey, buddy, want to go out and play a round of golf? You don’t just start a new business. Those who have been at war are deeply flawed, deeply wounded. And what Homer was telling his audiences 3,000 years ago, we are telling our soldiers now. It takes time for you to heal. You cannot go home to your wife, to your son, to your children. You cannot go home from work, your business work, and go home again until you are whole. You need time to heal. The Odyssey is a book about how to heal the wounded soul.

Hugh Ballou

Whoa, sounds like a spiritual. You’ve mentioned story several times. I just said that so you know I’m paying attention. So story in several contexts. So talk about the importance of story. So nonprofit leader being inspired by stories. I mean, I’ve heard you tell profound stories in groups, in person and online. Story of us, you know, we hear stories of people we work with who’ve been suffering and we carry that story as a burden maybe. And then stories that we need to tell about our work. So there’s stories in different contexts. So why is story important and why do leaders not give it that importance?

Phil Cousineau

Wow, beautiful. I love the way you have put this. The way that I see it. is that an anecdote, which is an old Greek word, by the way, which means an untold story. How about that? An anecdote is purely about what happened. All right, this is what happened at the office today. This is what happened when I went out and had drinks with my friend. This is what happened at church on Sunday. But that’s not a story until you infuse it or reveal meaning in it. and meaning takes time to tease out. It usually comes in three, like we have three acts in a play, which comes from Aristotle, it comes from the Greeks. Usually three aspects of a good parable from a good preacher in story. The story is required for us to know what something means. There is no wisdom without a story. Just to say that something that happened, it’s what I think of a story as a circle. like this. And it’s an old symbol for the soul, by the way. Van Gogh, the painter, once said, I believe life is round, which means things begin somewhere. They go through a dark night, like the dark night of the soul of St. John of the Cross, and then it comes back full circle.

And when you come home, this is the big theme of the Odyssey, what does it take to get home again? Ideally, you come back with some meaning. So a business leader who does not reveal why the company was started, why we are in business, and what gift we are giving besides profit to the culture is meaningless. Think of the immensity of that. We have a lot of businesses that are meaningless. because no one knows, other than the profit margin, why we’re here, other than just to make something that will fill my bank account. The beauty of the nonprofit is saying, we are here to make a contribution. In myth and story, this is embodied in this beautiful old word from the myths called the boon, B-O-O-N. And the boon is the gift that you bring back from your voyage. the gift you bring back from your journey, the gift that you could tell when you meet together with those in your nonprofit exchange and you say, this is why we are in business. This is why we are together. When you reveal the meaning, the ultimate meaning, which is selfless, now you have given a contribution to the culture.

Hugh Ballou

I want to highlight that. We spent a lot of time reminding nonprofit leaders that you start with why. So next, you start with why. We forget that piece, not only for our audience, not only for those people we serve, but for ourselves. So we come back to this homecoming theme. So let’s delve a little deeper into the Odyssey is often described as a homecoming story. So what does that mean in this epic and tie that to why it’s important for today’s leaders?

Phil Cousineau

Wonderful, thank you. In antiquity, these were called the returns. Why? Because so many, usually men, were going off to war, but also to trade, and also early learners. All the philosophers were wanderers. You went where there were libraries. You went where there were centers of learning, old Beirut, Babylon, Alexandria, and so on. Why? You traveled to learn. You traveled to learn. But here is a shocking statistic. According to Anthony Burgess, the man who wrote A Clockwork Orange, a great popular novelist, and some other scholars about travel, before the 19th century, roughly half of all people who left home never got home again. Travel until the modern age of safety, of hotels and inns, but also medicine, travel was so dangerous, most people never got home again. So there was this tremendous resonance about going down to the port to find the travelers and sailors or soldiers who were coming home from a long journey and said, what happened? What is life like over there at the other end of the sea? And they would sit down and they would begin to tell you stories that became called The Returns.

So for a long, long time, the Odyssey was simply called The Return because it was the ultimate story of how difficult it is to get home again. Think about, again, the immensity of that phrase. To get home can mean literally to go home. I’m born in Detroit. I go home once in a while, but that’s not my real home now. My real spiritual home is San Francisco, or in some ways it’s Paris, because I learned how to become a writer in Paris. So home is a very ambiguous thing. It always has been throughout antiquity. Writers like Pico Iyer, the great travel writer, has recently written that we are now global souls. At any one time, there is roughly 250 million people in the air, on trains, in cars, in constant movement, many of them in exile. many of them homeless. So this notion of Ithaka as embodied by the great poem about Ithaka by Cavafy, hope that your journey is long, he writes in this immortal poem from the 1920s. What does he mean by that? He says it’s because the long journey and which took you sometimes to the other ends of the earth and took you a long time to get home. That’s where you learned the truth about your life and the life around you.

That’s why people in business, it behooves them to meet leaders from all around the world, to meet people, leaders from other cultures and slowly glean meaning so that you can get home again. You know, our word nostalgia, which you have asked me about before, Hugh, thank you for that. is rooted in this very idea. It’s based on the word nostoi, which means in Greek, return. The nostois were the stories that people told you. Hey, Hugh, what was it like to go to Dublin recently? What was it like to go to this conference in Charleston, South Carolina? I really want to know what happened. I am asking you about your nostoi, your return story. But the other half of nostalgia is algea, like analgesic. Nostalgia is the pain of returning home. And it helps, I think, leaders of all kinds, leaders in sports, leaders in the arts, leaders in science, leaders in business, to know that it is hard, it is bittersweet to come home again because you have changed. You have learned something on your journey, and the people at home have changed.

And unless a hero, an athlete, a scientist, and a business leader, unless you know about this constant sense of change, when you come back with new ideas, It’s going to be hard. You may not be recognized like Odysseus was not recognized when he went back to Ithaka. He didn’t even recognize his homeland. So I would humbly submit to your nonprofit leaders who are about to address businesses or the community remember this, that life is in constant flux. Admit to this humbly when you begin your talk and say, I was changed when I went on this business trip to Europe recently, or when someone came from China and talked to me about the business possibilities there. It changed me. Emphasize this idea of change because what it means is there is the possibility for growth, which then leads to the possibility of wisdom. We do not grow wiser if we stay in the old model. If we expect everyone when we get home again to be the same, to stick with that old model. The beauty of the Odyssey is that it’s protean, which is a word that comes from the Odyssey. It’s constantly changing. So I suggest that all leaders giving talks and starting meetings, begin there. Life is in constant flux.

I have changed. You have changed. The business world has changed. Let’s accept that. Let’s even honor that. And what then becomes so beautiful to me is that Homer is suggesting, like an early psychologist 3,000 years ago, or he’s writing 2,700 years ago, he’s saying that the reason Odysseus survives And all of his crew perish. And most of the other leaders at Troy perish. It’s because he stayed true to his own soul. Think about this in terms of businesses. How many businesses fail? What is it, seven, eight out of 10 businesses fail? They do not stay true to the original agenda, the vision, the vision of coming home again. Odysseus is a lost soul who has to find his soul again in order to go home. And when he does, when he finally reaches home, He is recognized by Penelope, his son, his best friends, and then he gives you the idea of how we can all survive the tremendous sea change that’s out there for us.

Hugh Ballou

Yes, the failure rate with businesses is high. In the nonprofit world, A few years ago, 30,000 were formed every year and half of which would close, even with money in the bank. So, we’re in the business of serving others who need something and we want to provide value to them and it’s important to be able to understand that. So, what would it look like for a nonprofit to become a place of homecoming for people who feel exiled or forgotten or damaged or wounded or neglected?

Phil Cousineau

What a gorgeous question. Let me answer it this way. This whole code of Xenia, which is X-E-N-I-A, which I believe led to what’s sometimes called the Greek miracle, which is the origins of democracy. It’s the origins of law. It’s the origins of ethics, spiritual worship, collective worship. All of this is possible because of this code that says we are living in a landlocked world with mountain ranges. It’s very dangerous to go from one village to the other. Some of us are traveling out at sea. You know, there are 7,000 islands that are included in Greece. It was dangerous to travel. So, you had to have a way that accepted strangers, which is another way of saying sometimes new ideas, new codes. The technique then, or the custom was, when a stranger knocked on your door. It’s very biblical, and I believe the Greeks got this whole notion of be kind to a stranger in the Old Testament, be kind to a stranger because he or she could be a god in disguise. begins here. There’s a knock on the door of the castle, the citadel, the little village hut. It was all the same. Someone knocks on your door. You invite them in. You feed them. You give them drink. You give them a place to sleep.

You bathe them. Think about the rituals of bathing in the Old and the New Testament. Only then, only then would the householder, king, or queen who has invited you in would then say, so stranger, by which name did your parents call you? Isn’t that an elegant way of introducing yourself to someone? And then you say, so who are your parents? What country do you come from? What are your customs back there? Slowly you begin to establish an intimate relationship so that there is immense trust. That’s the beauty behind the code of xenia or hospitality. It’s a method of establishing trust in our own time, where we might not have three days to do this as they did in antiquity. What you would simply do is ask a new employee coming in or someone visiting you who you might want to establish some kind of a nonprofit relationship with. Simply ask, what is your story? What is your story? Four simple words. You begin there. You go from the head straight to the heart. What’s your story? What’s the story of your company? Tell me your story. You see how much softer that is. Then you can go in harder for the negotiations and so on later on. But without that trust, there will be constant suspicion.

That suspicion will never be allayed. Is this really nonprofit or is there another agenda that’s hidden here? Or how do you create a team antiquity have been called the crew. How can you establish trust with the crew, with the soldiers you are going off to fight with? Without trust, there is no teamwork. Without a vision combined with that trust, things fail.

Hugh Ballou

Beautifully put. Beautifully put. I just finished my 18th book. I’m catching up to you and I deal with that topic in that book. That book was a pretty large one. So I’m taking a break for the next one. So let’s delve into that a little bit the leadership aspect of this. The nonprofit world is one of the most difficult and becoming one of the most contentious because all the conflicts in society are coming into our cultures. But nonprofit leaders often work in conditions of uncertainty, scarcity, and that difficult topic of conflict. So which Odyssey lesson speaks most directly to their reality?

Phil Cousineau

Well, first I’d like to say that the word itself, it’s really important for us to know the words that we use, the deeper meanings of them. Because even if the origin of a word has been lost to us, it’s still in there. It’s in the melody. It’s in the sound of the word. Often it’s in the body feeling when we hear certain words. So to lead, there are a number of origins about this. One is that it meant to guide. So lead isn’t simply the vanity of someone forging ahead. It means something even, it’s tough and it’s tender, Hugh. It means to guide someone to the right place, the soulful place, the spiritual aspect of having a business. There is even an aspect of this that says the leader, L-E-I-T-E-R, the origin of our word leader, was the one who held up a flag going into battle. Wow, isn’t that a beautiful notion? And often that was dangerous. Often the flag bearer was one of the first to die. Now we have to think about this figuratively speaking. What that means is if I am going into business, I am about to suffer the slings and arrows, as Shakespeare said, of the enemy. Other businesses, the cynicism, of the commercial world, these things. Are you willing to sacrifice yourself?

Are you willing to actually take a risk? Maybe that’s even a better way to put it. Can you be, are you valorous enough to carry the flag forward? That’s one way that I look at leadership. And so in the Odyssey, the way that I think about this is that Homer is telling us that every time Odysseus falls asleep or his crew falls asleep, they are in danger of being extinguished. Here’s an interesting example. When he is at home, he is a king. People forget this, but Odysseus is king of Ithaka, which means he’s somebody. We talk, oh, he’s a somebody, she’s a somebody. We have to take them seriously, right? In the famous episode with the Cyclops, one of the most popular, we all remember this from childhood. Apparently, it’s going to be a big scene in Christopher Nolan’s movie of the Odyssey. When Odysseus blinds the Cyclops, in order to kill the huge ogre, he’s a cannibal. And to save his men, the Cyclops shouts out, who wounded me? Who hurt me? And of all things, Homer decides to put this word into the mouth of Odysseus, nobody. If they ask you who blinded you, tell them nobody. When he gets home again, he becomes, here’s one of the greater points of my book, he becomes everybody.

I think that’s why this story is immortal. Everybody is lost. Everybody begins as somebody. We’re all loved by our parents. We’re loved by our neighborhood. And then we go through middle life and we lose ourselves. Businesses lose their direction. They lose their identity. Businesses become nothing, nobody. How do you find your way home again? How do you get back to your true vision, your deeper self? How do you become somebody again to be reckoned with? How do you become everybody?

Hugh Ballou

Wow, wow. So what role does myth play in healing polarized communities? This would apply to churches, synagogues, as well as community charities. You know, we’ve been through some trauma, people have better ideas, they divide, they get into conflict, and, you know, where we have humans, we’re going to have conflict. You know, it’s really the sign of energy if we manage it correctly. What role can myth play in helping those communities heal? And not only for the leader, the person in charge, but the board of directors, because sometimes the board gets shell-shocked and they don’t have the confidence.

Phil Cousineau

I’m so glad that you asked that question. One way to think about myth as in mythology, a sacred story, not a lie that came much, much later. The myth is the shared story that holds people together. I think that’s a point to go back to again and again as a leader. Go back to the original vision. What brought us together? What made you want to join our team, our business, our community, our church? What was the original vision and what then coalesced, sank in because of agreement? What is our shared story? If you can’t agree on that, you are going to disintegrate as an individual, but also as a group. What is the shared story? That will take you home again.

Hugh Ballou

The shared story. So Phil, let’s have some fun. Can I do a set of rapid-fire questions to end up here? Sure, sure. Short or one word, let’s just say. What one word best describes Odysseus? Endurance. What one word best describes Penelope? Devotion. The scene in the Odyssey that still stops you in your tracks.

Phil Cousineau

The scene when Odysseus is coming home after 20 years, and he spends some time with a shepherd who he’s become friends with, Eumaeus, which is one of the archetypes of deep, deep friendship. Together they go to the citadel, the palace where he’s been gone for all these years, and on the steps leading to the palace, there Odysseus encounters his dog, Argus, his hunting dog from 20 years before. The dog that has been banished from the palace, which is enormously significant. The dog, Hugh, has been waiting for him for 20 years. But Odysseus cannot admit that they are together because otherwise the spies around the palace would identify him and they would immediately get rid of him. So he has to simply nod at his beautiful hunting dog and move on to the palace to save his wife, his son, his parents. He has to keep going. And this is one of the great, great qualities of the Greek poem, sophrosyne. It means self-control. Can you control yourself? In a world of tremendous overwhelming passions, tremendous temptations, can you establish self-control? When Odysseus nods and walks by to the palace, Argus, his hunting dog from his youth, whimpers and dies.

It is one of the tenderest scenes in all of human literature. And in this way, just to go back just for a second, this is the way Homer is telling us again and again, that Odysseus, as one of the great leaders, heals himself. Remember, he has been gored in his youth by a boar. Ulysses, which is the Italian version of Odysseus, Ulysses in Latin means healed scar. This is a beautiful association for me because it means we’re not waiting for government grants. We’re not waiting to fall in love. We’re not waiting for some miracle from another world to heal ourselves or our business or our families. Instead, great soulful leaders like Odysseus learn how to heal themselves. This is the glory of the Odyssey.

Hugh Ballou

That is the perfect final sentence for this powerful interview. Phil, this has been so inspirational today. And I am going to pull out the original. We’re recording this for the audience in the middle of 2026. And you might be looking at this on some future day because this is always going to be online. So some of the context is for today, but these messages are eternal messages. So as a final hope, final comment, what’s a word of encouragement for leaders who feel far from home?

Phil Cousineau

Follow the love. What did you love to do when you were young? What did you do that you loved when you were in midlife and you had a vision that this is who I am, this is what I want to do, this is the contribution I want to make? Follow that love and it will take you back home again.

Hugh Ballou

Phil, this has been an amazing journey. Thank you for reminding us about the ancient stories that still carry living wisdom. If we look at them, we read them. The work of nonprofit leadership is also a journey through storms, temptation, loss, discovery, responsibility, and renewal. Your work helps us see the journey itself can become a place where wisdom is formed, and we can learn on that journey. And this is an encouragement. Phil, thank you so much for sharing this wisdom with our audience today on The Nonprofit Exchange.

Phil Cousineau

It’s been a privilege and an honor, Hugh. And I wish everyone safe travels, getting home again.