This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life
When my daughters were 5 or 6 every second question was a “why?” why do we do this? why do animals die? why do we die?
As they grew those “why” questions became less frequent. It is tiring to question everything… and tiring to be around people who question everything.
In my own life right up to my mid 30s I was always asking “why?”… doubting or questioning if this was the right path for me, the current activity the best use of my time, the current person in front of me the best person to be around.
In my mid 30s, I made a big conscious choice to limit how much time I spend questioning everything vs committed to doing the best with the work or person in front of me.
There is a balance somewhere between the extremes. If you are always asking “why?” you will make no progress. If you are always testing the limits of the system, you break the system and annoy people. If you never test the limits of the system, you get stuck when the world moves on and the system can’t adapt.
The Trickster is the Jungian Archetype of the court jester, the comedian… someone who questions our assumptions, continually asks “why?”, laughs at us when we take ourselves too seriously.
Every long-term thriving organisation I have worked with or studied closely has had one — a person who asks the question no one else is willing to ask. Who notices what everyone else has learned not to see. Who makes the meeting uncomfortable in exactly the way it needed to be uncomfortable.
Sometimes they are celebrated. More often, they are managed, marginalised, or eventually let go.
The Trickster Across All Cultures
The Trickster archetype appears in virtually every mythology and folk tradition in human history.
- Loki in Norse mythology.
- Coyote in Native American tradition.
- Hermes in the Greek pantheon.
- Anansi the spider in West African and Caribbean stories.
- The Fool in Shakespeare — who alone can tell the king the truth.
The Trickster breaks rules, crosses boundaries, violates taboos — and in doing so, releases energy that had been trapped, exposes assumptions that had hardened into dogma, and forces the system to evolve.
Without the Trickster, systems and organisations stagnate.
Trickster Energy in Organisations
Every long-term healthy organisation needs Trickster energy. The problem is that organisations tend to suppress the Trickster. Trickster energy feels to others like it is always slowing down execution of what is needed today. The Trickster often turns destructive or they leave.
When Trickster energy goes destructive, it expresses itself as gossip, cynicism, passive resistance, and quiet disengagement.
How to Use Trickster Energy Well
How do we channel the positive elements of Trickster energy in organisations and teams?
- Create a Specific Space for disruption. Designate spaces — a retrospective, a pre-mortem, a devil’s advocate role in a key decision — where Trickster questions are not just permitted but required. When disruption has a legitimate channel, it tends to be far more productive and far less destabilising.
- Distinguish between the message and the delivery. Tricksters are often right about the substance and clumsy with their mode of communication. Do not let annoyance with the delivery cause you to dismiss a legitimate idea.
- Who you have silenced. If your meetings are harmonious, ask yourself honestly: is that because people have learned not to say certain things? Conflict is a sign of healthy trust and desire to improve.
The Trickster in Yourself
Jung would also invite you to look inward. Where does your own Trickster energy live? Have you suppressed it in order to fit in, to advance, to avoid conflict?
The part of you that wants to say the thing no one is saying… the observation that is clearly true but would be awkward to voice… is often carrying something important.
The inner Trickster is the part of you that knows the emperor has no clothes. What you do with that knowledge is a leadership choice.
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” — Carl Jung
A question: Who is the Trickster in your team or organisation?
This post is part of the series: Jung for Leaders — The Inner Work of Moving People to Action
Also in this series: The 12 Jungian Archetypes | A Deep Dive into Jungian Archetypes | Jung’s 5 Pillars of a Happy Life
Conor’s Jung for Leaders Series of Blog Posts
Carl Jung spent his life exploring what it means to be human. Most leadership development focuses on skills, strategy, and behaviour. Jung explores something more fundamental: the person behind the leader. The single most-read post on this blog is about Jungian archetypes — which tells me that the readers here are not just looking for tactics, they are looking for self-understanding. This series is an attempt to go deeper into that territory.
- The Shadow: The Part of You That Sabotages Your Leadership — projection, blind spots, why your strongest reactions point inward, the gift hidden in the Shadow
- The Persona: Are You Leading as Yourself, or as a Mask? — inflation of the Persona, the cost of living inside the role, the journey back to self
- Individuation: The Journey From Success to Significance — why midlife restlessness is a call not a crisis, what blocks the journey, why it is not selfishness
- The Anima and Animus: The Hidden Energies Every Leader Needs — one-sided leadership, integrating strength and empathy, what your professional conditioning suppressed
- The Hero’s Journey: Every Leader Must Answer a Call — departure, initiation, return; the call you’re refusing; why the ordeal is the point
- The Wise Old Man: Finding and Becoming a Mentor — the archetype in myths, what mentors do that advisors don’t, the shift from receiving to giving
- The Trickster Archetype: Why Every Great Team Needs a Disruptor — Loki, Coyote, the Fool; why organisations suppress this energy; how to channel it
- Synchronicity: Paying Attention to What Life Is Telling You — meaningful coincidence, intuition as intelligence, the discipline of attention
- The Collective Unconscious: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast” — culture as organisational unconscious, how it gets formed, making the invisible visible
- Jung’s Psychological Types: The Original Framework Before Myers-Briggs — introversion/extraversion, the four functions, the inferior function as your blind spot
- Active Imagination: A Conversation With the Part of You That Knows More — the practice step by step, why it works, how to use it for decisions
- Your Personal Myth: Living the Story Worth Living — the closing post; the unlived life; rewriting the myth; the test of a worthy story