The Coaching Conversation
What The Song of Achilles Taught Me About Leadership
On glory, ego, and the leader who lifts others without seeking the light.
Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles gives us two leaders for the price of one — and the contrast between them is one of the most instructive studies in leadership I have encountered in fiction.
Achilles is extraordinary. He is the greatest warrior of his age, destined for glory, radiantly gifted, and utterly aware of it. He burns bright, commands rooms without trying, and inspires devotion simply by existing. And yet, for all his brilliance, it is the other man in this story — Patroclus, the quiet, overlooked prince who was never meant for greatness — who holds everything together. Who holds Achilles together.
I have met both of these archetypes in every organisation I have ever worked in or coached within. And the deeper I go into leadership development, the more I find myself returning to Patroclus.
01 Know the difference between reputation and character
Achilles is consumed by his legacy — by how he will be remembered, by the prophecy of his short but glorious life, by the need to be the best and to be seen as the best. His gifts are real and magnificent. But his relationship with his own glory becomes, ultimately, his undoing. When Agamemnon wounds his pride, Achilles withdraws from battle entirely — and people die.
This is one of the most common leadership traps I encounter: the conflation of reputation with character. Reputation is what others say about you. Character is what you do when the outcome does not serve your image. Achilles, for much of the novel, struggles to lead from character because he is too busy managing his reputation.
The leaders who last — who create enduring cultures and genuinely develop others — are those who have made peace with this distinction. They do the right thing even when no one is watching. They give credit even when taking it would burnish their legend. That is character. And it is the foundation on which authentic leadership is built.
02 The power of the one who stays
Patroclus is, by the world’s standards, a nobody. He arrived at Peleus’s court in disgrace, an accidental killer, stripped of his own kingdom and future. He has no prophecy. No destiny. No particular renown. And yet he becomes the moral centre of the entire story.
He is the one who tends the wounded when Achilles refuses to fight. He is the one who listens to the men, advocates for the forgotten, and keeps a thread of humanity alive in the brutal machinery of war. He does not lead through position or power. He leads through presence, compassion, and an instinctive understanding that every person in his orbit is worth his full attention.
This is what I think of as invisible leadership — the kind that does not appear in the chronicles or the victory speeches, but without which nothing holds. In every high-performing team I have observed, there is a Patroclus: the person who bridges, who remembers, who makes room, who stays. They are rarely the loudest voice. They are almost always the most essential one.
03 Grief and loss are leadership territory too
When Patroclus dies, Achilles is shattered. The novel does not rush past this. Miller gives his grief enormous space — because she understands that what breaks Achilles is not the loss of a companion but the loss of the one person who saw him fully, loved him without agenda, and told him the truth.
In twenty years of working with leaders, I have seen grief arrive in many forms in the workplace: the loss of a role, a team, a vision, a relationship, a version of oneself that no longer fits. And I have seen how rarely organisations create space for it. We rush to resilience. We reframe the loss as a learning. We move on before we have actually moved through.
A curious leader — one who is genuinely interested in the full human experience of the people they lead — knows how to sit with someone in their grief without immediately trying to resolve it. That quality of patient, non-judgmental presence is not soft. It is one of the most sophisticated capabilities a leader can develop.
04 Ego is the enemy of growth
Achilles’s tragedy is not that he is flawed. It is that he knows his flaw and cannot overcome it. His ego — his need to be the greatest, to be honoured, to be avenged — repeatedly overrides his better judgment. He knows what the right thing is. He chooses glory instead.
I work with many high-achieving leaders who carry a version of this. Their talent is not in question. Their track record is impressive. But somewhere along the way, the identity of being the most capable person in the room became load-bearing — and now it makes it hard to ask for help, to be coached, to admit uncertainty, to let others shine.
The coaching question I often return to with leaders like this is simple: what would you do differently if no one was keeping score? The answers are almost always more interesting, more human, and more effective than what they are currently doing. Achilles answers this question too late. Many leaders, with the right support, can answer it in time.
05 Who you choose to stand beside defines your leadership
The central relationship of the novel is a choice. Achilles, fated for glory, surrounded by kings and warriors who would have been honoured to stand at his side, chooses Patroclus. The boy with no standing, no destiny, no obvious value to his cause.
He chooses him not for what he offers strategically, but for who he is. For the quality of his character. For the way he makes Achilles feel known rather than celebrated.
I think about this often when I work with leaders on building their teams and inner circles. We tend to hire and promote in our own image — people who are impressive in the ways we are impressive, who reinforce our existing views, who reflect our strengths back at us. Achilles teaches a different lesson: the most valuable person in your world may be the one who complements rather than mirrors you. Who is honest with you rather than admiring of you. Who grounds you when your own brilliance begins to lift you away from the people you are supposed to be leading.
Greatness that cannot be questioned is not leadership. It is performance. The leaders who truly change people are those who have the courage to be known, not just admired.
My Point of View
The Song of Achilles is, on its surface, a love story. But at its depth, it is a meditation on two questions that sit at the heart of every leadership conversation I have: What are you leading for? And who are you willing to truly see?
Achilles leads for glory. It is not nothing — his courage and brilliance are real and they matter. But glory is a lonely destination, and the novel shows us exactly what it costs. Patroclus leads for something quieter and more durable: the wellbeing of the people around him, the integrity of his own values, the relationship that makes both of them more fully human.
At Starfish Global, we work with leaders at every stage of this journey — from those just discovering that authentic, curious, inclusive leadership is possible, to those who have been practising it for years and want to go deeper. The Song of Achilles reminds us why this work matters. And it reminds us that the most important leadership choice is not the battle you fight, but the person you choose to become.
Inspired by The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller’s 2011 novel.