Heroic ecologies: embodied heroic leadership and sustainable futures

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate heroism as an embodied system of leadership and well-being. Heroic leadership is presented as a baseline for sustainable futures and global health. Design/methodology/approach - This paper presents an embodied reading of heroic leadership and its sustainable development across five stages. It outlines its core functions, its grounding in self-leadership through physical and mental trauma and its holistic benefits, resulting in the development of the Heroic Leadership Embodiment and Sustainable Development (HLESD) model. The efficacy of HLESD is demonstrated in an empirical case study of heroism promotion and education: the Hero Construction Company and the Heroic Imagination Project. Findings - Heroic leadership is revealed as an emergent, dynamic and distributed form of sustainable development. Research limitations/implications - This paper demonstrates the critical connections between heroism, sustainability, embodied leadership and well-being and how they stand to benefit from each other, individuals and communities at large. Social implications - The implementation of HLESD in educational, counselling and broader contexts in consultation with a wide range of professionals stands to offer significant benefits to pedagogies, clinical practice, holistic therapies and twenty-first-century societies, at both the community and policy level. Originality/value - The emerging field of heroism science and the use of heroic leadership as an interdisciplinary tool is a novel approach to well-being, which holds immense potential for the imagining and fostering of sustainable personal and collective futures.