Why Plato’s Cave Matters Now

You’re a leader. Your job is to communicate so that your team members not only understand what to do, they’re inspired to give their best. Now think of a time when you failed either to make yourself understood or to inspire. Maybe it was a rookie mistake early in your career. Maybe it’s occurring now, in the current crisis, as you struggle to connect via Zoom with your fractured team. What if I said the secret to communication and inspiration — to becoming a great leader — lies in taking a new approach to a 3,000-year-old story?

The story is Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, from his immortal work The Republic. In the story, prisoners are chained inside a cave, facing the back wall. Their shackles prevent them from turning their heads. Behind the prisoners burns a low fire and in front of the fire actors parade carrying puppets that cast shadows on the cave’s back wall. The prisoners, who have known no other life, believe these shadows are alive and that the cave constitutes the entire world. Then one day a prisoner escapes and experiences, for the first time, sun, trees, creek-sound, birdsong, the luxury of a languid breeze. Overcome with emotion, he vows to lead his fellow prisoners to freedom. Back inside the cave, when he tries to describe his experience, not only do his fellow prisoners call him a liar — they threaten to kill him if does not shut up.