Dragon Slaying and Safety

Where there are dragons there is also gold.

It seems counter intuitive to speak of slaying dragons as a means of staying safe. These fire breathing beasts are nothing but dangerous right? Besides, they don’t really exist, do they? Bear with me as I unpack this allegory.

The deeper narrative to the metaphor of the dragon is that they symbolize some of our deepest truths and fears about ourselves. The unsavoury, scaled, fire breathing aspects about our being (and the organizations we populate) that when discovered by others, could banish us to a dark cave to live out the rest of our days. Or at least that is how our mind plays with us about the discovery of the shadowy aspects of ourselves and our organization. But make no mistake. . . these dragons do exist.

Slaying the dragon is really about penetrating our well armoured ego, personally and organizationally. The dragon’s death comes when a light is cast on the aspects of ourselves and our institutions, that we are terrified to see. The irony is that when we put our ego protectionism to death, we discover gold.

Knowing and acknowledging the truth about ourselves, no matter how unsavoury, is our responsibility. That is why dragon slaying is in so many of our stories, because it resonates with respect to the human journey. As one wise man put it, taking responsibility is of course the greatest adventure we can go on because it is scary, has risks, and there are great rewards.

It is by this process that we become whole rather than fragmented. In becoming whole, we find the things in ourselves that were really dangerous and own them. This is priceless for yourself and your company. Only when we do this, will we start to get to the foundation of managing safety. When we can lead ourselves in this process, we can be trusted to do the right thing when the time comes.  

Don’t listen to me about slaying your dragons, listen to yourself. You’ve heard the call within. I know you have. archetypal.ca