LEADERSHIP STRATEGY: THE BENEFITS OF GOING DEEP
go deep when problem solving
The poem, Beowulf , written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century. Beowulf , the oldest surviving epic in British literature, exists in only one manuscript. This copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and a disastrous fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631). The Beowulf manuscript is now housed in the British Library, London. Behind this ancient writing, there is much wisdom and a great lesson for us.
Lessons from the legend of Beowulf
(by LSI contributor Charlie Davis adapted from the work of David Whyte’s The Heart Aroused)
Beowulf is a 6th Century Scandinavian warrior who comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the King of Denmark. Hrothgar is being plundered by a diabolical swamp creature called Grendel. At three o’clock in the morning, Grendel comes to the castle and slays Hrothgar’s subjects. Beowulf arrives to do battle on the king’s behalf, and is finally victorious. He mortally wounds Grendel who staggers back to die in the swamp. That night, there is much feasting and gift giving in the King’s castle.
We all fool ourselves into believing that the problem has been solved in one swift movement, and we celebrate easy victories.
The next night, however, an even more terrifying dragon appears and drags off human victims – it’s Grendel’s Mother!
The message in this portion of the poem is unsparing. It’s not the thing we fear that must be dealt with—it’s the mother of the thing we fear. The monster that has given birth to your nightmare. How many executives have solved their perceived difficulties with the first stroke? They advance with preconceived notions about what needs to be done. They implement quickly, and, because they thought they recognized the problem they believe they have solved it. Then the phone rings and a manager tells them another monster has arisen from the depths of managerial hell and is destroying the productivity and purpose the execuetive team thought they had solved.
In the saga, the man Grendel’s mother has dragged off to the lake was the closest friend of Hrothgar. The king was grief-stricken.
What we hold most dear in our organization’s culture is what denying the problem will cost us.
Visibly moved, Beowulf decides he must go down into the lake where Grendel’s mother lives and confront her directly. The people are aghast that he could contemplate such a thing; because of the terror they felt. They named the huge one Grendel: If he had a father, no one knew him, or whether there’d been others before these two, hidden evil before hidden evil.
The story tells us that you can blame your mother, you can blame your father, or his father for the problems with which you wrestle, but ultimately you are the one in whom they have made a home. You are the one who must say “Thus far and no farther”, then you must go down and confront them alone.
They live in secret places, windy cliffs, wolf dens where water pours from the rocks, then runs underground, where mist steams like black clouds.
When the story tells us that they live in secret places, we are being told that Grendel’s mother is the living incarnation of our disowned side, which has been forced to live in unfamiliar places – what’s terrifying is that we don’t even want to know what’s lurking down there. We learn that our ordinary wisdom is not enough to penetrate the mystery of the lake. The lake is so terrifying, that we would rather die than enter it.
The poem goes on to say A deer, hunted through the woods by packs of Hounds, a stag with great horns, though driven through the forest from faraway places, prefers to die on those shores, refuses to save its life in that water. It isn’t far, nor is it a pleasant spot!
What does it take to have the maturity to admit our lake even exists– and then have the courage to slip beneath its still surface? Where is your lake? When was the last time you journeyed there?
Beowulf prepares to battle Grendel’s mother in the lake, wearing the finest chain mail, woven by the wives of trolls. He leaps into the black water and sinks to the very bottom where Grendel’s mother waits for him. In the ensuing ferocious battle, he finds that the finest armor and his great sword are useless in pitch-black chaos of the lake. Beowulf is forced to throw them away and wrestle barehanded with Grendel’s mother.
In other words, the tools we use in our everyday exploits – computers, strategic plans, budgets, personality assessments, quality assurance programs, consultants – all are useless for matters of the soul. For the answer lies down deep, deep in the water of our personal lake.
Beowulf is down there a long time and given up for dead. Locked together in a deathlike embrace, they tumble into her den, where Beowulf sees, glowing on the wall, an unknown but marvelous sword. He breaks the chain on its hilt, and with a sudden blow, kills Grendel’s mother with the glowing blade.
Dramatically, Beowulf rises to the surface with the severed head of Grendel, whose body is found after searching the den. He brings as a trophy the sword responsible for his victory. But the sword used to kill Grendel’s mother dissolves in Grendel’s blood – it was useless in the light of day.
The poem tells us two things about our own monsters. As we expose them to the light of day, the fear they generated evaporates – as it evaporates, so does the need for the weapon we used to destroy it. Secondly, the dissolving sword reminds us that we can never ultimately show to others exactly how we slew our monster. We can never replicate in another how we faced our own fear and found the courage to do battle. Like Beowulf, we rise from the lake with severed head but look down to find only the hilt of the sword we used.
Don’t get carried away with your display of inner mastery and try to wield the same inner sword in the world above. Your delusions of grandeur will melt away as soon as you try to use it in the light of day. What is real and useful in the inner world does not immediately translate into the world to which you return. It takes skill and patience to find how much you have really changed, and which parts of your new world view will work for you.
The question is not one of winning or losing, but of experiencing life at an ever-increasing depth. The storyteller says, why not go down, at home or at work, into your lake, consciously, like Beowulf. Don’t die on the shore like the frightened stag. The stakes are very high; but the stakes are your very life.
We cannot discover the truth for or from others, but we can help others by letting them know that we found the courage to venture into our lake – and will never be the same again because of it.
What are your Grendels? How much time do you spend fighting and slaying them? What gave birth to them – what are your Grendel’s Mothers? When will you go into your lake and wrestle her barehanded?
This post is sponsored by Vistage Florida