Crying Wolf: The Real Tragedy Isn’t About Lying, It’s About Leadership.

What if everything you thought you knew about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” was wrong? We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf, but what if the real tragedy wasn’t about a liar, but a failure of leadership?

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is one of Aesop’s Fables, a tale hundreds of years old. You probably know the story: a shepherd boy would continually go up to the embankment and shout, ‘Help, there’s a wolf!’ The farmers would all come running, only to find out it was a trick. Then one day there really was a wolf, but when the boy shouted, they didn’t believe him, and no one came to his aid. The whole flock was eaten by the wolf.

The traditional interpretation states that this is how liars are rewarded: even if they tell the truth, no one believes them.[1]

But I propose the lesson is wrong; the lesson is not about lying. The true lesson is: this is what happens without effective leadership. Everyone in the fable—and the village they represent—suffered dire consequences.

Let’s look closer. The boy was not randomly protecting a few sheep; these were not only his family’s sheep. This was the village’s sheep, their collective livelihood. At the time of the story, livestock were often kept in a “Commons” managed by the entire village. The boy was protecting the food that the village would need for the winter. That food is now gone. In a pre-industrial society, the loss of an entire flock meant starvation for the community.

This raises critical questions:

• Why did the village allow an unreliable boy to manage a resource so vital to their survival?
• Why did they not recognize the escalating danger they were in, both from the potential wolf and from the boy’s behavior?
• Why was there no system of oversight, training, or accountability for such a crucial role?

When you have a worker who is a problem, or a system that is failing, you have an imperative to correct the situation. It doesn’t matter who they are or how uncomfortable it might be to address. Whenever there is an unsafe condition—be it involving people, equipment, materials, or environment—it has to be corrected, proactively and decisively. The wolf may have eaten the sheep, but it was the absence of leadership that truly devoured the village’s future.

[1.] “151. The Boy Who Cried ‘Wolf’ (Laura Gibbs, translator)”. mythfolklore.net.