Compare And Contrast Beowulf And The Teaching Of Leadership

Dr. Tom Loughman and Dr. John Finley created an article titled “ Beowulf and the Teaching of Leadership”, its main claim is about wether Beowulf was a good leader or not. The article describes Beowulf’s traits and the story to see if he is a leader or not. The article uses a model called Conger and Kanungo’s charismatic leader model and sees that Beowulf fits well into the model. With a leader like Beowulf, objectives will be compared. I agree with the authors’ objective about Beowulf being a leader due to his confidence and fearlessness, motivation, Aand his thanes’ loyalty to him.

First, a leader needs to be confident and have no fear. Beowulf showed no fear in fighting Grendel, his mother, and the dragon. A leader with fear will never accomplish anything. For example, from Conger and Kanungo’s charismatic leader model, it says that, “managers who engage in exemplary acts that subordinates interpret and involves great risk and sacrifice Beowulf as a leader , he takes great risks to save the people and the day. Every leader needs to take a risk in order to complete their objectives”(Finley and L pg. 159). This is an important trait to have for a leader. Having confidence will bring great outcomes in the future. Not having any confidence whatsoever can bring nothing but failure.

Additionally, Beowulf is a motivational leader, inspiring his thanes to help him in his battles.

A great leader needs to motivate his men, no matter who or what their adversaries are. For example, in the passage, Beowulf as a Charismatic Leader, from the authors, it describes how Beowulf talk about his boasts before fighting Grendel to motivate himself and his companions (159). Without a motivating leader, they will never be successful like a CEO in a company. Beowulf motivated his thanes to make them believe in him and each other to achieve their objectives. Not only you need to have confidence in yourself, but in companions in order to be

victorious.
Furthermore, Beowulf has thanes that are loyal to him. As long as the thanes are loyal to Beowulf, they will receive awards. For instance, “ The thane vowed loyalty to the lord and in turn received affectionate care as well as material rewards for his valor and allegiance” (157). Not only that, the thanes have to depend on each other for everything. However, even though Beowulf has been kind to them, they abandon him as he fights the dragon. Some thanes break down due to the fact that they turn out to be cowardly warriors.
To end it all, Beowulf was a good leader overall. He displayed many things in the story such as motivation, fearlessness, loyalty, etc. He and his thanes has been successful in all of their battles all because Beowulf wanted to get the job done. A good leader needs to be ready for anything that stands in his/her way. It is not easy being a leader, but everyone needs to have a leader in order to be successful. Without a leader, everything will be a disaster. What would happen if Mark Zuckerberg decides to shut down Facebook for good? Beowulf has been a tremendous leader to everybody in his time.