preview

Beowulf Leadership Summary

Decent Essays

The article Beowulf and the Teaching of Leadership written by Tom Loughman, Ph.D., and John Finley, Ph.D. was quite informative on the characteristics of a charismatic leader. They did a tremendous job by using Beowulf as a leader to check off the Conger-Kanungo guidelines.The main purpose of their research was to look at Beowulf's leader-like characteristics through evaluation of his band of warriors and kingdom. Then piggybacking off of that they take the risks of following, and over-relying on a charismatic leader. It is a piece of work worth praising and their efforts should not go unnoticed.
Continuing off of a short introduction they begin discussing how the epic poem Beowulf can be used “to further an understanding of leadership in general” (Loughman and Finely 156). To determine what type of leader he was and how it may affect his men they had to go through a series of steps which was:
(a)Review the historical and cultural indicators of the period as they relate to leadership in the poem: (b) recap the three major episodes of the poem: (c) summarize the Conger-Kanungo model of charismatic leadership: (d) examine the character of Beowulf for elements of charismatic leadership: and, (e) explores the risks to organizations of an over-reliance upon charismatic leaders. (156)

They executed this perfectly by giving a brief background of the story of Beowulf, and how he was as a person while also taking a look at his men slightly to then bring them into a bigger picture.

Get Access