Odysseus Flawed Leadership In The Odyssey

Odysseus’ Flawed Leadership in The Odyssey

Motivational speaker Brian Tracy stated, “Become the kind of leader that people would follow voluntarily, even if you had no title or position.” The most important skills an effective leader uses are communication, respect, responsibility, and trust. These skills are important because the people that follow someone want to be respected and treated fairly. If a leader doesn’t value these skills their followers will resent them and eventually stop contributing. Poor leadership can result in followers losing interest and possibly escalate to them resenting their leader. Leaders shouldn’t expect their followers to work hard if they’re not going to respect them. Odysseus was a terrible leader. He didn’t

Odysseus was warned by Circe that the sirens were a deadly force to sailors. She explained to him that their song is so beautiful that men lose their minds. When hearing this, instead of avoiding the sirens and keeping himself and his men from harm, Odysseus decided that he had to hear their song for himself. Circe explained to him the way that he could keep his crew from hearing the sirens. She said that he can place thick beeswax in the men’s ears and have them tie Odysseus up tight. Odysseus did this and luckily none of his men heard the song. Circe revealed, “There is a great heap of dead men's bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them”(Homer 12). Odysseus could have avoided the sirens completely and not put himself or his men at any risk. He should have communicated with his crew, while using his better-judgment to move past his need to hear the song. Odysseus is a leader, this means that he should be selfless when it comes to protecting his crew, however he doesn’t exhibit this skill at any point in The Odyssey. Continuing onto the leadership article Leadership: It’s Not About You by Amy Modglin. Odysseus would have learned that he should be selfless if he read this, “I must admit, in my early days as a leader I was all about me. I had a title and I thought that was all I needed. I thought because of my title everyone would follow me and respect me. I didn't think leadership was something I needed to work hard at. I had already arrived”(Modglin 1). If Odysseus had just treated his crew with more respect and worked harder to be selfless he would’ve been the perfect leader, and his crew would have the utmost respect for him as a