Odysseus Leadership Essay

John Maxwell once said, “Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.” Odysseus, a hero in the epic The Odyssey, becomes an example of this in his attempt to return to his home. While sailing, he decided to sail by a large creature and lose only a few men, compared to sailing by a whirlpool and possibly losing everyone and his ship. Odysseus also gets his crew to blind a large one-eyed monster and hide under his animals to free him and his crew. Odysseus was a strong leader and did everything he could to help his crew because of his decisions to sacrifice some men rather than possibly lose them all and to escape from a monster by hiding under his livestock.
Odysseus had proved he was a strong leader when he chose to lose only a few men over losing them all. While visiting an island, a witch named Circe gave him a sound piece of advice while giving him his future: “Hug the cliff of Scylla, take your ship through on a racing stroke. Better than to mourn six men than lose them all, and the ship too.” This means that Odysseus should pass by the island of Scylla and guarantee a loss of a few men rather than pass by the whirlpool named Charybdis and risk losing everyone and getting his ship destroyed. He decided to follow Circe’s advice, and when he approached the island of …show more content…
He tricked the Cyclops into eating and drinking heavily, and while it was asleep his crew drove a charred stake into its eye. Overnight, Odysseus comes up with the idea to tie them up to the undersides of the Cyclops’s rams. The following morning, the Cyclops lets his livestock out, and Odysseus and his crew manage to escape to their boat. Had Odysseus not come up with this idea, his crew and him would have been stuck in the Cyclops’s cave and likely killed by him. This excerpt is another example of how great Odysseus was as a