Abstract
While leadership seems to come naturally for many great leaders, leadership is also a skill that can be learned. Some leaders gradually grow into successful leadership positions but, for others, leadership is a challenge that they suddenly find themselves rising to meet. In the heroic poem, The Song of Deborah, we come face to face with Deborah--a woman who suddenly becomes a leader--and she leads her community to victory and social transformation. This paper delves into her character and her leadership role within her patriarchal cultural history and attempts to investigate and understand if leadership skills are personality specific or gender specific and if women leaders share a common distinctive style. The paper concludes by framing a template for ideal leadership that is gender neutral and more suited for the emerging generations of the future based on the concept of resonant leadership and how these principles can even be adopted by contemporary leaders to make their leadership more reflective and thus more effective. The main objective of this paper is to popularize the concept of resonant leadership by reviewing it from a literary perspective using The Song of Deborah as a text that exemplifies this type of leadership.
Recommended Citation
Thomas, Lyola
(2021)
"A Template for the Future: Resonant Leadership in The Song of Deborah,"
Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol. 22:
Iss.
6, Article 2.
Available at:
https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss6/2