Profound lessons from the Bronze Age, more meaningful than the latest management fad:
Around 400 BC, near the end of the Peloponnesian War, controversial, brilliant and legendary (and real) General Alcibiades of Athens looked out over a mass of untrained, raw, newly-recruited Thracian soldiers, on a southern plain in Thrace (part of Turkey, today). His military companions looked on at the new recruits in astonishment that Alcibiades could have so much confidence in them.
In a haughty tone, one of the companions says to Alcibiades, "Even yourself are not so vain as to imagine that these recruits will stick (i.e., fight – KPL) for you?"
To which Alcibiades replies, "I'm disappointed in you, old friend. Can you be as blind as these Thracians to what stares you, and them, in the face?"
"And what would that be?" his companion asked.
"Their own greatness."
He meant he would lift them to it.
He continued, "They will not stay for my destiny, but for their own."
From "Tides of War," by Steven Pressfield
Do you see the greatness in your colleagues?
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