On the eve of his army’s first battle with the fearsome Roman legions, Hannibal somehow had to bring his worn-out men alive. He decided to put on a show: he brought in a group of prisoners and told them that if they fought one another to the death in a gladiatorial contest, the victors would win freedom and a place in the Carthaginian army. The prisoners agreed, and Hannibal’s soldiers were treated to hours of bloody entertainment. When the fighting was over, Hannibal addressed his men. You soldiers, said Hannibal, are in exactly the same position as the prisoners. You are many miles from home, on hostile territory, and you have nowhere to go. It is either freedom or slavery, victory or death. But fight as these men fought today and you will prevail. The contest and speech got hold of Hannibal’s soldiers, and the next day they fought with deadly ferocity and defeated the Romans. Hannibal was a master motivator of a rare kind. Where others would harangue their soldiers with speeches, he knew that to depend on words was to be in a sorry state: words only hit the surface of a soldier, and a leader must grab his men’s hearts, make their blood boil, get into their minds, alter their moods. Hannibal reached his soldiers’ emotions indirectly, by relaxing them, calming them, taking them outside their problems, and getting them to bond. Only then did he hit them with a speech that brought home their precarious reality and swayed their emotions.
Daily Law: Motivating people is a subtle art. You must aim indirectly at people’s emotions. By setting up your emotional appeal, you will get inside instead of just scratching the surface.
The 33 Strategies of War
, Strategy 7: Transform Your War into a Crusade—Morale Strategies