The best way to motivate an ambitious person was to torment them with a lack of approval. To treat their highest accomplishments as trivial and their smallest lapses as catastrophes. Men and women of ambition gave their best efforts when praise was sparing. “I am sorry, my lord. I have failed you.” Good, Mícheál thought, he isn’t making excuses. That was the first reaction of most. If the captain had made excuses, they would have been hacked into splinters, like so much dead wood.
