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.
