Leadership & Strategy: Lessons From Alexander The Great by Martino Leandro

Author:Martino, Leandro [Martino, Leandro]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing
Published: 2008-02-13T16:00:00+00:00

Empowering the Team

After selecting the appropriate people for each job, Alexander did what every good leader needs to do. He empowered his people so they could develop their full potential and transform goals into reality. Had Alexander been a micromanager, he could not have continued to advance toward the limits of the unknown, for he would have been too busy dealing with the affairs of the nations he had already conquered. He needed to delegate in order to let his empire grow, even if the risk seemed big.

Only God can be everywhere, and even though some people compared Alexander with a deity, he needed to delegate power to loyal first-class soldiers to manage the various affairs of his vast and ever-growing empire.

“Don’t tell people how to do things,” said George S. Patton, “tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.”5 Alexander empowered his people to govern annexed territories as well as to lead units of the Macedonian army. Generally, he would tell his commanders what they needed to achieve rather than how to do it, and he would only get involved if the situation turned worrisome. Though he knew his commanders could eventually make mistakes, the king encouraged judicious risk-taking.

Frequently, Alexander assigned important parts of his army to different outstanding leaders who served as his generals and sent them to separate routes or to distant nations with specific objectives. Those operations included, but were not limited to, pacifying revolts, negotiating with locals, annexing new territories, inspecting terrains, performing strategic maneuvers, diverting enemies’ attention, and providing support and preemptive defense to the advances of the main force. Among some others, Nearchus, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus, Craterus, and Hephaestion headed these kinds of missions. While these commanders’ expeditions were not unbeatable like Alexander’s were, they were, for the most part, very successful and vital for the Macedonian king’s plans.

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