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Leadership Process Four: Directing Symbols 117 27: Illness at Tarsus Our actions can build (or destroy) trust. By coupling our actions with symbols, we enhance that trust; we enhance the effect of the action compound ways. In the second year of his campaign, before the second great battle (at Issus), Alexander paused at Tarsus and fell gravely ill with cramps and fever—in fact, all his physicians but one feared that he could not recover. Unfortunately, the only physician who did not despair, Philip of Acarnania, was the very one about whom Alexander had received a letter asserting that he intended to poison him. Furthermore, Philip proposed to treat Alexander with a powerful (read risky) admixture of drugs. Against the strong advice of his colleagues, Alexander agreed to the treatment. At the very moment Alexander began to drink the potion, he handed the accusing letter to the physician. The rumor was untrue. Alexander recovered. Philip was magnanimously rewarded. Inferences and Allegations The symbolism of quaffing a possibly poisonous potion while the rumored assassin is reading the assertion is one of the most delicious images in humankind’s history. Alexander was an enigma about trust. He believed in people until they taught him not to, but at other times he was paranoid. Much later in the campaign, he also became more paranoid about trusting his father’s advisers. How do you reconcile such schizophrenic behavior?
118 THE WISDOM OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT Leading Lessons The lesson? Trust people. Rumors can be very destructive and must be stopped ASAP. If you are trusting of your people, you can be a more effective vehicle of change. Getting people to trust you is the key. Using symbolism can convert trust into zealotry toward your mission. A wonderful story from World War I about saving face helps to further support and explain Alexander’s action at Tarsus. It also illustrates how great leaders symbolically acquire trust. Two promising and highly regarded captains had never met, but they happened to be commanding adjacent units on the front. They walked out in front of their troops, saluted, shook hands, removed their helmets, and began a conversation. Coincidentally, the Germans began a walking artillery barrage, which crept closer and closer to them. Rather than one of the captains losing face and suggesting the prudent expedient of putting on their helmets and retiring to their trenches, both stood there having their conversation while artillery fire rained down around them. Luckily, they were not hit. Their names were Patton and MacArthur. They went on to become two of the most important generals of World War II, acquiring exaggerated reputations for courage under fire. Courage of your convictions is imperative. Demonstrating those convictions is equally important. Symbolism enhances them. In other words, trusting your physician is one thing; drinking a possibly poisonous potion while accusing the physician while you do so is quite another symbolic thing altogether.
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CONTENTS Foreword .................
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CONTENTS vii 33: Ablutions, Celebra
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FOREWORD Alexander the Great as a l
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PREFACE Leadership cannot be taught
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PREFACE xiii Sources: How Do We Kno
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PREFACE xv Alexander’s exploits a
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Books are not the w
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix Dickerson, Andy
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RÉSUMÉ Alexander the Great SIGNIF
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Page 185 and 186: 158 BIBLIOGRAPHY Fildes, Alan, and
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168 INDEX Sogdiana, Rock of, 65 Sov
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