Beyond the Boundaries of Fantasia: An ancient imagining of the future of leadership

exercise: what makes a good leader in war

LISTENING FOR LEADERSHIP

PURPOSE

You may already have many thoughts about what make a good leader in war. Caesar may challenge, reinforce, overturn, or modify some of these thoughts. But he's a brilliant and tricky writer (renowned by Cicero as one of the best and most persuasive speakers of his generation), and you may not notice your thoughts changing as you read Caesar's self-presentation.

The purpose of this exercise is to record your current thoughts about what makes a good leader in war -- before we discuss Caesar's portrayal of himself. At the end of the module we'll return to our initial thoughts about military leadership and see how (and if!) our study of Caesar's generalship has changed our minds.

TO DO
Write down two things:
  1. a full-blown description of the ideal military leader
  2. a list of attributes a military leader should have
Keep both full description and attribute list in a document on your own (so you can easily return to them later) and share your thoughts (anonymously) here (so we can discuss them as a group).

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