What was it about Shadis that made Hanji admire him? It was stated that the Survey Corps took a lot of licks under his leadership. Was it just the fact that Keith tried the best under bad circumstances?
Nenithil is the best at explaining this as she has metas about Shadis in her tumblr!
But, in resume, he is underrated.
Keith was a very capable leader, and he recognized the value and skills Hanji and his others subordinates had while he was SC commander. His own view of himself was very depressed, as he felt like a bystander.
But 1. Just by becoming a SC Commander proves he had the strength, wits, and will power to go and come back alive from fully not-mapped Titan Territory (while Erwin and the others had maps of Wall Maria territory); 2. He knew very well how to evaluate his subordinates (to the point he knew Erwin had a great strategy anti-titan with the flare signals but was too prideful at that time to accept it; he eventually did tho); 3. He trained recruits very well later; 4. Hanji herself considered him a very capable leader, and she went outside the Walls under his command - and I don’t know if you noticed but they were building bases outside the Walls, which is something impressive yes considering Levi only appeared in the last year of Shadis's work. So there are things Shadis DID achieved and were good at!
