Do You Have This Ability?

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2:23welcome to the daily stoic podcast where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength insight and wisdom everyday life each one of these passages is based on the 2 000 year old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women for more you can visit us dailystoic.com

2:47Do you have this ability? A leader is a doer, but that doesn't mean they're always doing. In fact, if a leader is always doing, chances are they'll end up doing the wrong thing because they haven't taken enough time to think, to study, to question, and prepare. In Thomas Ricks' wonderful book, Waging a Good War, which he also discussed on a great episode of the Daily Stoic podcast recently. Ricks looks at what made Bob Moses one of the best yet lesser known civil rights leaders. Moses was calm and quiet. He didn't seek out the spotlight. He did not make decisions out of emotion. Instead, Ricks says, quoting a colleague of Moses, he had the capacity for reflection and distance from the thing you are very much in the midst of and even leading.

3:33Ricks goes on to say that the ability to gain psychological detachment to reflect on action is a talent of many effective leaders. James Mattis, he says, one of the best American generals in our recent wars made a habit of carrying in his combat knapsack a copy of the works of Marcus Aurelius. And reading that Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher for a half hour at night, he explained, helped him gain some mental distance from the battlefield. Of course, Marcus Aurelius himself had this ability, and that's what created meditations in the first place. Marcus was taking time to think and reflect, to distance himself from the very battlefield he was writing from in his tent.

4:13All leaders need to be able to do this. Reacting emotionally does not serve anyone well. Reacting unthinkingly does not serve anyone well. Look at the mess that Elon Musk is currently in at Twitter, a classic example of what Robert Green calls tactical hell. So much of it could have been avoided with a better plan, with more restraint, with a willingness to take in feedback and integrate new information as it comes in. Each of us must cultivate time and space for reflection. We must be able to detach from a moment and see ourselves and it from a distance. We need stillness. We need discipline.

4:50We need less ego. We need to listen. Only then can we act. Only then are we fit to lead. And this is, of course, something we talk a lot about in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. And when I talked to R.C. Buford, who's the CEO of the San Antonio Spurs, when I talked to General Dan Kane, who's in the Air Force, when I talked to entrepreneurs and business people and leadership experts, they were all saying some version of this, the ability to make transitions, to step back, to see perspective, to make good, rational, and calm decisions in the midst of very irrational and often not calm situations.

5:27That's the art of what we're trying to cultivate. If you haven't checked out the leadership challenge, you very much should go to dailystoic.com slash leadership challenge to check that out. I'll link to it in today's show notes. It's one of the best challenges I think we've done and you can get it for free, by the way, if you sign up for daily stoic life, which I'll also link to, but I'm wishing you much stillness in your leadership journey. And I think this challenge will help you get there.

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