How Do You Know If You're A Good Leader? | What Marcus Aurelius Learned from His Father About Being a Good Man

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1:53Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these Stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy.

2:20How do you know if you're a good leader? You lead a large team, you're the head of a household, you have millions of followers or thousands of subscribers, and you often wonder, am I being a good leader? Am I doing right by my kids, my followers, my employees? Am I being a good steward? It can be hard to know. Employees don't go out of their way to tell their manager that they're doing a great job. Kids don't fill their parents in on how they're doing, and the unhappy followers tend to be louder than the happy ones. But from the Stoics, we get a fast and easy test for whether we're doing a good job.

2:53It's this, do you make people better? As Seneca said, happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts. And that is the essence of being a great leader, a great Stoic, a great human being. As the leadership coach, Randall Stuntman, told us during the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, which I recommend everyone check out. I think it's one of the best things we've done. I'll link to it in today's episode. At the base of leadership, he said, what all great leaders have in their heads and their expressions is the idea that they want to make people and situations better.

3:28We talked about this. The job of the Stoic is not just to better their own lives. We, by our example, by our words and deeds, should make the lives of others better. We should be a positive source. We should leave people in places better than we found them. And if you want to feel good, as Marcus Aurelius said, do good. Better yet, help others do good. This is the kind of leadership that I am trying to work on myself. It's one of the things we talk about in the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge, which I think is one of the best things we've done. We actually got some advice from a two-star general in the Air Force.

4:04So you can listen to that as part of the challenge. One of the best interviews I think that we've done. Lots of great lessons in there. And there's a reason so many people have taken and loved the challenge. It's a six plus week course on leadership, but it's really digestible. It won't overload you and it'll give you actual tangible stuff you can use. I can't wait for you to check it out. Go to dailystoic.com slash leadership and check out the leadership challenge, or you can check out the leadership challenge at store.dailystoic.com and I'll link to it in today's show notes.

5:04I learned from my adopted father. Compassion. Unwavering adherence to decisions once he'd reached them. Indifference to superficial honors. Hard work. Persistence. Listening to anyone who could contribute to the public good. His dogged determination to treat people as they deserved. A sense of when to push and when to back off. His altruism. not expecting his friends to keep him entertained at dinner or to travel with him unless they wanted to. And anyone who had to stay behind to take care of something always found him the same when he returned. His searching questions at meetings, a kind of single-mindedness almost never content with first impressions or breaking off the discussion prematurely.

6:00His constancy to his friends, never getting fed up with them or playing favorites, self-reliance always, and cheerfulness, and his advanced planning well in advance, and his discreet attention to even minor things, his restrictions on acclamations and all attempts to flatter him, his constant devotion to the empire's needs, his stewardship of the treasury, his willingness to take responsibility and blame for both, his attitude to the gods, no superstitiousness, and his attitude to men, no demagoguery, no currying favor, no pandering, always sober, always steady, and never vulgar or prey to fads.

6:51The way he handled the material comforts that fortune had supplied him in such abundance, without arrogance and without apology. If they were there, he took advantage of them. If not, he didn't miss them. No one ever called him glib or shameless or pedantic. They saw him for what he was, a man tested by life, accomplished, unswayed by flattery, qualified to govern both himself and them. His respect for people who practiced philosophy, at least those who were sincere about it, but without denigrating the others or listening to them. His ability to feel at ease with people and put them at their ease without being pushy.

7:40His willingness to take adequate care of himself, not a hypochondriac or obsessed with his appearance, but not ignoring things either, with the result that he hardly ever needed medical attention or drugs or any sort of salve or ointment. This in particular, his willingness to yield the floor to experts in oratory, law, psychology, whatever, and to support them energetically so that each of them could fulfill his potential. That he respected tradition without needing to constantly congratulate himself for safeguarding our traditional values. Not prone to go off on tangents or pulled in all directions, but sticking with the same old places and the same old things.

8:30The way he could have one of his migraines and then go right back to what he was doing, fresh and at the top of his game. That he had so few secrets, only state secrets, in fact, and not all that many of those. The way he kept public actions within reasonable bounds, games, building projects, distributions of money, and so on. Because he looked to what needed doing, and not the credit to be gained from doing it. No bathing at strange hours, no self-indulgent building projects, no concern for food or or the cut and color of his clothes, or having attractive slaves, the robe from his farm at Lorium, most of the things at Lanuvium, the way he accepted the customs agent's apology at Tusculum, etc.

9:22He never exhibited rudeness, lost control of himself, or turned violent. No one ever saw him sweat. Everything was to be approached logically and with due consideration, in a calm and orderly fashion, but decisively and with no loose ends. You could have said of him, as they say of Socrates, that he knew how to enjoy and abstain from things that most people find it hard to abstain from and all too easy to enjoy. Strength, perseverance, self-control in both areas, the mark of a soul in readiness, indomitable. Book 16. Escape imperialization. That indelible stain. It happens. Make sure you remain straightforward, upright, reverent, serious, unadorned, an ally of justice, pious, kind, affectionate, in doing your duty with a will.

10:28Fight to be the person philosophy tried to make you. Revere the gods. Watch over human beings. Our lives are short. The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts. Take Antoninus as your model, always. His energy in doing what was rational. His steadiness in any situation. His sense of reverence. his calm expression, his gentleness, his modesty, his eagerness to grasp things, and how he never let things go before he was sure he had examined them thoroughly, understood them perfectly, the way he put up with unfair criticism without returning it, how he couldn't be hurried, how he wouldn't listen to informers, How reliable he was a judge of character and of actions.

11:26Not prone to backbiting or cowardice or jealousy or empty rhetoric. Content with the basics. In living quarters. Bedding. Clothes. Food. Servants. How hard he worked. How much he put up with. His ability to work straight through till dusk. Because of his simple diet, he didn't even need to relieve himself, except at set times. His constancy and reliability as a friend. His tolerance of people who openly questioned his views and his delight at seeing his ideas improved on. His piety without a trace of superstition. So that when your time comes, your conscience will be as clear as his.

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