The Daily Stoic - How the Stoics Can Make You A Better Leader

Episode Date: January 24, 2021

The Stoics have many lessons to share about leadership. From Marcus Aurelius' reflections on his rule as the Emperor of Rome, to Epictetus' experiences as a slave, the Stoics are uniquely positioned to discuss leadership and how to approach it. On today’s podcast, Ryan discusses the Stoic principles that can improve your role as a leader, no matter what you do.This episode is brought to you by GiveWell, the best site for figuring out how and where to donate your money to have the greatest impact. GiveWell’s team of researchers works countless hours to determine which charities make the most effective dollar-for-dollar contributions to the causes they support. Since 2010, GiveWell has helped over 50,000 donors donate over 500 million dollars to the most effective charities, leading to over 75,000 lives saved and millions more improved. Visit GiveWell.org/stoic and your first donation will be matched up to 100 dollars.This episode is also brought to you by ExpressVPN, the #1 worldwide VPN. ExpressVPN has super-fast connection speeds and keeps your data safe. No more advertisers selling your info for a quick buck, no more downloads at a snail’s pace. Sign up now at ExpressVPN.com/STOIC and get an extra three months on your one-year package, absolutely free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare, we think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school when we have the time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with our journals, and to prepare for what the future will bring. Celebrity feuds are high stakes.

You never know if you're just going to end up on page six or do moa or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle. And we're the host of Wundery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the build up, why it happened, and the repercussions. What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices

taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed to fight for Brittany. Follow Dissentel wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondering App. Hey there, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Today, I wanted to talk about a thing that I think about a lot in my life.

You know, one of the reasons you become a writer is, you just want to deal with your own stuff, but there's almost nothing in life that does not require some form of leadership. You can run away from it, of course, but leadership is the key to success in just about any field. It's also the dearth of that leadership is also, I think, one of the main things we struggle with as a modern society. And so today, I wanted to look at how this still can make us a better leader, whether you're leading a small team and a small business, whether you're the, whether you're the CEO of a large corporation, or if you're like the title of my friend, Ryan Hawksbook,

welcome to management, you've just been promoted to management. Now, what habits, practices, perspectives, do you need to be a great leader? And most importantly, what can the Stoics teach us about leadership because the Stoics were leaders about leadership? Because the Stoics were leaders. That's actually the obligation of this philosophy. It's to not be a pen and ink philosopher, as Mark's really talked about, but a doer in the real world.

A leader of men, a leader of women, a leader of a family, a leader of a business, a leader of a cause, a leader by example. All these things, that's what Stoicism is calling us to do. To today, we're going to look at how Stoicism can make you better leader. What's interesting about Stoicism is that unlike most philosophical schools, which are primarily about ideas, the Stokes were like real people with real jobs. So Marcus really is the Emperor, Seneca's the advisor to an Emperor.

There were Stokes who were generals, there were Stokes who were teachers, there were Stokes who were in various positions of public importance. So they had jobs to do and they weren't the only one doing them. Like they weren't just writers so all they had to worry about was like the pen and paper and getting their ideas out. They had to to convince other people to go along with their work. In any endeavor like that, which is where I imagine most of you are, you have to lead other people. This is the art of leadership. And so what can the Stokes teachers about leadership?

What can they teach us about being better at persuading and leading and inspiring and you're sort of shepherding an organization, I think they can teach a lot. The first is this sort of core lesson of stosis, which is, as a leader, we have to know our limits. What is in our control versus what is not in our control? So this is the idea of the dichotomy of control. This is something that Marcus are really, so we've gotten from Epic Titus.

This is the first task in life. The first task of a leader is to run a line down a piece of paper and discern what parts of the job, what part of the business, what part of the profession is up to you, and what part isn't. Right? So, you know, there's that expression you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink with your employees.

You can give them all the tools. You can give them all the incentives. You can give them everything you think they need. Ultimately, you can't make anyone do anything. So a leader has to know what is up to them and what's not up to them everything you think they need, ultimately you can't make anyone do anything. So, leader has to know what is up to them and what's not up to them, and then they want to focus all their energy on what's up to them.

I'm sure you've had leaders where like, they spend a whole lot of time wondering, getting angry about, frustrated by, you know, brainstorming about what the competitors are gonna do. It doesn't matter what your competitors are gonna do, according to the Stokes, it matters what you're gonna do and matters what's in your control. For the Stokes, it's all about accepting responsibility.

Like, accepting that the job of leadership falls on you. One of the key differences, and this is something that Marcus really sort of like believed at the core of his being, is that they believe the job of the philosopher was to participate in politics was to participate in government, in leadership, in serving the country that they lived in. The Epicurians, they believed, we just focus on your internal salvation, you just focus on yourself. The Stokes believe like there was an obligation to serve in any capacity.

So Marx really would have rather been a philosopher, but he's called to be the emperor. And he does it somewhat reluctantly, but he knows in a way that it doesn't have a choice. So seeing that leadership is something that we are called to, that we are obligated to do, that's another part. Like, if you're not going to be the leader, who is going to be the leader? It's going to be someone not as qualified as you. And so the Stokes took that very seriously. And Marcus Realis ultimately serves years and years in government service. Like he spends most of his reign far from home, you know, in distant, dirty, like, military camps. Not because he wanted to,

but because that's what a leader has to do. not because he wanted to, but because that's what a leader has to do. The next lesson for the Stokes is that the leader suffers, right? The leader puts in the hard work. Simon Sinek's concept of the leaders eat last. The leader does not sit in a fancy camp while the soldiers are off doing all the hard work. Kato, one of the famous St dogs, was known for walking barefoot, sleeping on the ground like his soldiers. He wouldn't ride a horse.

He would suffer all the ways that his soldiers would suffer. General Mattis, the Marine, there's a famous story. He's a big fan of Marcus Aurelis and the Stokes. And I think he probably gets this lesson and away from Marcus Aurelis. There's a famous story. Someone walks into one of the camps. He's like the commanding general of

and they ask this young soldier, soldier like who's on guard duty today And he says general Mattis and the guy goes no, I know general Mattis is the commanding officer who's on charge Specifically of like this guard post right now. It says general Mattis And what are you talking about and what it happened is it was Christmas day in general Mattis had sent the was Christmas Day, in general, Mattis had sent the low-level officer home to be with his family, in general, Mattis, who did not have a family, took that guard post and instead. So that's what we see in Marcus Aurelis and Cato in the Great Stokes, is they weren't these sort of like distant, you know, high-paid CEO-type leaders.

They were leaders doing the tough stuff themselves. Marcus Aurelis sells off the palace furnishings in Rome to pay down Rome's debt. The leader suffers first. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. Hey everyone, look, these are times when people are thinking a lot about privacy and data. Maybe you're searching for something you don't want people to see, maybe you don't want to get targeted with advertising information. All of that perfectly reasonable. And that's why today's sponsor is their express VPN. I know you might be thinking, why just use incognito mode on my browser. That doesn't actually keep your activity secret. No matter what

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So you have to be calm, you have to be clear-headed, you have to manage yourself, you have to steal yourself against the scary, difficult, frustrating things, because if you don't do it, your people won't do it. What is the most important thing that you can do in a life that you can do? One of the greatest rewards of a parent's life. But come on, someday's parenting is unbearable.

I love my kid, but is a new parenting podcast from Wondry that shares a refreshingly honest and insightful take on parenting. Hosted by myself, Megan Galey, Chris Garcia, and Kurt Brown-Oller, we will be your resident not-so-expert experts. Each week we'll share a parenting story that'll have you laughing, nodding and thinking. Oh yeah, I have absolutely been there. We'll talk about what went right and wrong. What would we do differently?

And the next time you step on yet another stray Lego in the middle of the night, you'll feel less alone. So if you like to laugh with us as we talk about the hardest job in the world, listen to, I love my kid, but wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. I think one of the interesting things in Mark's Realies' writings is how he's constantly reminding himself of the importance of changing his mind, and that's, I think, a mark of a good leader. You know, in one of the recent American elections

we accused John Kerry of being a flip flopper. But the reality is, a leader should change their mind if facts force them to change their mind. So, Mark has to realize, he says, if anyone can refute me, show me I am making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective on gladly change, it's the truth I am after. A leader is after truth.

A leader does not want to be told what they want to be told. A leader does not want just to keep things the way that they are. A leader wants reality on reality's terms, even if it challenges deeply held assumptions. So a great leader is open. A great leader is always looking to be disproven. And a great leader takes feedback, even from the low list of sources. This idea that the stoke is obligated to serve, part of that is this stoke idea of sympathy, that we're all on the same team, that we're all part of a larger whole, and that each one

of us has a role inside that thing. So Marcus Aurelius' famous quote that Alexander the great and his mule driver were buried in the same ground. There's an idea that like they're both equally important and as far as conquering the world because they're each is playing a role. You know Marcus Aurelius' emperor, he plays that role well, but Epic Titus is a slave for most of his life. He plays that role well, but they both change the world by doing the best that they can to their abilities. That doesn't mean one is complacent, that one needlessly accepts their station in life, but it does mean that wherever the dice have come up for you, that's what you've got to play. But at the

core of Sampathia, this quote from Marcus Realis, he says, that which isn't good for the hive, isn't good for the bee. So he had to remind himself as the leader, I have to do what's best for the whole, not what's best for me. And I think a lot of leaders forget that. The last part of leadership from Marcus Realis, I think is about concentration and focus. He would say always that a leader has to be asking themselves,

is this essential? Do I need to do this? Is this right to do this? He says, you want to eliminate the things that are inessential so you can focus on the things that are essential. My favorite quote from Marcus about concentration and focus he says, concentrate every moment like a Roman, like a man, on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness,

tenderly, willingly, and with justice. And so to me, that's probably the best definition of leadership that we're going to come up with. And it's at the core of the stoic obligation to be a leader, whether it's in your small town, whether it's leading a nation, or whether it's leading a cause that, you know, helps either of those two things. A stoke is a leader and they lead well because they are calm because they accept responsibility. They focus on what's in their control. They focus on what matters. They change their mind when facts dictate that and they genuinely believe that they are serving something bigger than themselves. Thanks for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast and if you didn't know I also that they are serving something bigger than themselves.

Thanks for listening to The Daily Stove Podcast. And if you didn't know, I also have another podcast and Daily Email. Every day I write something at dailydad.com, which gets delivered to thousands of people all over the world. I record the meditations just like this one on the podcast for free. So if you're a parent, if you know a parent, if you're an expecting parent, I think you'd really like it. It's called Daily Dad,

but it has nothing to do with gender. I'm a dad, that's why it's called that. We'd love to have you over at dailydad.com. And of course, subscribe to the Daily Dad podcast. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music App today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts.