How the Stoics Can Make You A Better Leader

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. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Bienvenidos a la edición de fin de semana del Daily Stoic. Cada viernes te traemos una meditación inspirada por los antiguos estoicos, algo que puede ayudarte a vivir hasta esas cuatro virtudes estoicas de coraje, justicia, sabiduría y temperance. Y aquí, en el fin de semana, nos enteramos más profundo de esos mismos temas. Intervemos a filósofos estoicos, reflexionamos, nos preparamos, pensamos profundamente sobre los problemas desafiantes de nuestro tiempo y trabajamos en esta filosofía de una manera que es más posible aquí cuando no estamos arrastrando a trabajar o a llevar a los niños a la escuela, cuando tenemos el tiempo para pensar, para ir de una caminata,

• 0:44Ryan Holiday?

  para sentarnos con nuestros diarios y para prepararnos para lo que traerá el futuro.

• 0:52Ryan Holiday?

  Hola, es Ryan Holiday. Bienvenidos a otro episodio de la edición de fin de semana del Daily Stoic Podcast. Hoy quiero hablar de algo que pienso mucho en mi vida. Una de las razones por las que te conviertes en escritor es porque solo quieres lidiar con tus propios cosas. Pero en la vida casi nada requiere alguna forma de liderazgo. Puedes escapar de ello, por supuesto, pero el liderazgo es la clave al éxito en casi cualquier campo. También la fuerza de ese liderazgo es, creo, una de las cosas principales con las que luchamos como sociedad moderna. Y así que hoy quería mirar cómo los estoicos nos hacen un líder mejor, ya sea que estés liderando un pequeño equipo y un pequeño negocio,

• 1:34Ryan Holiday?

  si eres el CEO de una gran empresa, o si eres como el título de la novia de Ryan Hawke en su libro, "Bienvenido al manejo", acabas de ser promovido al manejo. Y ahora, ¿qué hábitos, prácticas, perspectivas necesitas para ser un gran líder? Y lo más importante, ¿qué puede enseñarnos los estoicos sobre el liderazgo? Porque los estoicos eran líderes. Esa es en realidad la obligación de esta filosofía. Es no ser un filósofo de lápiz y bolígrafo, como Marx y Realistizó sino un hacedor en el mundo real. Un líder de hombres, un líder de mujeres, un líder de familia, un líder de negocio, un líder de causa, un líder por ejemplo. Todas estas cosas, eso es lo que el estoicismo nos llama a hacer.

• 2:16Ryan Holiday?

  Así que hoy vamos a ver cómo el estoicismo puede hacer que seas un líder mejor.

• 2:25Ryan Holiday?

  What's interesting about Stoicism is that unlike most philosophical schools, which are primarily about ideas, the Stoics were like real people with real jobs. So Marcus Aurelius is the emperor, Seneca's an advisor to an emperor. There were Stoics who were generals, there were Stoics who were teachers, there were Stoics 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 convince other people to go along with what they were doing. In any endeavor like that, which is where I imagine most of you are, like, you have to lead other people. This is the art of leadership. And so what can the Stoics teach us about leadership?

• 3:07Ryan Holiday?

  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 us a lot. The first is a sort of core lesson of Stoicism, 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 Aurelius would have gotten from Epictetus. He says 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,

• 3:52Ryan Holiday?

  you can give them everything you think they need, but 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, 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 going to do. It doesn't matter what your competitors are going to do. According to the Stoics, it matters what you're going to do and matters what's in your control.

• 4:23Ryan Holiday?

  Für die Stoike ist es alles um die Akzeptanz von Verantwortung. Die Akzeptanz, dass der Job von Führung auf dich fällt. Eine der wichtigsten Unterschiede, und das ist etwas, was Marcus Aurelius wohl von seiner Gruppe geglaubt hätte, ist, dass sie glaubten, dass der Job des Philosophen darin war, sich in Politik zu beteiligen, in Regierung, in Führung, in der Tat, die die Lande beteiligt hatte. Die Epikurene glaubten, dass man sich nur auf seine eigene innere Selbstverschämtheit konzentriert, dass man sich nur auf sich konzentriert. Die Stoike glaubten, dass es eine Pflicht war, in jeder möglichen Lage zu dienen. Also wäre Marcus Aurelius eher ein Philosoph, aber er wurde zum Kaiser gebeten, und er tut das etwas abweichend, aber er weiß in einer Art, dass er keine Wahl hat.

• 5:06Ryan Holiday?

  Also, dass Führung etwas ist, das wir gebeten werden, das wir verpflichtet sind zu tun, das ist eine andere Sache. Wenn du nicht der Leiter bist, wer wird denn der Leiter sein? Es wird jemand, der nicht so qualifiziert ist wie du sein wird. Und so haben die Stoike das sehr ernst genommen. Und Marcus Aurelius dienen letztendlich Jahr für Jahr in Regierungsschutz. Er verbringt die meisten seiner Zeit weit von Hause, in entfernte, saubere Militärcampen. Nicht, weil er es wollte, sondern weil das was ein Leiter tun muss.

• 5:39Ryan Holiday?

  Die nächste Lektion für die Stoike ist, dass der Leiter leidet. Der Leiter macht den schweren Arbeit. Simon Sinek's Konzept für "Die Leute essen am Ende" bedeutet, dass der Leiter nicht im fancy Camp sitzt, während die Soldaten alle die schwere Arbeit machen. Cato, einer der berühmten Stoike, war bekannt für den Schritt in den Himmel, auf dem seine Soldaten liegen, dass er kein Huhn fahren würde. Er leidete alle Weisen, die seine Soldaten leideten. General Mattis, der Marine, es gibt eine berühmte Geschichte. Er ist ein großer Fan von Marcus Aurelius und den Stoike, und ich denke, er bekommt diese Lektion vielleicht von Marcus Aurelius. Es gibt eine berühmte Geschichte, jemand geht in einen der Camps, in den er das General des Kommandos ist, und er fragt diesen jungen Soldat, wer ist heute im Sicherheitsdienst? Und er sagt, General Mattis.

• 6:21Ryan Holiday?

  Und der Typ sagt, ich kenne General Mattis, der ist der Kommandant, der sich speziell für diesen Sicherheitsposten verantwortlich ist. Und er sagt, General Mattis. Und er sagt, was sagst du da? Und was passierte, es war Weihnachtszeit.

• 6:34Ryan Holiday?

  And General Mattis had sent the low-level officer home to be with his family. And General Mattis, who did not have a family, took that guard posting instead. So that's what we see in Marcus Aurelius and Cato and the Great Stoics, is they weren't these sort of distant, you know, high-paid CEO-type leaders. They were leaders doing the tough stuff themselves. Marcus Aurelius sells off the palace furnishings in Rome to pay down Rome's debt. The leader suffers first.

• 7:03Ryan Holiday?

  Got a quick message from one of our sponsors, and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned.

• 7:09Ryan Holiday?

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• 7:52Ryan Holiday?

  ExpressVPN reroutes your internet connection, so your ISP doesn't see anything. And it uses some of the most powerful encryption technology around, so everything stays 100% secure. And you don't have to be a computer genius to figure it out. ExpressVPN has been rated the number-one VPN worldwide by Wired, CNET, and The Verge. Check it out, expressvpn.com/stoic. Get an extra three months off your one-year package absolutely free. That's expressvpn.com/stoic.

• 8:22Ryan Holiday?

  Obviously, one of the big themes in Stoicism is calm. The Stoic leader knows that being calm is contagious. If you freak out, if you lose your cool, your people will freak out and lose their cool. If calm is contagious, so is courage, but also so is cowardice. So you have to be calm, you have to be clear-headed, you have to manage yourself. You have to steel yourself against the scary, difficult, frustrating things, because if you don't do it, your people won't do it.

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  I think one of the interesting things in Marcus Aurelius's 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 Marcus Aurelius, he says, "If anyone can refute me, show me I am making a mistake or looking at things from the wrong perspective, I'll 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

• 9:34Ryan Holiday?

  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 lowliest of sources.

• 9:49Ryan Holiday?

  This idea that the Stoic is obligated to serve, part of that is this Stoic idea of Sympathia, 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's famous quote that, you know, Alexander the Great and his mule driver were buried in the same ground, there's an idea that, like, they're both equally important as far as conquering the world goes, that each is playing a role. You know, Marcus Aurelius is emperor, he plays that role well, but Epictetus 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 where

• 10:33Ryan Holiday?

  you've got to play. But at the core of Sympathia is this quote from Marcus Aurelius, he says, "That which isn't good for the hive, isn't good for the bee." So he had to remind himself as a 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.

• 10:54Ryan Holiday?

  The last part of leadership for Marcus Aurelius, 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

• 11:35Ryan Holiday?

  town, whether it's leading a nation, or whether it's leading a cause that helps either of those two things. A Stoic 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 Stoic 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.

• 12:17Ryan Holiday?

  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.