In the Daily Stoic podcast on February 17th, host Ryan Holliday discusses the notion of imperial rulers and he said something that made a lot of sense to me about ancient stoic, Seneca.
“One thing I take that’s clear though from all these stoic’s lives is that they were involved. You know what I mean? They weren’t sitting on the sidelines talking about the things; they were in the arena.”
Full Podcast Link
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2K5vsbQULP79vts5yJTodg?si=RBN9oK7ARPCAnkaJPxiY1w
This made me think of the classic concept of not expecting anyone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself. If you are in a management position or you lead a sales team, this is critical to inspire that team.
Consider the movie, Gladiator, when Russel Crowe’s character Maximus Desimus Meridius is respected and followed by his army because he’s in the trenches with his army as opposed to the villain of the movie, Commodus, who does not partake in any actual combat.
But, back to the real world; it’s also key to your company’s success to get out of your management bubble and do the grunt work. Put yourself back into the positions that you’ve delegated to staff members simply to see what’s actually going on. You’d be surprised what you hear on a sales call, or on a customer service call, or what you see in the assembly line that nobody made you aware of.
