What’s the purpose of a leader?

If you subscribe to Ryan Holiday’s “Daily Stoic” newsletter, you’ve probably seen he’s done a week-long feature on leadership and Stoic philosophy.

One email he wrote earlier this week stood out to me… I’ve been able to think of little else since. It’s about the sole purpose of being a leader. Here are some of the quotes used in the email:

“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. —Seneca

Another one here from Seneca:

“Nobody can live happy [sic] if he cares only for himself, if he turns everything to his own benefit: you have to live for others, if you want to live for yourself.”

Then, near the end of the email, he sums up an idea from Marcus Aurelius:

“As Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations, people are our proper occupation. ‘[My] job is to do them good.’ When we make others better, he writes elsewhere, ‘we perform our function.’“

Summing up his newsletter, he makes this statement:

Leaders make people better.

We’re all leaders. And we’re all philosophers.

So let’s make other people better.

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