At the end of the second book of his notes, there's a line that almost nobody notices: "This in Carnuntum."
Carnuntum was a military camp on the empire's frontier. The man writing was the emperor of Rome, the most powerful person in his world, on campaign, far from the capital, with armies to command and wars to manage. And at the end of a day, or the start of one, he sat down and wrote notes to himself. Not orders. Not speeches. Private reminders, in Greek, about how to be a decent person.
Another book ends with a similar line: "Among the Quadi at the Granua." Another frontier. Another camp. Another set of notes nobody was meant to read.
What can leaders learn from Marcus Aurelius?
Marcus Aurelius shows that power doesn't exempt you from being decent. The emperor of Rome wrote himself private notes, one of them for the start of the day: he'd meet difficult people, and his job was still to act well. His lesson for leaders is that the role is not the person, and the person needs looking after.
That last line is what I find most useful in him for the leaders I work with. It's easy to admire his wisdom. It's more useful to notice how hard he had to work, every day, to stay himself underneath the job.
What did he remind himself at the start of the day?
The second book of his notes begins, in George Long's translation: "Begin the morning by saying to thyself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial."
Read that again, knowing who wrote it. This isn't a man complaining about his staff. It's a man preparing himself, before the day starts, so that when the difficult people arrive, as they will, he won't be knocked off centre. He expects the friction. He decides in advance not to be ruled by it.
The fifth book begins with a reminder for the mornings he didn't want to get up at all. In the same translation, he tells himself that he's rising "to the work of a human being."
Not the work of an emperor. The work of a human being. That's the turn in his notes, and it's the one I'd most want any leader to hear.
Titles change. Companies are sold, roles end, boards turn over. The work of a human being is the one job nobody can take away from you, and the one most leaders neglect the longest.
Why do powerful people lose themselves?
Because the role is loud, and the person underneath it is quiet.
Most of the leaders I work with didn't set out to disappear into their jobs. It happened gradually. The role needed them to be decisive, so they became decisive all the time, even at home. It needed them to be strong, so they stopped letting anyone see when they weren't. It needed them to be available, so they stopped being available to themselves. Over years, the role became the whole identity, and the person underneath started to feel like a stranger.
That's a survival identity wearing a suit. It's brilliant at the job. It's terrible at rest, intimacy and joy. And it often drives the very behaviour that makes teams, families and health suffer: the short temper, the need to be right, the inability to switch off.
What strikes me about Marcus is that he seems to have known this danger well. The two openings above show it. Before the day began, he reminded himself of the kind of person he meant to be, and that his first work was a human being's, not an emperor's. People write notes like that because they need them.
Is being decent really a leadership skill?
It's the one everything else rests on.
Teams don't follow a title for long. They follow a person they trust. And trust is built in small moments: how you respond when someone gets it wrong, how you speak about people who aren't in the room, whether you can admit a mistake. Those moments don't come from strategy. They come from who you are when the pressure's on.
Which is why the inner work isn't a luxury for leaders. It's the foundation. When the old charge and conditioning are cleared, the reactive parts of a leader quiet down, and something steadier comes through. People feel it immediately.
On our stories page, Erin Kurt wrote: "My business literally tripled within 6 months." I don't share that as a promise. I share it because it's what can happen when a capable person stops running their work from an old survival pattern and starts leading from who they actually are.
How can I write my own morning note?
Try what the emperor did, for one working week. It takes about three minutes a morning, before you open your email.
Take a notebook you'll use only for this. Each morning, write three short lines to yourself.
First, like Book 2: who am I likely to meet today that I'll find difficult? Name them, or name the situation.
Second: how do I want to be with them, whatever they do? One sentence. Calm. Clear. Kind. Direct. Whatever's true for you.
Third, like Book 5: what's the work of a human being in my day today, underneath the work of my role?
Don't show the notebook to anyone. It's for you, the way his were for him. At the end of the week, read all five mornings together. Most leaders find the third line surprises them most, because it's the one the role never asks.
What does a leader lose by never stopping?
Usually, the one thing the role can't replace.
Most leaders I meet don't lack drive, skill or intelligence. What many of them lack is any time at all when they're not the role. Mornings start with messages. Evenings end with messages. Weekends carry the week's weight. Holidays are spent half-present. Over years, the person underneath the role gets fewer and fewer hours of air.
The cost shows up slowly. First as tiredness that rest doesn't fix. Then as irritability at home. Then as a flatness, a sense that the success isn't landing anywhere. Often, the people closest to them see it long before they do.
What the emperor's notes show is a man deliberately making a small space for the person rather than the post, before the day took him. It sounds almost too simple. But a few quiet minutes, taken on purpose before the first meeting, can change how the whole day is met.
What does his example ask of us?
Not that we become Stoic philosophers, or emperors. It asks something simpler and harder: that we keep remembering there's a person underneath whatever position we hold, and that the person needs tending every day.
Who were you before the world told you who to be? For a leader, that question often sounds like: who were you before the title? It's worth asking before the day starts, every day.
If you'd like to talk that through with someone outside your organisation, Sara, our veteran RS Method Master Coach, holds free mentoring sessions for leaders and anyone else who wants a clear first conversation. And if the role has quietly become the whole of you, feeling stuck despite success may be worth reading next.
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.