After a long line of incompetence, after a long chain of excuses, after a series of failures, the Union cause finally turned around when General Ulysses S. Grant took command. Other generals had focused on pomp and circumstance, they had been anxious and defensive, they claimed they didn’t have the resources or troops they needed.
As the great historian Bruce Catton wrote in The Hallowed Ground, “when Grant showed up things began to happen.” It didn’t matter if he was in charge of a small army or a big one, he was a leader and when leaders arrive, they make a difference. A staff officer noted the same thing. “We began to see things move,” he noted of Grant’s rescue of a besieged army. “We felt that everything came from a plan. He came into the army quietly, no splendor, no airs, no staff. He used to go about alone. He began the campaign the moment he reached the field. Everything was done like music, everything was in harmony.”
This is a lesson that Marcus Aurelius learned from the Emperor Hadrian, who spent nearly the entirety of his reign touring the empire. He would show up in a city that had languished as a backwater and start a series of public improvements. He would come upon troops who had grown fat and lazy and put them to work building fortifications (many of which still stand). He made reforms. He replaced ineffective bureaucracy. He restored temples. He solved problems.
A leader isn’t a figurehead. They are a doer. They are a solver of problems. They are in command of themselves, confident in themselves, and this feeling is contagious. They make things happen, they help the people around them make things happen. This is not random or a result of their authority, it’s because of their skill–they are playing their instrument, making music, creating harmony and progress.
You can do this too, if you learn the art.
Source: Daily Stoic