What did Marcus Aurelius say about leadership?

Leadership was never, to my mind, a prize to be sought. It was a burden to be borne with dignity — or not at all. In the Meditations, I recorded what I learned from those who shaped me. As I wrote in Book I, “Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion” A ruler who cannot govern his own passions has no business governing others. The great temptation of power is what I called becoming "Caesarified" — the drift toward autocracy, toward treating one's position as license rather than obligation. I warned myself against it. Power narrows the soul if one is not vigilant. I reminded myself of the republican heroes — Brutus, Cato — men who understood that authority derives its dignity from justice, not from force. The measure of good leadership is not victories, not tribute, not applause. As I set down in the Meditations, “A happy lot and portion is, good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions” That standard applies to any man in authority no less than to any private citizen. And I knew from experience what the biographers later confirmed: that I sought, above all, to protect the weak, to administer justice honestly, and to carry the work through on nothing but the stern sense of duty. The soul must be drilled in right principles beforehand — not improvised in the moment of crisis.