This is great leadership. And it stood out immediately to me watching the series debut. Let them wag. Basically, let fools be fools. That’s what they do. You meanwhile, do the work, keep your head down and eyes focused on your duties. You don’t have to be moved by the chattering class and your critics.

Cicero, one of the last “great statesman” of the Roman Republic before it devolved into autocracy, was from a lower-class rural family and had a somewhat obnoxious love for flowery rhetoric. His colleagues in the Senate would whisper about him and talk smack. He wrote,

“Let other people worry over what they will say about you. They will say it in any case.”

In Meditations, the Roman Emperor & philosopher Marcus Aurelius wrote about a similar subject pertaining to his critics in the Roman Empire’s high court:

Someone despises me. That’s their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them. Ready to show them their mistake. Not spitefully, or to show off my own self-control, but in an honest, upright way.

Tongues? Let them wag. Offense, temper, and retribution for foolishness from fools only make you appear as though you’re compensating. If you have nothing to prove, move forward unaffected.

This is the way.