Cicero's On Duties: Leadership Lessons in Good Faith and Integrity

What is Cicero's On Duties, and why do leaders still read it?

Marcus Tullius Cicero was born in 106 BCE and murdered on 7 December 43 BCE, according to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was a Roman lawyer, orator and consul in 63 BCE, and a prolific writer of philosophy in Latin. De Officiis, usually translated On Duties, was written in 44 BCE, after the killing of Julius Caesar, as a letter in three books to his son Marcus, who was studying in Athens. Cicero says in Book III that he followed the Greek Stoic Panaetius in the main.

The structure is unusually practical. Book I asks what is honourable. Book II asks what is useful: how a person wins goodwill, trust and reputation. Book III asks what to do when the two seem to conflict. The World History Encyclopedia names later writers who quoted Cicero, from Augustine and Aquinas to Locke and Voltaire, which helps explain why his ethics keep turning up in discussions of public life.

Read him honestly. Cicero belonged to a slave-owning elite, and as consul he had five accused conspirators executed without trial, according to the IEP. He does not need to be a saint for his questions to be useful. They are useful precisely because they come from someone who held power, lost it and still asked what a person owes to others.

What does Cicero mean by good faith?

In Walter Miller's 1913 translation, Cicero puts it plainly: "The foundation of justice ... is good faith ... truth and fidelity to promises and agreements." The Latin word is fides. For a leader, it is the quiet engine of everything: delegation, targets and plans all run on people believing what you say.

Cicero is not a rigid literalist. He accepts that some promises should give way: "Promises are, therefore, not to be kept, if the keeping of them is to prove harmful to those to whom you have made them" The practical rule for managers follows: never let a commitment lapse in silence. If circumstances change, go back before the deadline, explain, and offer what you can.

He also warns against keeping the wording of an agreement while breaking its spirit, which Romans summed up in the proverb summum ius summa iniuria: the strictest law can do the greatest wrong. In business terms, that is the bonus scheme quietly redefined in December or the small supplier paid on the last permitted day.

What are Cicero's two kinds of injustice?

Cicero identifies "two kinds of injustice ... the one, on the part of those who inflict wrong, the other on the part of those who, when they can, do not shield from wrong those upon whom it is being inflicted." Most leaders guard carefully against the first. The second is where good people go wrong: the colleague who is talked over every week, the contractor working excessive hours, the unfair practice that is somebody else's department.

He even lists why people stay silent: a wish to avoid enmity, trouble or expense, indifference, busyness and self-interest. A monthly two-question check works well: what harm did I do, and what harm did I fail to prevent when I could? Then take the smallest effective step, through the proper channel.

• Harm done: a decision, word or omission of mine that hurt someone.
• Harm not prevented: something I saw or suspected and did not act on.
• Why I held back: be honest about the reason.
• One act of protection, logged and followed up.

How should leaders reward and recognise people, according to Cicero?

Cicero gives generosity three rules: "we must, in the first place, see to it that our act of kindness shall not prove an injury either to the object of our beneficence or to others; in the second place, that it shall not be beyond our means; and finally, that it shall be proportioned to the worthiness of the recipient" Translated into recognition and reward, that becomes a three-question test before any bonus, award, stretch assignment or public thanks.

Harm: does it hurt the receiver or anyone else, directly or by comparison? Means: is it mine to give, within budget, policy and authority? Merit: is it matched to evidence of the work? He adds that "nothing is generous, if it is not at the same time just." and asks us to look at character rather than status when deciding whom to help. A monthly spread check, sorting your recognitions by name, quickly shows whether you reward quiet work or only visible work.

What is decorum, and what are Cicero's four roles?

Decorum, or propriety, is conduct that fits. Cicero's short version is "for what is proper is morally right, and what is morally right is proper." It starts with consideration: justice means not wronging people, and propriety means not wounding them needlessly.

He then describes four roles each of us plays at once: a nature shared with everyone, our own particular character, a role that circumstance hands us, and a role we choose. For leaders, this is a strong frame for authentic leadership. Work with your own nature rather than impersonating a predecessor, but give your best to the parts of the job that do not suit you. A weekly review of role, person and moment catches the right decision delivered in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

How does Cicero say leaders should correct people?

Cicero is precise: "We should take care also that the punishment shall not be out of proportion to the offence, and that some shall not be chastised for the same fault for which others are not even called to account. In administering punishment it is above all necessary to allow no trace of anger." Correction should serve the good of the organisation, not the satisfaction of the person giving it, and sharp reproof should be used like surgery, rarely and reluctantly.

A simple cooling-off routine follows from this: rate your anger, and if it is high, wait; separate the person's part from the system's; choose the smallest consequence that fixes the problem; check what you did last time someone else made the same mistake; and correct privately, with the person's good in view. Serious misconduct follows your HR process and local law.

What does Cicero teach about trust and reputation?

Book II opens the question of usefulness with a claim every manager can test: "of all motives, none is better adapted to secure influence and hold it fast than love; nothing is more foreign to that end than fear." When people fear you, they hide bad news. When they trust you, you hear about problems in time.

Trust, he says, rests on competence and fairness, and fairness counts more: "justice combined with practical wisdom will command all the confidence we can desire; justice without wisdom will be able to do much; wisdom without justice will be of no avail at all." And he quotes Socrates on the shortest route to a good name: "the nearest way to glory ... is to strive to be what you wish to be thought to be." Reputation is the shadow of what you actually do. If you want a reading on how colleagues experience you, an assessment such as AssessAll's What You're Like to Work With can give you a baseline.

What is the right against the expedient?

Book III is where Cicero goes beyond Panaetius, who promised this part but never wrote it. His rule: "that which seems expedient must not be morally wrong; or, if it is morally wrong, it must not seem expedient." The conflict between what is right and what is useful, he argues, is only apparent.

His cases are strikingly modern. A grain merchant reaches the famine-struck island of Rhodes first, knowing other grain ships are close behind. A man sells a house with defects only he knows about. Cicero's verdict is that both should tell the buyers, and his definition of concealment is the useful part: "merely holding one's peace about a thing does not constitute concealment, but concealment consists in trying for your own profit to keep others from finding out something that you know, when it is for their interest to know it."

Then there is the ring of Gyges, Plato's story of a shepherd made invisible by a ring. Cicero's moral is that "good men aim to secure not secrecy but the right." For a leader, the test fits in ten seconds: would I do this if everyone affected could see it?

• Name the expedient option and the right option fairly.
• Ask whether the expedient option is actually wrong or only uncomfortable.
• Check what the other side needs to know, and whether your silence serves your gain.
• Ask the Gyges question.
• Look for the third option that is both right and useful, then review the outcome after 30 days.

How can a leader start practising Cicero this week?

Start small. Each morning, ask which promise matters most today, and renegotiate any that are at risk before they are due. Before any decision you would rather nobody examined, ask the Gyges question. Each evening, pick one decision and ask whether the useful choice was also the right one. On Fridays, review whether your conduct fitted the role, the person and the moment; once a month, run the two-injustices check.

Two cautions. First, quote Cicero carefully: many popular 'Cicero quotes', including a well-known passage about balancing the budget, are not in his works. Use a public-domain translation such as Miller's 1913 Loeb edition. Second, treat the disclosure cases as ethics, not legal advice, and check legal duties with your compliance team. If you want an ethics baseline, AssessAll's Ethical Leadership & Judgment assessment is one option, and Jobulary's guide to a development plan that survives week six helps turn new habits into goals. Bodhih Training's Cicero's On Duties for Leaders kit packages the whole system: e-book, decision ledger, promise register, six fillable forms, a 52-card deck and a 12-week programme.