Purpose and Integrity for Sustainable Success in Turbulent Times
The Art of Leadership: Serving Without Interference
Sections 62–66
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What is leadership? Why is this important? How do you lead successfully? The Art of Leadership provides timeless answers to these eternal questions. It is a modern reading of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching — a guide for sustainable success in turbulent times. All parts. Other reading formats.
62. Caring For All
Lao Tzu
Purpose is the source of everything:
prized by the able;
sheltering the lost.
Sweet words can buy honour;
good deeds can gain respect.
If people lack them,
why reject them?
When leaders are installed
instead of gifts
respectfully offer purpose.
The ancients honoured purpose.
They said: through it,
seekers find;
offenders are forgiven.
Therefore, it is the most valuable thing in the world.
Ursula K. Le Guin
I think the line of thought throughout the poem has to do with true reward as opposed to dishonourable gain, true giving as opposed to fake goods.
Ames & Hall
Comforting the least among us and surviving through the most trying of times are occasions for those who are better off to grow in greatness. Those who are suffering provide those more fortunate the precious opportunity to be generous and share what they have.
Stefan Stenudd
Leaders on all levels must understand that society can only improve if all its inhabitants are guided. If just the ones who already behave decently are cared for, the others will soon cause tremendous problems. When they are deserted and damned, the only thing remaining for them is to revolt. Caring for all is not only the compassionate thing to do. It’s also the most practical.
63. Serving Without Interference
Lao Tzu
Act without pressure and control;
serve without interference.
Savour the flavour of the unmixed;
treat small as large, few as many.
Repay hatred with kindness.
Resolve the difficult
through the easy.
Achieve the great
through the small.
The most difficult in the world
start out easy.
The greatest in the world
start small.
Therefore, skilled leaders
avoid great things
and so accomplish them.
Quick promises
mean little trust.
Things considered easy
mean great difficulty.
Since skilled leaders
consider all this carefully
they are free of difficulties.
Stefan Stenudd
We are often stuck in the misconception that the world is a static place, although we can see that everything in it moves and changes constantly. When problems appear, they are usually quite small and nonthreatening. So we ignore them, thinking that they will stay that size forever. They don’t.
Any problem not dealt with will grow. That’s the way it is. We need to learn to deal with problems immediately. Then we will find that we need to do almost nothing.
Actually, many problems are initially so small that they are solved just by recognizing them. By discovering and exposing them, we make our world immune to their potential harm.
Sun Tzu
Skilled leaders' success looks easy since it is well-prepared.
Therefore their wisdom is without fame;
their courage without honour.
They engage without mistakes.
Without mistakes, success is certain since competition is already defeated.
Ames & Hall
In culinary terms, those who have the most comprehensive and inclusive taste make no final discrimination. They just try with imagination to find a productive use for things, and to enjoy all things big and small as they come.
There are distinctive characteristics of good Chinese cooking. A primary feature reflected in the never-ending menu is the stubborn attempt to optimise a finite number yet surprisingly the imaginative range of ingredients. This is done by inventing any number of ways of preserving and extending them and then combining them in the different sequences, colors, textures, flavors, fragrances, and so on. Use a little bit of the more pricey ingredients to flavor a lot of the more common ones. Take advantage of seasonableness. Prepare the food to provide maximum surface area and cook it so as to sear in the nutrients while minimising the expenditure of fuel.
Importantly, getting the most out of your ingredients means keeping the garbage can empty. This effort at maximisation is pursued with minimum wastage.
Part of getting the most out of your ingredients in the life-experience has to do with deference to detail. Understanding things in their relationship to the process as a whole enables one to anticipate a developing situation while it is still embryonic. By responding to circumstances while they are inchoate, one is able to coordinate them both positively and negatively to the best effect.
64. Minor Changes, Major Consequences
Lao Tzu
Peace is easy to keep;
yet to occur is easy to plan.
Brittle is easy to split;
small is easy to break.
Create conditions
for things to happen;
create order
before chaos gets underway.
A tree too big to embrace
springs from a small shoot;
a nine-story tower
rises from a lone brick;
a thousand-mile journey
starts under the sole.
Pressure and you ruin it.
Control and you lose it.
Since skilled leaders avoid pressure
they avoid ruining it.
Since skilled leaders avoid control
they avoid losing it.
People often fail
when success is near.
So, proceed as carefully at the end
as at the beginning
to avoid failure.
Therefore, skilled leaders
act with respectful intent;
avoid prizing rare goods;
learn to unlearn;
return to what others overlooked;
help self-organisation by avoiding interference.
Chuang Tzu
Those who drink at a formal banquet begin in order and end in disorder, and in overdoing it, the result is intemperate pleasure. This is true of all affairs also. What begins in propriety often ends in impropriety. What begins modestly ends up in extravagance
Ames & Hall
The capacity to see where a situation has come from and to anticipate where it is going — precludes the habit of resolving the fluid process of experience into isolated “things” and discourages the one-sided and exclusive judgments that come with it.
A detailed understanding of the minutia within situations enables one to encourage or discourage processual fluctuations in their inchoate phase before they evolve into the overwhelming force of circumstances.
It is salutary to understand that each major event has a modest beginning, that minor changes can have cascading consequences, and that the devil and the angels, too, are in the details.
François Jullien
The action certainly takes place but upstream, and it happens so far upstream that it is not noticed.
The earlier one intervenes, upstream, the less one needs to act.
Instead of “daring to act”, the thing to do is to “help the spontaneous development of all the existing elements”, in other words, to assist whatever happens naturally.
The favourite example of this is the growth of plants. One must neither pull on plants to hasten their growth (an image of direct action), nor must one fail to hoe the earth around them so as to encourage their growth (by creating favourable conditions for it). You cannot force a plant to grow by means of coercion, but neither should you neglect it. What you should do is liberate it from whatever might impede its development. You must allow it to grow. Such tactics are equally effective at the level of politics. Skilled leaders eliminate constraints and exclusions, makes it possible for all that exists to develop as suits it; they act in such a way that things can happen of their own accord. Even if the doing becomes minimal, so discreet as to be hardly discernible, allowing things to happen constitutes active involvement.
65. Going With the Flow
Lao Tzu
In ancient times, skilled leaders:
used purpose
and hid their intelligence
since people distrust know-it-alls.
Leading with knowledge only
brings grief.
Leading with compassionate knowledge
brings joy.
Knowing this pair
is to possess a powerful pattern.
Understanding this pattern is effectiveness:
going deep and far;
returning all things to their source,
truly going with the flow.
Robert G. Henricks
Do away with crafty, self-serving knowledge that does indeed make for bad relations in people.
Stefan Stenudd
Each phenomenon in nature is given a name, as is every plant and animal. That doesn’t mean we understand them, nor does it mean that we are clear about their roles in the world.
We should halt the naming, and start our quest for the truth behind all things.
Chen Guying
Lao Tzu would like to see people return to their original nature, to simple
calm and sincerity, so that they return to a state of mind unrestricted by prejudice and value judgements. Leaders should refrain from corrupting this genuineness and natural simplicity.
Hans-Georg Moeller
Going with the flow, just like a leaf that floats on the water. This is not understood as a lack of freedom or self-determination, but rather as an effortless and “easygoing” natural motion.
66. Going Lower
Lao Tzu
Rivers and seas rule a hundred valleys
because they go lower.
So, they are the masters of the hundred valleys.
Therefore, those who wish to guide
speak as if they are below;
those who wish to lead
speak as if they are behind.
So, skilled leaders
guide without burdening;
lead without hindering.
Therefore, the whole world
delights in promoting them tirelessly.
And, by avoiding contending
they succeed sustainably.
Zhang Ruimin
Haier should be like the sea, only the sea can absorb the rivers with a broad mind and not dislike its trickles.
Ames & Hall
Skilled leaders like the rivers and seas perform a synchronising function that, perceived from a particular perspective, has a nobility to it. Both skilled leaders and seas do what they do naturally and well.
Far from being merely passive players buffeted about in the emerging order, both skilled leaders and seas actively coordinate the massive quantum of energy that flows into them from their constituents and maximise its circulation to the advantage of all. Because such coordination benefits all equally, the streams and the common people defer happily to their coordinators.
What distinguishes the contribution of both the waterways and the skilled leaders is that they are able to be as effective as they are because they use accommodation rather than coercion as the basis for organising their worlds.
Nonaka & Zhu
We have just pulled down a tyranny of strategy-as-planning; we do not need another tyranny of strategy-as-ad-hoc-responses.
Skilled leaders encourage proper competition, win-win strategy, making a beneficial difference for all and sustainable development in a world where ‘we are one with all things’. Skilled leaders need to engage in this-wordly affairs with a shared purpose, getting jobs done in appropriate, fitting ways.
Stefan Stenudd
Following behind people, instead of being an obstruction in front of them, means being sensitive to their needs. Merely hiding in the back of the line, right after pointing the way, is not enough.
The good leader should always be sensitive to where people really want to go, what directions they favour and which ones they want to avoid. That’s following behind.
The Art of Leadership: All Parts
Contents: A very short summary of all parts
Introduction: How to make a difference
- Sections 1–6: Ultimate purpose
- Sections 7–13: Attending to needs
- Sections 14–19: We did it ourselves
- Sections 20–23: Grasping the whole
- Sections 24–30: Self-organisation
- Sections 31–37: Knowing yourself
- Sections 38–43: Effectiveness
- Sections 44–49: What is enough?
- Sections 50–55: Ultimate effectiveness
- Sections 56–61: Living with change
- Sections 62–66: Serving without interference
- Sections 67–73: Effectiveness without contending
- Sections 74–81: Balancing
Glossary: Explanation of key terms
Acknowledgements: Standing on the shoulders of giants
Sources: Where to learn more
Other reading formats: Hardcover, paperback and PDF
This is provided as Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International by the author, Erik Schön.
