Poem 57
If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
The more prohibitions you have,
the less virtuous people will be.
The more weapons you have,
the less secure people will be.
The more subsidies you have,
the less self-reliant people will be.
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.
Commentary
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| The wonderful worker bee: Summer 2012 |
Control is an interesting desire. In one sense we all desire control of our own lives, and that is essentially a good desire. However, there are many who seek also to control others as if these others are actually part of their own reality. (A good philosophical sense helps in no little way here. After all, I can ask the seminal questions: what is my reality? What is his/her reality? What is our shared reality as partners in a relationship or as workers in a company? In short, these are very important questions. The root question, of course, that underlies them all is simply put: what is the nature of reality anyway? Putting these seminal questions will, to sustain the metaphor in our adjective, promote the growth of harmony and good leadership anyway. So, a good sharp sense of philosophy is a good tool for any leader). I remember attending a talk years ago on teaching and management where the psychologist Dr Tony Humphreys emphasised over and over again that "all control is self-control." How right the good Doctor is! If I can control my own "self," then everything else falls into place, and I actually don't have to control others then at all. In fact, the base desire to control others vanishes. One might, of course, still legitimately desire to lead others and that is a very good thing. However, all good Human Resource Personnel know that good leadership is not about controlling others at all. A desire to control others results in what's termed "micro-management" which has a negative affect on all the staff including the so-called controller or "control freak."
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| Mallard, Phoenix Park, 2012 |
Flexibility, or the ability to bend with the circumstances, is an approach with works. The opposite, namely rigidity, or the inability to bend with the situation, is a method that leads to fracture of all harmony in the workplace. Something has got to give and people do actually crack. It's the same with ideas, concepts and preconceptions. That's what our ancient writer (some 2,500 years ago) means when he says that we must "let go of fixed plans and concepts," because that is the path of wisdom. A leader who comes into any organisation or business with his or her ideas, plans and concepts set in stone will meet with much opposition and will eventually break or at least cause much upset amongst the staff. Most leaders know that when all the staff have a "buy in" to whatever the plans are for the particular company or organisation that much more progress is made. More progress is made in a harmonious atmosphere than in a disharmonious one. Having recently completed the Ken Blanchard et al Leader Behaviour Analysis II, the whole guiding principle is that of flexibility and awareness of the four leadership styles and the positive and negative aspects of each, and through growing awareness to be able to avoid the negative aspects and highlight the positive ones, and moreover, to be able to flexibly change one's style of leadership through awareness and practice. Like the Myers Briggs or MBTI inventory of personality types (16 in total) once one knows one's natural type one can change this by awareness. Of course, one will have a style or a type more natural to you, but with awareness and practice one can alter one's style or type from time to time as appropriate and then obviously return to that which is a more natural tendency for you. In short, awareness or consciousness is all. In fact, awareness in any mental, and indeed physical illness, is most important. Much relief and release, if not a certain amount of healing, comes with this knowledge.
Another few lines that jump out at this commentator here are "The more subsidies you have, //the less self-reliant people will be." As a Resource Teacher, I have found that those parents who put too much help and assistance in place for their children foster a attitude of over-dependence in their offspring, while those that allow their children more responsibility and have less fears about their future foster an attitude of independence and self-reliance in their offspring.
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| Sundown, Phoenix Park, Winter 2015 |
However, realistically, too, there is a growing minority in all societies who need to be watched over and controlled because of the nature of their great disabilities or by virtue of their inability to conform to societies' rules, that is, through criminality and so on. However, our Taoist poet is not talking about these exceptions, but rather about the most of us who are law-abiding and responsible members of society. It is in this context alone that the final stanza makes any sense at all. Also, we must remember that we are dealing with poetry which is replete with simile and metaphor that abhors a literalistic or a fundamentalist interpretation. Needless to say, the same can be said of all the religious and spiritual texts from any religious tradition. It is only in this sense that we can read any meaning in these words of the final stanza:
Therefore the Master says:
I let go of the law,
and people become honest.
I let go of economics,
and people become prosperous.
I let go of religion,
and people become serene.
I let go of all desire for the common good,
and the good becomes common as grass.
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