A Leader Holds Things in Balance and Reject Not - DaoDeJing 28

Effective and powerful leadership does not only do one thing extremely well. Rather, it holds opposite demands in balance and increase the pie for the sharing. Lao Zi uses analogies of rivers and valleys to highlight the attributes of great leaders. There are 6 attributes we can learn from Loa Zi.

Time really flies. I checked up where I left off in translating Lao Zi's Dao De Jing for this blog readers. It was July 2014 and now it is Sep 2015. Slightly more than a year has passed since I felt like taking a short break from the translation to have fresh and better ideas. Now I'm back to continue the work. Here is on DaoDeJing Chapter 28.

The mind-map gives the details:
The Six Lessons for Effective Leadership:

1. Be creative and also nurturing - innovate and refine - start and sustain
2. Know what to show and what to hide/silence (the white and the black) and when too.
3. Know the glory and the shame. Seek glory without commiting shameful acts.
4. Be inclusive, take in all the diversity and put them to good use, be balance.
   Synergy is not white and black becoming grey. It is white and black keeping their color but rather co-ordinating and complementing each other to form patterns giving beauty and meaning. eg. the writings of black ink on white paper.
5. Be like rivers and valleys the consolidate the diverisity leading to abundance
6. Be authentic, be sincere. keep moral virtues.

Lim Liat (c) 3 Sep 2015

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