Tai Chi Chuan and Leadership

Tai Chi Chuan and Leadership

I must admit I have a queasy feeling about “leadership.”  Leadership presumes a certain authority and most leaders project a sense of perfection.  We want them that way.  But I assume all humans – leaders included – are flawed.  So why should we believe leaders when they presume their authority?  Do we ever hear a leader come out and declare their deficiencies for the entire world to see?  In our hero worship culture, we either follow blindly, or try to find a way to tear them down.  Of course, it is we who put leaders in their place.

To my mind, it is OK to have flaws because how can we not?  As long as you know you are flawed – and I know I am flawed – life will go on in a much more forgiving and agreeable way.  Tai chi practitioners know this well because any serious tai chi player will feel deficiencies in their form.  There is always more to learn about you.  Always. 

And what is leadership in the first place?

You can look in my blog site for The Humble Hound by New York Times editorialist David Brooks, a very tai chi like approach to the subject.  Not everyone agrees with his position.

I’ve certainly experienced a great deal of “top-down” leadership.  This usually amounts to “What I say goes!”  Why?  Because they are “right”.   To be “right” is problematic.  The top-down perfect leader who is right rarely listens to oppositional forces.  But because we are all flawed, leaders who believe they are “right” are just as often NOT right.  How many disasters have befallen the perfect leader?  Mountains of disasters!  Often, “being right” is the beginning of the end.  The antidote to “being right” is “being engaged,” the beginning of real success.  Which leads me to tai chi.

The other night in tai chi class, one of us wanted to do the form together.  Because a form together with others is a different experience than just doing the form at home alone.  The group form is uniquely a “being with others in unison” kind of experience.  Engagement. Connection.  A group form can be leaderless, just like a small group of musicians.  We all follow each other.

However, there can also be a form with a leader.  When the direction of the form veers away from the leader, as the form will do, the leader then follows the group.  The leader follows the group who then follows the leader and so on.  Inherently, there is a lesson in leadership here.  Leaders lead by following then leading then following then leading and so on.  This kind of leading and following has nothing to do with any kind of perfection.  Everyone in the form is working on some deficiency while doing their best to follow or lead and be in unison with each other.

The tai chi form is a special relationship where the leader will anchor the pace of the group and model some good qualities, but once the pace has been set, the group chi is what creates the tai chi form.  Not the leader.  In tai chi, there a great deal of allowing.  Each participant allows every other participant to be themselves.  You give everyone a long leash.

Too often leadership today is a form of some kind of egotistical hubris.  Such hubris happens everywhere and is a real problem.  There has been an outcry for strong, even bold, leadership and a focus on “leadership” in the education system.  Yet there is no outcry for the kind of leadership authenticity that includes recognition of human frailty.

If you are a leader in push-hands practice, you work with each student individually.  In doing so, you address what that individual needs to learn and even HOW that student learns.  But you need to be honest with yourself and keep working with your own push hands skill.  Leaders can practice push hands by giving themselves a handicap and insisting on maintaining some skill they want to hone.  In the tai chi world, “investing in loss” is the term we use when practitioners would rather lose the game than win it by breaking the principles.  By “investing in loss”, leaders as well as students are more vulnerable.  Students work on what they need to work on and the leaders can work on what they need to work on. 

Other kinds of leaders exist.  One leadership style, in push hands, will persistently defeat the student.  The student has to be the kind of student that sees the benefit of working with a “hard” leader.  I believe it was Professor Cheng Man-Ch’ing (my teacher’s teacher) that stated if you push me a 100 times, and I discover one successful neutralization, I have learned an invaluable lesson.  Not everyone likes this level of exchange: Ninety-Nine losses to gain one insight.  “Hard” leaders have to be REALLY secure in their skills while really caring for their students.  At the same time, a student has to have great faith in the leader.  But even this kind of leader knows they have work to do.  Being Number 1 is not the same as lacking deficiencies.

In my view, real leaders would say:

“I see X in you, but you might want to try Y.” 

“You have many skills, but the one you need to work on most is Z.”

“What are you trying to do?”

“Where does your path lead you? What is the logical conclusion to your practice?”

“We’re in this together – I need to learn from you as well.”

“I used to believe N, but now I believe M.  What do you think?”

“How can we get this thing to work?”

“What are your thoughts?”

“What do you need to succeed?”

“I don’t know….”

This line of questioning is more than just “seeking to understand.” It engages the student/follower to find their own understanding before a leader intervenes.  A leader may have the answer to a problem, but the student/follower may have helpful insights and possibly a better solution.  Both learn in the process.

I just witnessed the downfall of a leader.  I doubt he ever expressed such statements as I have just noted.  He was “top down” and the base that he was leading did not like it.  The result?  War.  Politics.  Waste of time.  My side vs. your side.  Lies or misrepresentation.  Fear.  Frustration. More politics.  Bad publicity.  Firings.  Misunderstanding. Uncompromising “solutions.” Hirings based on favoritism.  One friend noted the problem was not in this leader’s intentions, but in his style.  Style?  I am beginning to think “Style” is exactly what leadership is.  Knowledge and expertise you can buy.  Style is something you have to “be”, and that being has to bring out the best in your group.  Since we all respond differently, a good leader perceives how to work with each individual.  There is no cookie cutter approach in the real world.

Tai chi principles can inform leadership styles: relax, integrate, focus, be inclusive, connect, get-with, listen, be grounded.  It’s that basic and it’s that deep.

If you decide to lead, it means you have to practice even more deeply.  Because others depend on you.  And ultimately, for your own growth, you depend on others.