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    Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?”
    Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?”
    Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?”
    Ebook86 pages1 hour

    Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?”

    By David Tuffley

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    About this ebook

    For thousands of years people have tried to understand the elusive quality of Leadership. Still no consensus. What it means to be a leader differs according to the circumstances. This book examines the timeless, underlying qualities that must be present in a person if they are to be perceived as a leader by those around them. The distilled the essence of leadership is then formulated into a simple, easy to use process model for anyone to use, whether they be project managers, team members or simply people wishing to become the embodiment of those leadership qualities.
    Leadership and the Tao is a fresh take on the timeless question of "What is Leadership?" Read what the ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu had to say and marvel at how up-to-date is this 2,500 advice when seen in comparison with what modern day experts have to say.
    Come to understand Leadership as an aspect of the self-actualising person; someone who is in the process of expressing their fullest potential as a human being.
    This book combines the distilled wisdom of modern day thinkers like Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis with the timeless wisdom of the ancient sages. You might be surprised how useful this book turns out to be.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAltiora Publications
    Release dateOct 28, 2010
    ISBN9781452343136
    Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?”
    Author

    David Tuffley

    David Tuffley (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & Socio-Technical Studies at Griffith University in Australia.David writes on a broad range of interests; from Comparative Religion, Anthropology, Psychology, Ancient and Modern History, Linguistics, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Architectural History, Environments and Ecosystems.

    Read more from David Tuffley

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      Book preview

      Leadership & The Tao a New Look at the Timeless Question “What Is Leadership?” - David Tuffley

      Leadership & the Tao

      A new look at the timeless question

      What is Leadership?

      David Tuffley

      Management is doing things right;

      leadership is doing the right things.

      --Peter F. Drucker

      Published by David Tuffley at Smashwords

      Copyright 2010 David Tuffley

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Part A: The essence of leadership

      Part B: The Tao of leadership

      Part C: The leadership literature

      Part D: Self-actualisation & leadership

      Part E: References

      A.The essence of Leadership

      Much has been written since the times of ancient Greece about the nature of leadership. Yet despite the sustained interest in understanding leadership, there are still almost as many definitions of leadership as there are writers on the subject.

      Why is this? One explanation is that there is an underlying set of personality traits and competencies that if present in a person will be perceived by those around them as leadership. You cannot see Leadership directly, only the behavior that is informed by those qualities.

      The form that these traits take depends on the circumstances in which they are expressed. Since no two set of circumstances are exactly the same, the leadership behavior will also differ, hence the difficulty in agreeing on a single definition.

      If leadership qualities cannot be directly perceived, only the behavior that is informed by those qualities, we must look beneath the surface and identify those traits that are embedded deep in human nature, and which have probably not changed for thousands of years.

      This book aims to give you an understanding of the underlying principles of leadership by discussing what Lao Tzu has to say, together with perspectives from Social and Evolutionary Psychology.

      B.The Tao of Leadership

      The essence of leadership is to see a compelling future and then communicating your vision of that future in a way that creates enthusiasm.

      The Taoist perspective is useful with this since it cultivates a strong awareness of the patterns of Nature and how these influence human societies. With this awareness you can extrapolate these patterns into the future and see what is possible or likely. But the future is not set in stone. Its direction is influenced by the visionaries and their ability to make their vision a reality.

      Consider for example the visions of the future created by the early science fiction writers Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Generations of engineers have been inspired by the works of Verne and Wells, producing all manner of technologies from submarines called Nautilus that could travel 20,000 leagues under the sea without surfacing, journeys to the moon and back, and the exploration of Mars. Later sci-fi writers like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson have also had a profound effect on the direction of technology development. Form and content aside, all of these writers imagined a compelling future and communicated it to the world with impact.

      Regardless of whether you are a manager of other people, or someone who has less formal relationships with those around you, the principles discussed in this chapter describe the Taoist way of influencing people. Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching specifically for those who might help create a better world, those whose position in society was to lead. By default, the Tao Te Ching is a Leadership manual, albeit one that ranges far and wide into all aspects of life itself.

      B.1.Introduction to the Tao Te Ching

      To help you find the Middle Path, the Tao Te Ching (The Book of the Tao) is an excellent source of insight. The book describes a force called the Tao that operates uniformly throughout the universe and is the causal agent of everything that happens. It explains how you can develop personal power through being in harmony with the Tao.

      Written nearly 2,500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching is acknowledged to be a work of the most profound depth, though written in deceptively short, simple chapters numbering only 81 in total. It is one of most translated books in history, with well over 50 translations in English alone. The Tao Te Ching exercises a powerfully transformative effect on those who contemplate it.

      The Tao Te Ching is said to have been written by Lao Tzu, the Custodian of the Imperial Archives during the reign of the Chou Dynasty, though some researchers believe that Lao Tzu, which translates as the honorific term Old Master is a composite of several people. This practice is not unheard of in the world of literary classics.

      Whether Lao Tzu was one man or several, the Tao Te Ching is clearly a reaction to a time of great political unrest. China was comprised of hundreds of warring states that came into frequent conflict with each other in a ceaseless struggle for dominance. Aggression was met with escalating aggression until it seemed the Middle Kingdom would become a wasteland. The Tao Te Ching was written for an audience of leaders and people of influence so they might be guided in the ways of peace and harmony with Nature.

      The Tao Te Ching is the result of the author’s careful observations of the unfolding patterns of Nature. From these observations a set of underlying principles was deduced that cause the world to behave in the way it does. These principles are in the abstract, in the same way that a mathematical formula is an abstraction. Knowledge of these principles is tremendously helpful for a person seeking harmony and balance, just as the mathematical formula Pi r squared is helpful for calculating the area of a circle, any

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