19臨 Approaching – Leadership with Integrity & Love
The hexagram has an Earth trigram on top of a Lake trigram. The meaning of the Chinese word is approaching, being close to, or facing. Since Earth is higher than Lake, it shows staying on top to approach those at the bottom. It represents the management of people or leadership to be more precise. There is another hexagram that talks about leadership and management too. See Learning from I-Ching Part 12 7 師 Army – Mobilization & Leadership. The Army hexagram covers the management of a large group of resources with clarity of orders and discipline. This hexagram shows leading with integrity and love.
Leadership is about motivating people to willingly work together to accomplish a purpose and management is about organizing and monitoring resources to accomplish a mission. Leadership is about doing the right things and management is about doing things right.
Description:
- 元亨: a great smooth flow of success
- 利贞: good to have righteous perseverance
- 至于八月有凶: only applicable to the 8th month when danger will arise
Textual Description:
彖曰：临，刚浸而长。 说而顺，刚中而应，大亨以正，天之道也。 至于八月有凶，消不久也。
Strong and firm that is under-covered is slowly growing. There is joy in following. The Strong take a centered stage and are supported by others. The following righteousness will have great success because that is the law of Heaven. However, when reaching the eighth month there will be a danger. The decline will come soon.
Pictorial Description: 象曰：泽上有地，临； 君子以教思无穷，容保民无疆
There is land (Earth) on top of the Lake. Wise men never feel tired of teaching, thinking, caring for, and protecting people without boundaries and limits.
Moral Teachings:
This hexagram teaches how to lead and manage people.
- Being in the position of a leader or a manager is a good thing. We have greater influence and impact. It is therefore important to start and do good projects.
- While we have the authority to rule, we should approach people with love and gentleness to gain support.
- Gentleness does not mean giving way. It means treating people rightly with respect but we still insist on doing the right things and doing things right. We are not in a crisis situation here. We have 8 months. We can have a gentle approach to gain understanding and support for greater effectiveness and lasting effects.
- There is time, but time is limited. We should not procrastinate.
- Leaders and managers should always be seeking the interests of their people by
- teaching them and upgrading their skills.
- think and plan for their future.
- care for their interests
- protect them
- don’t segregate them; be good to all.
Stage 1 Begin Nine: lead or manage with responsive love and care. Lasting good fortune.
Pictorial Commentary says that loving leadership is good fortune because it is the right thing to do.
Most untrained leaders lead by giving commands. It is self-centric. But I-Ching tells us the very first step to leading is to love. Be others-centric. Touching the hearts, making an emotional connection, and gaining their support is a much more effective way of leading. We have sayings like:
- I probably won’t remember what you said to me, and I may not even remember what you did for me, but I’ll never forget how you made me feel.
- People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care
We can lead people based on our position, knowledge, or skills but the most effective is by an emotional connection with the hearts.
Stage 2 Second Nine: leading with responsive love and care is good fortune and progresses smoothly.
The pictorial commentary adds that leading with responsive love is a good and smooth sign of progress though the Law of Heaven has not been fully adopted throughout.
Here is the continued emphasis on leading with love and touching the hearts. We must gain true support from the heart and then that is true obedience. We can roughly classify the levels of obedience or compliance to our orders as
- grudging compliance – obey because of force and actually dislike it. Expect to have some sabotaging actions and gossip. They will try to dissuade others.
- blind compliance – passively obey. If the instructions cause some problems. They will not report them. True improvement is not in their mind. They are just following orders, blindly.
- compliance with the mind. Understand the why of compliance. Will make suggestions and corrections when needed.
- compliance with the heart. Will not just follow the rules, and feedback to improve the rules, but will encourage and help others to do. Some will expand into other areas not covered by the rules and make improvements.
Stage 3 Third Six: Sweet-talking leadership will bring no success. If we realize it (and correct it), then there is no disaster.
The pictorial commentary says that sweet talking is ill-positioned. Since corrected, the faults will not last.
If we ignore gaining the support from the hearts of people and forcefully implement our rules to manage, we will end up with lots of opposition from the ground. Then we switch to taking a reverse approach – sweet talking. People will not buy insincere sweet talking, especially when trust has not been built. We have an encouragement here – it is not too late to go back and do it right from the start. Do it right and still have hope, no disaster.
Stage 4 Fourth Six: Complete support for leadership. No blame.
Pictorial Commentary adds that no blame is due to being in the right position.
This is good leadership reaching up to stage 4. The leader now has the complete support of the people. Fourth line Six (yin) is at the fourth (yin) position. The corresponding position is Begin Line Nine (yang) which is strong and wise. Here it shows the leader at Stage 4 is able to get the table at Stage 1 to support him. Leaders at a higher level should always be open to learning from those below.
Stage 5 Fifth Six: Leadership with wisdom. This is the method of the King. Good fortune.
Pictorial Commentary adds that the way of the Great King is to execute the balanced middle path.
While we begin to lead rightly with emotional connection, there is no substitute for true wisdom. We must think and see further and wider than the people so that we may lead them. There is a famous quote 范仲淹《岳阳楼记》：其必曰“先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐”。 A good leader must worry before the people and enjoy only the people who have enjoyed themselves.
Stage 6 Top Six: Leadership with love (literal is great forbearance or wholeheartedness). Good fortune and no disaster.
Pictorial commentary good fortune comes from motivation from within.
At its height, leadership’s number#1 priority is love – love for the people. Leadership is others-centered and not self-centered. The hexagram starts with touching the heart for connection and ends with love. Love without wisdom is futile and powerless. Intelligence and ability without love could be channeled for the selfish exploitation of the people. Leaders must lead with love and wisdom. The true leadership model is servant leadership. Serving them to earn the right to lead them. Serve with love and wisdom and will gain you the followers to follow your leadership.
Summary:
Leadership and Management are about doing the right things and doing them rightly. Lead with a firm hand but be gentle in approach. Develop, plan ahead, care for, and protect the interests of people. Leadership is not about self but about others. The best form of leadership is servant leadership.
The stage lines give additional teachings:
- Make an Emotional Connection. Gain the hearts.
- Connected with Enthusiastic Support and expanded influence.
- Don’t sweet talk. It does not work.
- Lead with complete support
- Lead with wisdom
- Lead with love
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