Wei Zheng
If the Crown Prince Had Listened
When an old position is raised in your face, answer with what you actually said then, without retracting it or begging
Old Book of Tang, Biography of Wei Zheng (juan 71)
Your new boss was once your opponent, and his first question is about the past. What did Wei Zheng say when Li Shimin put it to him?
What actually happened?
Wei Zheng had served the Crown Prince Jiancheng, and seeing Li Shimin's achievements grow by the day he had urged the prince to act against him early. Jiancheng fell. Li Shimin summoned Wei Zheng and asked him to his face why he had set two brothers against each other. Wei Zheng answered that if the Crown Prince had listened to him, there would have been no disaster today. He did not deny it, did not plead, and did not bend his words to suit the new master.
He answered with the advice itself
The history is plain that he had urged Jiancheng to act. Asked why, he gave the judgment he had held then: had it been followed, today's disaster would not have happened. He did not deny it, and did not add that he had really meant it for the good of the realm.
An interviewer says your last firm kept taking our clients. Do not say it was not your idea; say what your judgment rested on.
A man who retracts is not believed later
Li Shimin would need him as a censor, whose job was to say unwelcome things. A man who drops his old position the moment a new master asks leaves that master guessing whether anything he says later is flattery. The sentence that was not retracted is what gave his later two hundred remonstrances weight.
A new hire spends week one running down the previous way of working, and you find you trust none of what he says next.
With the old account on the table, work can begin
Li Shimin, who had always thought well of him, kept him close. At a banquet he told Zhangsun Wuji that Wei Zheng and Wang Gui had served the prince wholeheartedly and been truly hateful at the time, and that he had promoted them anyway. Neither pretended the past was not there.
You end up working with a former rival. Setting out what happened once, plainly, costs less than two people walking round each other for a year.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: someone you are joining, or working beside, was on the other side before, and he has asked about it.
Ask first: What was my judgment then, and does the reasoning still stand? Am I answering the question, or looking for a way out of it?
Where it goes wrong: treating it as a challenge or a chance to reopen the case. Wei Zheng answered because he was asked, gave the reason, and did not turn it round to demand that the other man admit he should have listened.
Lines to keep
Why did you set my brothers against each other?
Wei Zheng had told Jiancheng to deal with Li Shimin early.
Taizong had long thought well of him.
Same situation, other people are asking
I don't know if I can stay here much longer.I don't agree with where this is going. Do I stay and soften it?I'm unhappy here and leaving is the only move I can picture.Is what I'm good at worth anything anywhere else?Should I leave this job · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.