The Duke of Zhou
Three Times Out of the Bath
The higher your seat, the more you must keep the door open
Records of the Grand Historian, Hereditary House of the Duke of Zhou of Lu; Analects, Taibo
Your position keeps rising, and visitors grow more polite. How did the Duke of Zhou keep far humbler people willing to walk up to him?
What actually happened?
When the duke's son Boqin was sent to rule the state of Lu, his father warned him on the way out. I am King Wen's son, King Wu's brother and King Cheng's uncle, he said, and nobody counts me low. Yet in one bath I grab my hair three times to go and meet a visitor, and in one meal I spit out my food three times to rise and greet a scholar, for fear of losing a worthy person. When you get to Lu, do not look down on anyone because you hold a state.
When the seat is high, open the door yourself
The higher you sit, the more visitors weigh whether it is safe to say a thing. The duke did not wait for them. Hair still wet, he went out; food still in his mouth, he stood up. He pushed the cost of seeing him as close to zero as he could.
You became a manager and your team goes quiet in meetings. What needs to change is that seeing you takes an appointment and a three-page brief.
He feared missing someone, not being interrupted
What worried him was missing a useful person or a useful word. If every interruption counts as a cost, the higher you rise the more you miss, and you are the last to find out.
Your calendar is full and someone keeps hovering at your door. You say 'later.' Most of the time they will not come back later.
His parting word: do not use rank on people
He said this to a man about to hold a state of his own. The biggest change that rank brings is not what you can do but what others dare to tell you. That gap does not close by itself; you have to close it.
For your first three months after a promotion, keep ninety minutes a week empty. Whoever comes, you see.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: your seat is higher now, reports look better and better, and nobody says anything that makes you uncomfortable.
Ask first: when did someone last say to my face what I did not want to hear? How hard is it for people below me to see me?
Where it goes wrong: staging an open door. The duke actually put his meal down. If your door is open and your face is not, people try it once and do not come again.
Lines to keep
One bath, three times I seize my hair; one meal, three times I rise.
Even so, I fear losing the worthy people of the realm.
Proud and mean, and the rest is not worth seeing.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time it reaches me, three people have smoothed it.Nobody lied to me and it still reached me wrong.The higher I climb, the less I hear.They aren't ignorant. They just don't know how to say it to me.Nobody tells me the bad news · all 4 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.