Asakura Clan House Code - Law #16 | Part 16 of 17 Article Series

ORIGINAL TEXT:

When you pass a temple, monastery or town dwelling and the like, rein in your horse for a moment.  If the place is attractive, give some words of praise.  If the place is damaged, show your concern by expressing your sympathy.  These people who consider themselves unworthy will be overjoyed by the fact that you have spoken to them.  They will repair the damages expeditiously and pay continued attention to preserve the beauty.  In this way, without effort on your part, you can have your province beautified.  Remember that all of these depend on your own resolve.

MODERN INTERPRETATION:

Take care to respect, beautify, and maintain the functionality of your environment by engaging others thoughtfully in admiration for what’s right, and sympathy for what’s wrong.

True Management : Getting Work Done Through Others

By communicating to others what you appreciate about the result of their work, you increase their will to maintain it, improve it, and create similar works.

By communicating to others that you feel sadness because a beautiful thing has been damaged or neglected, you increase their will to pay attention to it, to fix it, and to not allow it to slip back into poor condition. 

Simply, communicate your care for your community, and your community will care more strongly for itself.  

Samurai Communication Skills 101:

When you see a beautiful creation, communicate your sincere appreciation of its beauty.

When there is a problem, communicate that you see the problem, and that you care about fixing it.  In that way, people around you will know what you value.  

Leaders - Communicate your Values

As a leader, people pay attention to what you care about based on what you say, but also what you do.  Purposely stopping what you’re doing to comment to others in your organization what you notice and how you feel about them, gives your teammates the opportunity to learn what’s important to you, and what you’ll measure and pay attention to.

Leaders - Expressing Negative Emotions

Make sure that you don’t express your concern for something that is as it shouldn’t be by expressing your anger, contempt, disgust, impatience, or lack of respect.  This will cause your teammates to develop negative feelings about you.  While sometimes it may be useful to communicate your true thoughts, as a high level leader, you must be careful and thoughtful before expressing any form of anger towards your people.

Expressing Sympathy vs Empathy

Expressing sympathy (feeling what others are feeling) is different from expressing empathy (understanding another person’s point of view).

Sympathy would be “it’s sad that this has been broken for so many years.”

Empathy would be “you must be very busy that you haven’t had a chance to fix it.”

Expressing sympathy doesn’t assign any PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to the problem, whereas expressing empathy may do so.

Ever Feel “Blamed” for something that WASN’T Your Responsibility?

When a person fails in their personal responsibility and gets called out on it, generally they feel “attacked” because of the “ego.” 

When a person doesn’t even understand that there is a personal responsibility involved, and the leader calls the person out for failing it, the person will get angry, saying that the matter is someone else’s responsibility.  The leader then may get dragged into an argument, which is not healthy for the leader.

Avoid Assigning Blame and Simply Get it Fixed through CULTURE

Instead, the leader should simply express sadness and discontent in a sincere yet blame-avoiding way.  In this way, the person will think about how to solve the problem, and act on it, instead of thinking how the problem isn’t his fault, and thus how to avoid blame for the problem.

NEXT ARTICLE IN THE SERIES: A PREVIEW

The next article, Law #17, is the last of the 17 House Laws of the Asakura Clan.  Law #17 is regarding the essentiality of governance through the virtues of justice and compassion.