Real Power: Business Lessons from the Tao Te Ching

A premier business consultant offers practical lessons from one of the world's most profound works of wisdom and shows how to transform the workplace into a source of immense satisfaction and fulfillment.

Legend has it that as the sage Lao-Tzu was leaving the country of Chou at the end of his life in the sixth century B.C.E., a frontier guard asked him to write something that would teach the art of living. The result was a text called the Tao Te Ching. It is the world's oldest leadership manual, written to help everyone who is in a position of power-farmer, landlord, parent, head of household, local politician, head of state to turn that position into an opportunity for creating both inner and outer harmony. Widely considered the wisest book ever written, the Tao Te Ching shows leaders how to guide their communities to peaceful productivity and happiness.

James Autry and Stephen Mitchell have now brought this wisdom to bear on the most significant arena of life outside family: work. "Management," writes Autry, "is a calling, a sacred trust in which the well-being of other people is put into your care during most of their waking hours." Real Power will change the way working people look at how they spend this time, and shows how to create an environment in which everyone's power can be expressed in order to produce the best results for everyone.

Autry and Mitchell make clear the paradoxes of winning at work: that only when we learn to let go of the illusion of control can we empower others and ourselves; that conventional displays of power are the least effective ways to get things done; that helping our competition (inside or outside the company) can bring us the greatest benefit; that employees already have power in their skills, their commitment to their job, and their passion for their work.