See the Series Introduction for Just Tao It, Part I: HERE
See the Just Tao It Series Introduction Tao/It on-ramp, PART II: HERE
See Just Tao It, Chapter 1: HERE

From my interpretation of Chapter 66 of the Tao Te Ching (Unpublished):

Streams and rivers
flow down
to valleys.

Valleys hold
the sea
by staying low.

Those who stay low
stand not above.

So they lead
without standing over.

And in this way
trust flows.

—

Water never tries to convince anyone it should flow downhill. It just does it.

I learned the cost of standing over instead of standing with through consequences I would not recommend.

There was a period in my career when I was certain I could see what teams needed better than they could tell me. I had the frameworks. I could name the patterns. And somewhere inside all that certainty, I stopped asking and started directing. Leading without following. Standing over when I should have been standing with.

The results looked successful for a while. Teams complied. Projects moved. Recommendations got implemented.

Underneath, something else was happening. People stopped bringing me concerns early. They stopped challenging weak assumptions. The work continued. Trust was thinning out beneath it.

I mistook compliance for alignment. I understand the difference now.

The clearest symptom is one most people have felt from one side or the other: malicious compliance. People follow instructions exactly as given while withdrawing judgment, creativity, care, and initiative. Everything looks orderly on the surface. Underneath, people no longer trust that their voice is worth the risk of using it.

That pattern shows up in teams. Increasingly, it shows up at societal scale too. The older leadership models get more anxious, more performative, more loyalty-driven, and systems start optimizing for obedience instead of participation. People learn how to survive inside the system instead of how to help the system get wiser.

Watch a watershed after a hard rain. No river campaigns to become the largest. None advertises itself as the most important stream. Each simply follows gravity until, together, they become something no single stream could ever become.

Teams with high trust feel like that. Leadership circulates — people step forward when they’re needed and step back when someone else is closer to the work. Teams with low trust feel heavy. Everything waits for direction, while candor and initiative disappear first.

The Tao Te Ching knew this before anyone gave it a name. Rivers and seas become rulers of the valleys because they stay low. By not placing themselves above anything, they become the place where everything gathers.

Especially now, in a world built around visibility — branding, self-promotion, outrage, dominance displays. Leaders who need to be seen constantly are usually trying to settle something inside themselves through attention from outside. Trust erodes under the performance.

Democracies survive the same way valleys do. Authority must keep finding lower ground.

Barry Oshry’s work on systems names two energies every group carries: Power AND Love. Power differentiates — it creates movement, direction, action. Love integrates — it creates belonging and shared purpose. Power without Love becomes domination. Love without Power loses its effectiveness. My mentor Barry Johnson spent a career showing both energies were always in play, arriving together like separate rivers learning to run the same valley.

This matters more now that artificial intelligence runs so much of the work. AI already excels at directing it: optimizing, executing, coordinating faster than any of us. Trust still gathers the old way — one human being making it safer for another to tell the truth.

Systems built on force get brittle. Systems built on trust bend.

I’m still learning this. Still catching myself standing over when I should be standing with. Still noticing when following feels safer than stepping forward. Still discovering how easily leadership drifts toward performance when something underneath is running scared.

Rivers don’t argue about where to flow. They follow the shape of the land, and over time they carve mountains, carry valleys, and become the places where life gathers. The lowest point becomes the gathering point.

There’s an old teaching close to this one: the best leaders are those people barely notice. When the work is done, they say, “We did it ourselves.”

The rivers still flow downhill. The valleys still gather the water.

Here’s a Polarity Map to help see the pattern:

INVITATIONS
Use an AI-trained “Chat w/Cliff” for Step 1, Seeing, CLICK HERE.

Take a quick self-assessment for Lead And Follow CLICK HERE
NOTE: the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).

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