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From my interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 22 (Unpublished):

Be broken to be whole.
Be empty to be full.
Be small to be great.
Be bent to be straight.

Let the old depart,
the new appears.
What is true—
already here.

Unmoved by appearance—
esteemed.
Unconcerned with reverence—
admired.
Uninterested in applause—
celebrated.

The sage does not contend,
and none contend.

What is bent
becomes whole.

—

We talk about imposter syndrome like it’s one thing.

It isn’t.

At minimum, there are two versions I repeatedly see in leaders, teams, organizations, and unfortunately, in myself.

The first is the All-Knower Imposter. Confident to a fault. Has the answer. Says it cleanly. Demonstrates certainty quickly. It is tailor-made for environments rewarding confidence, speed, clarity, and immediate response. There is something genuinely useful here. People do need direction. Decisions matter. Leadership requires ownership.

Though over time, something underneath starts tightening.

Conversations narrow. Questions decrease. People begin managing what they say around the leader rather than contributing honestly to the work itself. Trust weakens gradually while certainty strengthens publicly. The leader often experiences this as increased alignment while everyone else experiences it as increased caution.

The system compensates.

The second version moves in the opposite direction.

I think of it as the All-Shoulder Imposter. Humble to a fault. Carries everything. Questions everything. Seeks more input. More perspectives. More caution. More time. It can look thoughtful, collaborative, emotionally intelligent, and inclusive. There is something genuinely valuable here too. Reflection matters. Listening matters. People do need to feel heard.

Though eventually another form of erosion begins.

Decisions slow beyond usefulness. Clarity weakens. Accountability blurs. Frustration quietly accumulates underneath the surface while leaders convince themselves they are simply being careful, thoughtful, or appropriately nuanced. The hesitation increasingly becomes part of the instability itself.

The system compensates here too.

Both patterns work for a while.

Both eventually become exhausting.

And both slowly produce the very outcomes they were initially trying to prevent.

Lao Tzu points toward something deeper in Chapter 22. To be broken is to stop organizing yourself around appearing whole. To be empty is to make room for what you still may not understand. To be bent is to recognize your first answer may not be your best one, even when it occasionally is. To be small is to stop placing your identity at the center of every outcome.

It sounds poetic.

Living it is something else entirely.

Because the All-Knower Imposter overfocuses on owning and loses relationship with questioning. The All-Shoulder Imposter overfocuses on questioning and loses relationship with owning. Both can sound reasonable. Both can gather supporters. Both can temporarily feel morally superior to the other.

And over time, both erode trust.

Once trust erodes, compensation intensifies. The All-Knower becomes increasingly declarative, certain, reactive, and attached to being right. The All-Shoulder becomes increasingly tentative, delayed, cautious, and afraid of causing harm. Each side reinforces the other while becoming progressively less capable of recognizing its own contribution to the larger pattern.

That dynamic feels painfully familiar right now.

Modern culture increasingly rewards people for sounding certain rather than being thoughtful. Humiliation has become entertainment. Public contempt increasingly passes for leadership. Social media platforms amplify performance certainty faster than discernment, reflection, humility, or relationship. Many systems now reward identity defense more than curiosity.

The result is not merely polarization.

It is performative overcertainty.

The loudest person increasingly gets mistaken for the clearest thinker. Mockery gets mistaken for strength. Dominance gets mistaken for leadership. Humiliating opponents gets mistaken for courage. Certainty itself starts functioning like a public performance of safety and belonging.

And once entire systems begin organizing around certainty performance, something essential quietly deteriorates underneath.

People stop learning.

Adult development researchers describe something remarkably similar. Earlier stages of development often seek stability through expertise, certainty, clear identity, fixed answers, and confidence in one’s conclusions. Those capacities matter. They help people build competence, accomplish goals, and function effectively in the world.

Though over time, more mature developmental stages increasingly recognize something unsettling: reality remains larger than the frameworks used to explain it.

That realization changes your relationship to certainty itself.

Other people stop looking merely wrong and start looking like carriers of information you may still be missing yourself. Complexity becomes harder to flatten into clean narratives. Contradictions stop feeling like failures requiring elimination and start looking more like realities requiring stewardship.

Conviction still matters.

Though humility increasingly matters too.

Brené Brown helped many people rediscover something important here. Vulnerability is not weakness. It involves uncertainty, emotional exposure, and risk. Without vulnerability, people protect themselves constantly. Though in protecting themselves, they often create the very distance they fear most.

Jim Collins found something similar in his research on Level 5 Leadership. The leaders producing the most enduring results consistently combined fierce professional will with deep personal humility.

Both matter.

At this point, I increasingly think mature leadership requires becoming a kind of loyal opposition to your own certainty.

Own your view.

Question your view too.

Without the first, leadership weakens.

Without the second, leadership hardens.

That polarity feels increasingly important now because democracies themselves depend upon people remaining capable of disagreement without dehumanization. Shared governance requires citizens capable of holding conviction without absolutism, advocacy without humiliation, confidence without contempt, and identity without turning opponents into enemies of reality itself.

Yuval Noah Harari describes democracy as an ongoing conversation. Not merely elections, laws, or institutions, though those matter deeply. A living process through which societies remain capable of collective self-correction over time.

That framing feels increasingly important now.

Democracy depends upon people remaining capable of listening, questioning, disagreeing, adjusting, and revising collectively without treating every challenge as betrayal. Independent courts, free presses, loyal opposition, elections, and constitutional constraints all function as forms of societal self-correction. They exist because human beings are fallible. Leaders are fallible. Groups are fallible. Entire nations are fallible.

Democracies do not survive because people agree.

Democracies survive because people remain capable of disagreement without abandoning relationship, correction, legitimacy, and shared participation.

Authoritarianism increasingly struggles with correction because certainty itself becomes part of the identity structure holding power together. Questioning starts feeling dangerous. Opposition becomes disloyalty. Complexity becomes threat. Conversation gradually gives way to monologue.

And once systems lose the capacity for self-correction, compensations intensify rapidly underneath the surface.

The All-Knower Imposter is no longer merely a personal leadership problem.

At scale, it becomes a democratic problem.

And the All-Shoulder Imposter creates its own risks too. Mature people can become so committed to questioning, nuance, caution, and avoiding overreach that they slowly lose the capacity to interrupt harm when interruption is exactly what the moment requires. Reflection gradually drifts into paralysis. Humility drifts into abdication. The desire to remain fair starts weakening the willingness to name what is plainly happening.

Both poles matter.

Always both.

Own Your View AND Question Your View.

The tension never fully disappears.

AI is now accelerating all of this.

Technology amplifies existing human patterns. Algorithms increasingly reward speed, outrage, certainty, simplification, emotional activation, tribal signaling, and immediate reaction. Nuance moves slower. Reflection moves slower. Humility moves slower. Relationship moves slower.

Human beings do too.

Democracy moves slowly because people move slowly. Trust moves slowly. Repair moves slowly. Shared understanding moves slowly.

Authoritarianism increasingly markets itself as relief from all of that.

Strong certainty. Simple narratives. Fast decisions. Public enemies. Clear answers. Reduced ambiguity. Less patience required for complexity, opposition, dissent, negotiation, or shared meaning-making.

For a while, it can even feel emotionally relieving.

Until the compensations begin there too.

Lao Tzu understood something many modern systems increasingly forget: people organized around appearance eventually become trapped by appearance. People organized around applause eventually become dependent upon applause. People organized around certainty eventually become frightened of questioning itself because questioning starts feeling like identity threat rather than collective learning.

That is part of the blindness.

And perhaps part of the sickness Chapter 71 points toward as well.

The older I get, the more I suspect wisdom has less to do with becoming endlessly certain and more to do with becoming increasingly capable of remaining present while larger realities continue revealing themselves.

That does not eliminate conviction.

It changes how tightly we grip it.

A steadier form of leadership starts emerging there over time. Less organized around performance. Less attached to applause. Less reactive toward disagreement. More capable of acting decisively when action matters and questioning itself honestly when certainty starts narrowing perception.

The movement feels less connected to weakness than maturity.

Less connected to image management than reality.

Less connected to winning arguments than building relationships, organizations, communities, and democracies capable of holding together under pressure.

Which increasingly feels like one of the most important forms of leadership our moment requires.

Here’s a Polarity Map for Own Your View AND Question Your View:

INVITATIONS
If you want to take a quick self-assessment for Own Your View AND Question Your View: CLICK HERE
NOTE: the results include Leveraging Action Steps and Early Warnings (to support maximizing upside benefits and minimizing downside limitations).

Where is Own Your View AND Question Your View challenging you now?
Try the AI-trained Chat w/Cliff for support for Step 1, Seeing Polarities

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