In this interview, the author of the new book The Five Rings explains the five core tactics—Opposition, Deflection, Leverage, Borrowing, and Harmony—that underpin the accompanying workshop. Each tactic is described in practical, leadership‑focused terms: Opposition is a force‑against‑force approach that can stop or push back resistance but is costly; Deflection uses questioning to shift focus from the speaker to the listener, turning conflict into dialogue; Leverage amplifies outcomes by tapping the talents, skills, and abilities of team members, allowing a small input of energy to generate a larger result; Borrowing builds on a shared vision or purpose, adding the leader’s force to the existing direction to create exponential momentum; Harmony ties the previous tactics together, ensuring they work in concert for cohesive, aligned action. The conversation highlights when and why to employ each tactic, emphasizing efficiency, alignment, and the leader’s role in embodying the vision.
A new book, The Five Rings, that I just put out, and the workshop that we do there, that's what we're talking about. Those tactics: opposition, deflection, leverage, harmony, borrowing, right? That speaks directly to that. How do we get people working with us?
Can you talk about those tactics a little bit more? What does it mean actually to employ those five tactics and when do they— Well, opposition.
Force against force can be effective. It's not very efficient, is it? It's expensive. If you got 100 units of force moving this way and you want to stop it, you need 100. You want to push it back, you need more. That's very expensive.
Yeah.
And a lot of people will say, well, you never want to use that tactic. Well, yes you do. When do you want to stand your ground at all costs, even though it's expensive, right? That leads us to the next one is deflection. And what's the mother of all deflections? Especially when you're in conflict, think about this, one very practical application of it. If someone's angry at you, you can oppose them, you can use that, right? Or you can deflect by asking a question. Don't I do that all the time? You notice that? But it's interesting because it does two things. It shifts the focus from me to you when I ask a question. You become more important in that exchange. Then there's leverage. That's a really cool one. And I'll just cut to the chase with that one. Usually when we're talking about leverage in workshops, I'll ask people, how do you apply that in a leadership context? Are you fully utilizing the talents, skills, and abilities of the people around you? So that the leader— as the leader, with a little bit of input energy on your part, you get a much bigger outcome, right? You get more power as the product of that, get more things done. And then the next evolution of that is borrowing. With borrowing, I really talk more— and again, I'm talking this on a very practical level— about the vision, the purpose That's where you really inspire people. Can you get them on board with the purpose? Get everyone aligned, moving in the same direction. That's what borrowing is. So physically, if you want to see it, there's a force that comes this way. Rather even than deflecting it, which is efficient, I intercept it, I add mine, my force to it, and the output is exponential now, you see? So how do you do that? How do you do that in a leadership capacity? That's the purpose of the vision. Right? But you gotta live and embody that vision. And harmony is just getting it all working together. Mm-hmm.
