Aikido Leadership and Personal Responsibility

I recently had a conversation in which I was observing that the senior students of the various Aikido organizations seem to have received different training than what the current generation of students is receiving. Now, I have to say that it isn’t just in Aikido that I noticed this… My sister and I, close in age, used to marvel at what our baby sister, born in a different decade got away with. Did the rules change? Or did my parents simply tire of the role of disciplinarians and mellow out? Anyway, I see much the same thing in Aikido.

Virtually everyone I talk to says that testing seems easier, more forgiving than in the so-called “old days”. This seems to be true cross-organizationally as far as I can tell. I see things that in “my day” would have occasioned a tirade, now evince a polite and rather oblique lecture. If I was on the wrong track in my training, I was given fairly direct feedback to get myself on track. There wasn’t an optional quality to this direction.

Aikido has grown exponentially since those days. There are thousands of practitioners in each of the major organizations. No longer is training an intimate experience between the top Teacher and a few students (unless one is VERY lucky). Most students get to see their Shihan level instructor once or twice a year at large seminars. Rank testing is often overseen by a Shihan level teacher who has had almost no direct input into the training process of the person taking the test. Often, the dojo-cho who put the candidate forward is not himself a direct student of the Shihan level teacher, or even someone else trained by that Shihan. More often than not the instructor either started Aikido outside the organization in question or he was trained by a student of a student of the Shihan level teacher.

Almost all Japanese instructors have a large investment in group cohesion. Very seldom will you see someone singled out, either positively or negatively in a group run according to Japanese norms. This is not necessarily true if one is a personal and direct student of that same hypothetical Shihan. As a “deshi” the Teacher relates to you differently than he does with the other students of the organization. Screw up and you hear about it instantly. The proper way to do everything is modeled all of the time, both in class and out of class. Training is apt to be more severe and the Teacher less tolerant of mistakes. Good intentions don’t count for much, it’s performance that counts.

In relating to the organizational membership as a whole, things seem quite the reverse. The Shihan seems to be more interested in creating a harmonious whole than in correcting the many deficiencies he sees (often much to the puzzlement of the “deshi” who may have been severely chastised for exactly the same deficiencies). The Shihan may preside over rank testing smiling serenely, seemingly oblivious to some performance which would, in his own dojo, have led to a tirade and much hard training thereafter.

I have observed that in the organizations with which I am familiar, despite the far larger number of students training in the art, there do not seem to be more students coming along who look as if they are destined to reach the same level of proficiency attained by the 6th and 7th Dan direct students of the organizations founding Shihan. Certainly there are some fantastically talented folks out there, but it doesn’t seem that the number of the next generation’s is proportional to the increase in practitioners.

After thinking about this I felt I should offer a bit of help in interpreting the feedback being offered by the top teachers to the general membership of their organizations. I believe that training today requires much more personal responsibility than it did when I was a mudansha and lower level yudansha. No one is going to force you to be better. You won’t get criticized… you won’t take extra hard ukemi… the most you can expect is very oblique reference to what the Teacher wishes you to do.

First of all, it is important to realize that most Japanese teachers seldom praise anyone directly. When I was a white belt with my own teacher, I only got feedback if something needed changing, not if it was going fine; then you heard nothing. On a very rare occasion one might actually exceed my teacher’s expectations and then would, if one was lucky, get a grunt or a nod. So if one is at a seminar or especially a rank test and the Shihan overseeing the test seems to praise some individual’s performance and singles him out, it isn’t meant to be feedback for that student. The Teacher is trying, obliquely, to say to the group, “Look. That is what I expect. I want you people to pay attention and shoot for that level of performance on your tests.” I attended a test in which the student had done a very nice job. He had good intention, was very sharp, had excellent zanshin, his weapons work was spot on. The Shihan overseeing this test singled out this test and praised many specific elements of the test. Now this test was done at a seminar and there were many instructors there from a number of other dojos. Most of the people present seemed unaware that the whole point of the praise lavished on this one student was meant to say to them, “your tests need to have more energy. I want to see more intention, better zanshin, cleaner weapons work, etc.”

There was a test in which the candidate got to the Randori segment and totally punted it. He didn’t do a single technique but ended up underneath a pile of the three ukes. It was absolutely one of the worst randoris I ever saw. At the end of the test the Shihan presiding commented politely on the test and, almost as an afterthought, mentioned that more work on Randori would be good. In conversations with this student in the dressing room after this event, it was clear that the student involved was pretty much unaware that the Shihan was trying to say, obliquely once again, that his Randori was a disaster and that he needed to get his act together. Additionally, the Sensei was also sending a message to that student’s instructors… “don’t bring someone that unprepared before me again. You need to do a better job preparing the students for the test so this doesn’t happen”.

To properly understand these oblique messages one must be honest with oneself. If the teacher, after watching a set of tests then gives a lengthy lecture about makoto (sincerity) and what it means, one must ask oneself, honestly, if what he is saying is meant as a message for you. If the tests seemed to be lack luster, with ukes who didn’t really attack, with little energy or intention, one should understand that the makoto lecture was the Sensei’s way of saying that the attacks needed to have real intention, that the tests needed to have more energy. You have to ask yourself, is this true of my students? Does my dojo lack the kind of intensity the teacher is referring to?

I once saw an instance in which this very thing occurred. After the long talk about makoto, which to my mind very clearly referred to the low level of energy and completely ineffective attacks on the tests, I was talking to some folks who had interpreted what the Sensei had to say as meaning one had to care deeply about what one was doing and treat it very seriously. While makoto does indeed include that meaning, in the context of the tests it was clear to me that they had missed the point of the lecture and had concluded that the Sensei must have been talking to someone else. Not wishing to believe that their own practice could perhaps have more intention, stronger attacks, etc they chose the meaning that validated what they were already doing. This is the downside of the oblique approach to feedback… it requires people who willing to look critically at themselves and what they are doing.

Another misunderstanding regarding the top instructors… they don’t teach outsiders the same way they teach the folks within their own dojos. One only needs to visit the dojo of one of the Shihan level instructors when there isn’t kind of event, when the teacher is conducting his regular classes with his own direct students. The contrast is often startling. The seminar classes of this teacher which he conducts when he is on the road might be very controlled, containing substantial explanation, focused on certain principles, with lots of fairly slow practice. The classes taught by this teacher at his own dojo might be quite hard, with little explanation, powerful throwing, little slow practice, and hard, focused striking by the ukes.

Most dojo-cho out in the Aikido hinterlands never actually visit their teacher’s dojo except when a special event takes place. They only see how their teachers are during the special events when they are teaching their “soto deshi” so to speak. They model their own teaching styles to that of their teachers and in turn imitate a manner of training which was never designed to produce students of the ability which the Shihan has produced in his own dojo.

What the top teachers do when they travel has more to do with creating group cohesion within the organization, bonding with membership, creating an enjoyable and safe training experience at a given seminar, and providing people with various pointers which can guide the direction the students’ training. This is true if for no other reason than there simply isn’t space to train hard when you have two or three hundred students on a mat for a big regional camp or 50 or 60 students on a mat at a weekend seminar in a dojo which normally puts twenty or so people on the mat for nightly practice.

If one looks at the senior students of a given teacher and feels that they represent the kind of Aikido one is shooting for, then one needs to look at how they have been trained. If a teacher wishes to produce students of that caliber, then one must train his own students in a similar manner. If a student wishes to become like the seniors he sees teaching classes, taking the ukemi, etc. he must ask himself if his training is designed to do that. In many cases it is not. Toned down training produces toned down students.

So this brings me to the issue of personal responsibility. In order to get to the real meaning of what is said by the Japanese Shihan when they are teaching as guests outside their own dojos, one must constantly ask oneself if what the Sensei is saying could possibly apply to oneself. If so, he is probably talking to you. When a student is given pointers about some deficiency in his test, this instruction is as much for his instructors as for the student himself. Saotome Sensei once said to me “student not do well on test, not student’s fault, teacher’s fault.” So whether the Shihan ever says anything directly, I can guarantee that what he sees of the students informs his opinion of the instructor/s of those students.

I have noticed that, in some cases senior instructors of the Shihan level teachers have attempted to maintain the same standards according to which they received their own training. Their attempts are often met with disparagement by people who are experiencing the Shihan in a completely different context than as direct teacher and student. The Shihan in question may feel that they have already passed on their teachings to a generation of new instructors, just now reaching 5th, 6th and even 7th Dan now and are no longer worrying about continuing to insist on the standard that produced these very instructors.

I find myself frequently wishing that things weren’t so oblique… that a bad test would be called a bad test. That the expectations for performance would be stated flat out and not tailored for the various individuals and their circumstances. Every time a teacher allows a mediocre test to pass un-remarked he is sending a message that this is an acceptable level of performance. This might be good for morale within the dojo involved, might avoid embarrassing a valued instructor within an organization, might encourage loyalty to the organization, but it isn’t good for the training of the people observing because it says to them that they can do Aikido-lite while the Shihan has given the real goods to his direct students.

If you are serious about your own training or serious about teaching your students how to reach their highest potential in the art, then you need to learn to read between the lines when the high level Shihan give “feedback”. And it is always a good idea to listen to the senior students of these teachers when they talk about how they were trained; after all, it’s how they got to where they are. If they have chosen to tone down the training they offer, perhaps out of compassion for their students, one has to ask if this kinder, gentler training will produce anyone of the same caliber as those trained in the harsher, more intense manner. Each student and teacher must answer that question himself or herself. No one else is likely to do it for you.

George Ledyard — October 2^nd, 2005 (add comment)