“If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.”
Confidence in people plus insistence on orders creates a two-way gain; both conditions matter.
Chapter 9 ends its command sequence with the mutual contract: if a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual. Confidence without obedience dissolves into drift; obedience without confidence curdles into compliance. Sun Tzu’s formulation insists the two are not in tension — properly expressed, each produces the other.
A flight crew culture study found the safest airlines were neither the laissez-faire ("captain trusts everyone’s judgment") nor the tyrannical ("captain’s word is law"), but the ones where crews were genuinely empowered to speak — and the captain’s decision, once made, was final without grievance. The empowerment made the orders smarter; the finality made the empowerment safe. Mutual is the operative word: each side’s gain is conditional on the other’s.
Insisting on obedience is not egomania — the verse’s general shows confidence first, meaning orders arrive with visible respect for the crew’s competence and often incorporate it. The line being held is decision rights, not omniscience: one voice decides, having heard the others. Leaders who skip either half get the failure mode of the half they skipped.