- Some people argue that successful leaders in government, industry, or other fields must be highly competitive. Other people claim that in order to be successful, a leader must be willing and able to cooperate with others.
Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented.________________________________________
One may say that the best preparation for true leadership is not learning to be cooperative but learning to be personally competitive. In some sense, it is true that great leaders in many fields of human endeavors have been those who rely on their own brilliances. From my perspective, however, what ultimately determines true leadership is their well-developed senses to harmonize with others.
Of course, it is undeniable that an effective leader should be equipped with a variety of personal competences. With regard to formation and control of the public’s psychologies, it seems almost prerequisite for a leader to sharpen his or her personal abilities. Without those basic competences, people would not show any respect or trust, qualities that should be formed at the initial stage of ascendance to leadership. At the time of calamities or crises, only those leaders who have special powers can give courage and hope to people. …….
Many would say that the most important asset of a successful leader is not his brilliance but the ability to cooperate with others. In many ways, it is undeniable that the willingness to recognize and respect others’ abilities is a key for an effective leader. Still, in my opinion, it is not the simple ability to coordinate different specialties but the development of personal competence that ultimately determines true leadership.
Of course, few would disagree that a leader’s ability to credit others’ diverse perspectives is critical for him to guide an organization in the most productive direction. Considering the fact that most modern enterprises are composed of diverse subfields of specialties, the ability of managers to communicate with those specialized spirits can never be neglected. Different from the traditional fields of arts such as musical composition or painting in which the sole important factor of artistic creativity is an artist’s own skill and talent, one area of modern arts—film requires its director to be more communicative and cooperative with others; for example, many famous works of Steven Spielberg might not have been produced if it had not been for his ability to adjust and harmonize differing techniques and specialties needed to make them.
((When it comes to maximal exploitation of diverse talents scattered throughout individuals, effective leaders should be those who can respect and blend these independent potentials into a more significant fruit. Whereas personal brilliance usually represents a leader’s person self-confidence and, consequently a huge gap between him and others, the willingness to respect others’ opinions prevents a leader from being an unenlightened and authoritarian manager who sticks to his own genius vision.))
Then, is a leader’s personal ability just a peripheral component for effective leadership? My answer is definitely no. Even at the initial stage of recognizing and discovering meaningful talents of others, it is still leaders’ well-developed discernment that enables their choice of good companions. Once again, Spielberg might not have been the effective film director as we know him today, if he had lacked his sophisticated sense of discrimination to distinguish between true gemstones and famous but mediocre talents when he built his staff.
Further, the fundamental importance of leaders’ own competitiveness can be found at the final stage of decision-makings. Anyway, it is the responsibility of leaders that finishes the long process of discussions and debates to find out the best solution to address a problem. In the process, although any good leader should be open to all opinions, he is also asked to judge and decide which ideas are suitable and beneficial and which ones are not. And, for the best decision, it seems almost commonsensical that the leader should be sensitive enough to select good ones over bad or irrelevant ones. This also says that a leader should be competitive of himself and for his organization.
"The best preparation for life or a career is not learning to be competitive, but learning to be cooperative."
The speaker asserts that our lives or career can best be prepared not by learning to be competitive, but by learning to be cooperative. Considering some problems related to being excessively competitive, having cooperative minds can be said to be a beneficial asset for our future career. However, development of competence has unique meanings that cannot be traded off by cooperative minds in our lives.
Needless to say, learning to be cooperative is one of the crucial qualities for people to adapt to a society and their working places. Without a well-developed sense of harmony, continuous conflicts and altercations will linger around one’s career. To have a successful personal lives, we even need to yield or concede our position if this attitude is necessary. If one lacks cooperative and revering attitude to respect others’ opinions-our co-workers’, seniors’, even our subordinates’ opinions-, he or she would also lose others’ respects too in the long run. Moreover, the harm of having no cooperative spirits would be obvious, considering today’s over-specified and over-complicated social and economic environments.
However, learning to be cooperative is not an exclusive preparation strategy for our better lives. When one cannot find his or her unique contribution through having some idiosyncratic ability, attitudes to be cooperative might result in almost nothing to his or her coworkers and colleagues. That is, to be really cooperative, it is a prerequisite for anyone to be competitive. Good partnerships and wholesome interdependence rely not only on complacent attitudes of participants but also well-developed competitiveness and actual abilities crucial to the maintenance of those relationships.
Moreover, learning to be competitive is crucial for some enterprising and creative human endeavors. Explorations of somewhat unfamiliar worlds of arts, thinking, and scientific discoveries can be initially thwarted by collective checking and conventional standards or norms held by the majority. If one cannot overcome various types of misunderstanding, obstinacy, or collective conservatism interweaved with the emphasis on cooperative and harmonious approaches, coining of new ideas or new paradigm for which people having competitive minds are striving would be almost impossible. This phenomenon can be easily observed in most of Asian cultures which usually values too much on collectivism and cooperation rather than individuality and competitiveness. Despite the positive values of cooperative and team spirits, sometimes, excessive emphasis on cooperativeness may deter the introduction and development of original, creative, and convention-betraying ideas.
In sum, in spite of healthy aspects of cooperative minds, learning to be competitive is necessary for both development of individuals’ unique contributing skill on the co-projects and encouragement of coining new perspectives conflicting with conventional and collective beliefs. On balance, I cannot fully agree with the speaker’s assertion that learning to be cooperative is the only and best policy for our preparation of future lives. Only by ignoring the importance of competitiveness could one conclude that development of individuality is detrimental while a sense of cooperation is beneficial and desirable.