The best way for a society to prepare its young people for leadership in government, industry, or other fields is by instilling in them a sense of cooperation, not competition.

In order to become a leader of any profession a certain skillset needs to be inherent but what is the best way to prepare the entering young people into those respective fields? The prompt suggests that a sense of cooperation, not competition, should be instilled by society. Although competition can lead to success, a sense of cooperation should be idealized for young people aspiring to become leaders in government, industry, or other fields. This is because of two reasons.

To begin, the ability to collaborate with others is a strong proponent of leadership. In fact, many of the greatest inventions known today are derived from collaboration, of which cooperation is an essential component. The invention of Macintosh, or more commonly referred to as Apple, was developed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Their collaboration allowed for the creation of one of the most widely used technologies today. In order to become leaders of their respective field, they had to work together and cooperate with each other since they individually contributed different skillsets. Similar to Apple, many other inventions in history and even today are brought forward from collaboration. If the young people today are suggested to be more competitive rather than collaborative, they risk potentially limiting their discoveries by not working with other individuals who may possess they skills they lack/

Further, many leadership roles today require cooperation to make progress, specifically in government. During the election process, competition is very crucial to candidates to win their desired position; however, after winning, cooperation is pertinent in delivering upon the promises they made to their constituents. In a democracy, like the United States, the concept of checks and balances prevents one person from being able to make the rules on his or her own. Only with collaboration, teamwork, and cooperation with other members of the government are laws able to be passed and real changes be made. In this case, like many other fields, cooperation overpowers competition as the true responsibilities require cooperation.

Even though competition is beneficial to instill within the young people of society, it is more important to teach the principles of cooperation as all leaders need to be cooperative with either other leaders or their subordinates and people they manage. For example, during the Space Race between the United States and Soviet Union, the U.S. was trying to compete with the Soviet Union and make their mark in terms of ventures in outer space. Though the competition between the nations did fuel the inspiration of going into space, without cooperation between government officials, scientists, astronomers, and many more, Neil Armstrong would not have been able to become the first man to walk on the moon and preceding other nations. Inability to hear the concerns of other departments and take into considerations each other’s goals, the accomplishment as a whole would not have come to fruition. This emphasizes the superior need to instill a sense of cooperation in young future leaders of society.

Overall, to definitively state that competition should not be instilled in young people to prepare them for leadership in the workplace is extreme. However, a sense of cooperation is more beneficial for young people entering government, industry, or other field as collaboration is key to making progress and many responsibilities of the fields require a sense of cooperation.