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.

The role of a leader has been discussed over various fields and for a long time. Albeit its broad meaning it encompasses, the ultimate goal of a group’s leader is to draw the best results. As the impact of leaders is increasing recently, the effort to foster future leaders are also increasing. Inculcating the young with a sense of cooperation than competition seems to be more crucial for becoming a leader.

Granted, the sense of competition is important for making better results than others. Take Korea’s education system for example. By letting students compete each other by their grades, they learn the importance of putting in more effort than others and how studying strategies can come to effect for getting better grades. Similarly, only a leader with the sense of competition can invigorate his team members so they put in more effort and think about effective tactics so that their results can outweigh their competitor’s. Hyundai’s president Joo-young Jung is an example, who said, “if impossible, make it possible”, exhibiting his mind of competition to outrun others by attempting seemingly impossible problems.

However, since a leader has to guide a ‘team’, the sense of cooperation is more important than competition. Having a sense of cooperation means that one knows how to lead a group to work as a whole, which is crucial for successful results. For example, General Sun-Yeop Baek, a South Korean hero of the Korean War, could successfully lead his division to counterattack the North Korean troop by enhancing his men to cooperate through his famous words, “Follow me, we cannot act like this while our country is falling down”. Thus, young people need to grow their sense of cooperation to become an effective leader.

Furthermore, cooperation is more important than competition in that the result of cooperation can elicit more positive responses. For example, Wonsoon Park, the mayor of Seoul, is regarded as a good leader for his ability to make compromises between groups by cooperation. By gathering opinions of bus drivers, citizens, and government employees and then leading them to cooperate into a conclusion, he fulfilled the policy of late-night driving buses. Likely, students should be instilled with the mind of cooperation so that they can elicit best results to maximize satisfaction of all groups.

In conclusion, while becoming inured to competition can help students to become a leader by realizing its importance, knowing the sense of cooperation by heart will benefit more by making a cohesive group and knowing to compromise. Therefore, to rear students to become effective leaders, the education system should imperatively make a balance between the two virtues when instilling them.