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 disc

There is a centuries old argument about crucial characteristic of a leader which makes him or her successful. One part of people believes that competitiveness is the cornerstone of a governor's success; the second part asserts that ability to cooperate is a fundamental characteristic of a leader. Although those two viewpoints initially seem to be in conflict with each other, as far as I am concerned, an efficient leader must possess and wisely combine both characteristics.

To begin with, a leader by definition should be able to compete with others. In fact, in any field of human's endeavor from scientific research to politics a leader has to be able to compete and champion his or her ideas and concepts. For instance, we may take a look at elections in Congress; as we know Congress has limited number of members and the number of candidate significantly exceeds the number of places available. As a result, the candidates have to rival with each other for people's voices. In other words, the world of politics as well as business and other fields demand from a leader to be able to compete and champion his or her stance.

However, cooperation is important facet of today's world as well. In fact, we are social animals who live in groups and our culture is the product of cooperation, for example, take look at your computer, it is a product of work of thousands of scientists, engineers, programmers and mills' employees who worked together in order to create such a device. Moreover, neither of them is able to create this item alone. Imagine a person who tried to develop a silicon chip, keyboard, computer language and other elements which make possible to build this machine. What is more, cooperation is important in other fields as well, for instance, today's world of politics was created in such a way that it is literally impossible to rule such country as the USA in one person. Consequently, cooperation is cornerstone of a successful leadership as well.

As a result, we face a dilemma: we have two crucial and important characteristics which seems to be in conflict with each other; however, are they? The answer on this question is "no" because our world is complex and elaborate; it is unthinkable to become a successful leader only through competition or cooperation. A person who is willing only to cooperate will face a hard situation when one will not be able to present and protect his or her position, in other words, one's position will be lost in the cooperation. By contrast, a leader who is willing to compete with other will not be able to find many supporters and proponents. However, a leader who wisely combines both characteristics is a winner. To illustrate the idea we may take a look at presidential elections in the USA. In fact, all promising candidates were promoted from democratic or republican party. In other words, those candidates manage to cooperate with the members of those parties. At the same time, each candidate is able to compete as well and one will be challenge others' positions during campaign in order to attract voters.

In conclusion, cooperation and competition are two sides of the same medal which make a leader successful, in fact, if one of those facets is absent, a person will not be able to become a winner in today's world. Therefore, only wise combination of both of them may bring success to a leader.