3.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 preparing youths toward leadership in government, industry or other fields, the statement above takes an extreme position; with avoiding instilling a sense of competition, the statement recommends instilling a spirit of cooperation in the young generation. I agree with such an assertion in instilling cooperation in youths, but at the same time, youths need to have an active competitive spirit in order to become effective leaders.

To begin with, inducing a sense of rivalry in the young generation is required to prepare them for leadership because in every aspect of society there is a contest which dares leaders. The young generation needs to know how to vie for what it needs. Competition exists in every corner that the demand is more than supply. Some win in satisfying their demands, and some lose because there is always a shortage in supply. Hence, a leader needs to know how to be a winner in economic, politic, or social contests in order not to cause the system led by him/her to lag behind.

At the same time, to pass sound and sturdy through such a life-race, youths need to learn how to work together. To instill a cooperative spirit means to teach the young generation how to assimilate into a team toward a common goal. Consider Steve Jobs. When he was deciding to do something exceptional, he tried hard to establish a nexus of collaborating members between different engineers and in doing that he introduced technological horizons not observable even by the giants of that time such as heads of INTEL. Being a professional in the programming, he made common cause with other fields’ professionals to achieve great successes. Had he been alone, Steve Jobs could have not made such great successes. Furthermore, promoting cooperation is accompanied by learning how to be patient, how to connect with people and so many other experiences that in the future helps the young generation in leading their society.

Finally, an appropriate way to bring up a leader is to provide youths situations inducing both cooperative and competitive characteristics in them. Consider two successful companies in the hot market of cell phones: Sony and Samsung. They are rivals in the arena of cell phone marketing, one from Japan and the other from South Korea. At the same time they cooperate with each other, for example the LCD of their certain cell phones is the joint product between Sony and Samsung. Having these two successful giant companies in mind, we see that in the competitive ambiance of life we need to have leaders who know when to compete and when to work together to become successful.

In short, inducing a cooperating spirit is not mutually exclusive with inducing a competitive spirit. Furthermore, we need both to instill competitive and cooperative spirits in the young generation because successful leaders are possessing some degrees of both in their characteristics.