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.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim. In developing and supporting your position, be sure to address the most compelling reasons and/or examples that could be used to challenge your position.

The question of how a society prepares its young people for leadership is an issue that has perenially dominated headlines and academic debate. Yesterday, the headline of The Guardian newspaper read, 'Too many of our leaders study P.P.E. at Oxford', and yet another article in the Telegraph argued that our leaders should have more compassion. This debate is an emotive one but, rather than be guided by our instincts on this issue, we should consider the facts: countries whose leaders are cooperative have better economic and societal outcomes. Thus, the best way for society to prepare its young people for leadership is instilling a sense of cooperation. This is for three key reasons: these leaders will have to make decisions that require them to listen to the views of many people, leaders have shown that they are more successful when they are collaborative than competitive, and the problems that the world faces today depend on cooperation more than ever before.

Firstly, excellent leadership is characterized by a distinct ability to make difficult decisions that combine contradictory views. To be effective at doing this, a leader must be cooperative, rather than competitive. It is the duty of a leader to be able to listen to the people in the social or organizational group to which it belongs, and to collate the views of such people into a coherent directive. This is unlike fantastic employees, who are able to attain brilliance in one area of their job. We can see this most clearly in government, whereby leaders must incorporate the views of their own party as well as the opposition in order to adequately represent their nation. The leader of a country must make decisions that have normative implications and, in so doing, must cooperate with an eclectic array of people for whose interests they represent.

Secondly, and relatedly, a leader that is guided by competition rather than cooperation is likely to cause fractious relationships that lead to undesirable outcomes. An interesting illustration of this example is the stark differences in adversarial and collaborative governments in Europe and how these countries have responded to Covid-19. Adversarial governments, like the UK, have been fraught with party politics and lambasted for their ineffective response to the virus. The more collaborative governments like Germany, on the contrary, have been lauded for their responses.

Thirdly, instilling a sense of cooperation into future leaders is likely to result in decisions that are positive for the good of the country and the world. When considering the duty of society in preparing its young leaders, policy should take into account not only the profitability of their national businesses and economy, but the world problems that these organizations and governments must tackle in the years ahead. In the current political and business climate, the only way for the world to create solutions to increasingly complex global problems is through cooperation. The clearest example of this is climate change; where governments and businesses have been competitive both within and across nations, there has been a failure in responding adequately to the threat posed by rising temperatures. An illustration of this point is the USA recently pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, which could arguably be attributed to its competitive relationship with China.

The opposition to this argument may claim that leaders will only be able to attain leadership status by acquiring a 'competitive edge'; if we want to train global leaders, we must teach them how to be competitive on the world stage. Though I will concede some truth to this argument, it is largely misguided; the 'competitive edge' that business and political leaders have comes not from being competitive as leaders, but from excellent outputs. A leader is only as good as their policy or business outcomes which, as demonstrated, are dependent on cooperation. Thus, this point does not weaken the argument; it strengthens it.

To conclude, a society that wants to prepare its young people for leadership in a world which is increasingly facing complex international challenges should instill cooperation, not competitiveness, in its students. Leaders that are cooperative are more likely to have success in government and industry, since they are better at listening to the people and organizations that they represent. This has been proven countless times, and this argument has used the example of the Covid-19 crisis to illustrate the point. Instilling a sense of cooperation in our future leaders will not only have a positive effect on the outcomes of the country; it is requisite for future success in tackling global problems.