Is Competition or Cooperation Better for Leadership Development?

In the capitalist societies of today, often winners in the race to the top, of wealth, prestige, and power, is determined by constant competition for limited resources among all capable actors.  Many have been taken aback by the ruthlessness of such constant competition, arguing that the hostility of the competitions bring out the worst in our leaders, prioritizing success over ethics and goods human relations.  However, examples can demonstrate that for the youth to become good leaders, competition is still necessary for honing their necessary skills, including the very ability to seek cooperation in order to achieve certain goals.

Competition, above all else, is still the best tool for the people with best skills to rise to the top leadership positions.  The youth’s constant battles for leadership positions with their peers allow those with the best leadership positions to ultimately take charge of large groups of people, often through concrete actions that demonstrate the leadership abilities to superiors.  Such examples are prevalent in private enterprises.  The author’s own experience working as an analyst in a startup firm can serve as a typical example.  Initially some ten college graduates are hired for the same position, analyzing performance of the firms in various capacities. 

Slowly some of the analysts began to demonstrate abilities to command their fellow analysts in group projects, directing others to produce superb collective results.  These natural leaders are seen by the company directors, and are quickly promoted to leadership positions, formally taking charge of their peers who remain as analysts.  Leaders, when their abilities are demonstrated, will be seen.  And when seen, their leadership skills will be recognized with promotions to leadership positions.  Through such formal mechanisms, competitions among peers allow those with best leadership abilities to rise to the top.

But interestingly, one of the most necessary qualities of these best leaders is to demonstrate an ability to use cooperation as a tool.  A leader cannot lead alone; they require the collective support of those who they lead, through cooperated actions toward the same goals.  Without team members who are cooperative, the leader cannot deliver good results and as such cannot be considered a good leader, and indeed remain in the leadership position, for long.  Thus, competition for leadership position is about just as much reward for individual leadership talent as it is for awarding abilities to breed cooperation in others. 

The same corporate example for the previous paragraph is still relevant here.  As an analyst is promoted to a new leadership position, s/he is given a group that requires directing the several analysts to create a collective result.  While the leader won competition for the leadership position before, now s/he needs to create cooperation among his/her previous peers to get the project done.  As such, cooperation becomes just as much of a skill in leadership as ability to compete for leadership positions.  In such circumstances, competition for leadership and cooperation to retain leadership become complementary, and not mutually exclusive, skills.

The complementary nature of competition and cooperation can be extrapolated to macro-environments that go much beyond the success of individuals as leaders.  For firms and organizations, the ability to cooperate with others is inherently important for each to compete more successfully, and in the process allowing each competitor to retain leadership positions.  This is most markedly true in companies producing products for a specific market.  Let’s take the mobile phone market for an example.  The modern cellphone is a complex gadget that requires an entire supply chain of individual components for final assembly. 

End consumers are picky about phone functionalities, of which the quality of the components is a key.  For the end producers selling the final products to consumers, finding the best component producers become the key.  And to retain the component producers in their own supply chain, sustained cooperation in terms of partnerships become absolutely essential.  It is not an understatement that such cooperation among different firms underpins a firm’s competitiveness, allowing the firm to retain market leadership positions.

The above examples demonstrate the complex relationship between competition and cooperation in breeding leadership.  While competition allow for the best natural leaders to be rewarded initially with higher positions and responsibilities, cooperation is what allow the newly anointed leaders to retain their positions.  A leader who cannot lead by harnessing cooperation among those they lead cannot possibly remain as leaders for long, and a new group of future leaders among the youth will in turn out-compete them in time.