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How did LKY choose people for positions of power? Insights from 1977–2000 showed how he defined leadership and chose leaders.
“A leader must lead. He cannot follow. If you’re following opinion polls, straw polls, and you’re doing what you believe the public wants, even when you know it’s wrong, then you are not a leader. Success will be ephemeral, temporary, transient.”
— Lee Kuan Yew, Interview with Hirotsugu Koike, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, December 20th, 1990
In an earlier story I talked about Lee Kuan Yew‘s top down approach to overcoming corruption in a nation. It starts with having a core group of united leaders with strong morality and integrity at the top of the government. In this story we’ll talk about how Lee defined leadership and chose leaders.
Lee defined leadership as being able to convince people to trust in your vision and the way to get there. In an interview with Reiko Kinoshita from the Asahi Monthly on March 13th, 1991, he was asked the definition of leadership, to which he responded…
“What the word means — to lead and not to follow… the art of…
