Personal Reflections on Leadership (2000)

Lee Kuan Yew:
"Personal Reflections on Leadership"*

Conversations on Leadership, 2000-2001

"No one picked me out as a leader. It just happened in the process of natural elimination. Or as the communists used to tell us, they emerge through struggle. If you didn't have it, you got melted in the crucible."
-Lee Kuan Yew

Presentation and Discussion

Lee Kuan Yew was elected Prime Minister of Singapore for a staggering eight terms, and has served in the position of Senior Minister since 1990. To a capacity audience at the second Leadership Roundtable, Lee recounted stories and shared his perspectives on leadership. Below is a faithful reporting, in his own words, of Lee Kuan Yew's fascinating and often surprising reminiscences.

On identifying potential leaders

I'm somewhat skeptical about making a leader out of a non-leader. I tried hard to look for successes in the last 30 years. I meet lots of people with effervescence, energy, who speak well, but you put responsibility on them and it isn't done.

I visited a sheep farm near Canberra during a meeting of Commonwealth leaders. The farm had 10,000 sheep and six to eight dogs. The dogs brought all the sheep into the pen in 10 minutes with just whistles and signals. The farmer told me that if you get the right dog, training them only takes two or three months. The question is how to get the right dog. Some litters only produce one to two, some none. I found out that a sheepdog must have strong eyes, so when the dog looks at the sheep, they quail and follow him. I'm not sure humans need stronger eyes, but there may be some measure of truth here. I had to run through hundreds of potential candidates to find a few potential leaders.

On making great leaders

It's a somewhat pessimistic view on making great leaders, but if you identify someone who's got the potential, all lessons can be taught. The lessons are standard lessons-what mistakes to avoid. They'll become better leaders in a shorter time and make fewer mistakes.

I was in New York in the 1970s and Isaac Singer, the Nobel Prize winner in literature, was asked if he taught writing and he said yes. He was asked, can you make a great writer? Can you teach great writing? He said "Yes, if he's got it in him, then I can bring it out faster and I can teach him how to do it better. But he's got to have a big story inside here or here [the head or the heart]. If you ain't got that, then all you've got are words or phrases and a lot of fluff in between, and you get a nasty review, and it ends up in the remainder bookshop."

On his experience leading an anti-colonial struggle

The skills required to be a leader in an anti-colonial struggle are simple: enormous charisma and exuberance, and you've got to command the trust and belief of your followers that you're going to give them the better life. And most of them say, "Look at all those fine big houses and big white farms. Now that we are in charge, you will have those." That's what I did, too. I said "Look at all those big offices and stores. They're all British and we're in charge. You will be running those big stores."

By the time I got in charge-we started in 1950, we got in office in 1959, and so in nine learning years we knew that wasn't true. We did a quiet U-turn. I said, of course, if you get rid of them too quickly, there'll be an empty store. Better go slow and make sure of this, that, and the other. If we hadn't done that and we chased the British out, we would have collapsed. I wouldn't have been re-elected. As it was, we decided this wasn't going to work, so let's figure out how we're going to give them something without ruining the economy. So we figured out a new strategy, a joined militia. That would fix the communists. Then we'd have a bigger resource base-rubber, tin, palm oil-so that we'd have a better economy. So we joined militia. Then I found that we got captured by Malay extremists, Muslim extremists. So we got out of that one and were independent on our own in 1965. By then we had learned enough of what didn't work.
If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed.

By that time we'd seen India and we'd seen the British, and Indonesia was a mess. So we concluded that you have to create wealth before you distribute it. A large part of the survival of my party and me was our ability to convince our people and our unions and our union leaders that we had to work with management, and produce good products at low prices that will sell worldwide. Then we'd share the profits. Had we failed in that, we would have gone down. We succeeded. Thereafter we just improved upon it election after election, and we produced result after result. And so they decided we had the secret formula, the touch of Midas. They re-elected me leading the party eight times, and my successor twice already. Without that U-turn and without teaching them the facts of life, we would have been finished.

On political leadership

It's a very tough job, especially in political leadership. Being a CEO or the general of an army is different. You don't have to persuade people who can say 'Boo' to you to get them on your side. When campaigning, no one has to listen to you at all. And when the campaign is over, people have to believe that you've got something for them that you can do that will make them cast their vote for you. It requires a totally different set of skills. Those skills can only be developed if you have a natural urge, a natural interest in people, in wanting to do something for them, which they can sense and feel. If you haven't got that and you just want to be a great leader, try some other profession.

On leading a change in the national language

English was the language of an elite minority that the British nurtured. So with the surge of independence movements and nationalism, when we first became self-governing we made Malay our national language.

The Chinese Chamber of Commerce was very hot on the Chinese language. If you remember, China was supposed to be a very powerful nation, getting rapidly industrialized, and Chinese would be a great language. So they insisted that we should make Chinese the national language. I called them up and I called other chambers up and said "Do you want riots? Because if you make Chinese the national language, all of the Malays and the Indians and others will be disadvantaged and that will be the end of us. And moreover, who are we going to trade with-China? What do they have to trade with us, or buy or sell from us?" So I didn't make English the national language [at that time].

I knew it was an emotional subject, so I said, "Let's leave things alone and let events decide what language is our working language." So I introduced English as a second language into the Chinese schools and into the Malay schools, as well as the Tamil schools. And into the English schools we introduced Chinese, Malay, and Tamil for those whose mother tongues are those languages. Then I allowed year by year the graduates from these schools to show the parents who got the best jobs. That settled it after 20 years. But it took 20 years.

On the issue of leadership succession

I found eight to ten possible successors. And in 1988 when I fought my last election at the age of 65, I called them up and said, "Now you choose [among yourselves] your leader and I'll hand over." I didn't want to appoint him because I've seen how things can go wrong. If I appointed a leader and the others didn't agree, they would withhold their cooperation and he wouldn't succeed. So I threw the onus onto them. There was no outstanding person who obviously could be superior to anybody else. So they chose Goh Chok Tong, and I said "Fine." Goh is a very able person, but he lacks communicative skills. He used to speak haltingly in English because his first language was Hokkien, and his English had this Hokkien lilt, which was a disadvantage. Nor did he know Mandarin, which is the language of the educated. But nonetheless I said, "Alright, you'll take over." And he said "No, no. Please stay on for two years while I find my feet and get to know my neighbors." So he took over in 1990, and I advised him. I said, "Brush up your languages and your ability to communicate. " So we found him teachers in English and Malay and he applied himself. And I must say that in the 10 years since then, he has improved his communication skills considerably, and his English is now more fluent. For this he deserves high marks.
Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. . . .He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.

What he had is a certain determination to succeed. And that determination came not from a desire to be a great man, but to do something for Singapore and the people. He came from a very poor family and a hard life. He won a scholarship and took a first in economics at our university. He then went to Williams College, and when he came back the Finance Minister, who knew him well, who was a very good assessor of people, put him in charge of an ailing shipping company called Neptune Orient Lines. It was in the red, and had been so for several years. He turned it around in three years. When dealing with wealthy ship owners in Hong Kong and Tokyo, where gifts are not golf balls but sachets of gold, diamonds, and other things in the golf bags, he kept himself above all that. And when my Finance Minister wanted to retire, I said to him, "No, you will not leave me in the lurch. You find me a successor." He produced Goh Chok Tong, and made him a Finance Minister. Then the others chose him, and he is a success.

On the importance of context

Different situations call for different types of leaders. The same country, China in the 1930s and 1940s, required a Mao Tse-Tung. But China in the 1970s did not require a Mao Tse-Tung. It needed a Deng Xiao-Ping. One was a destroyer of the old system, a visionary. And he kept on wanting to destroy the system that he had created with a cultural revolution. The other was a pragmatist who saw that the communist system wasn't working long before the Soviet Union imploded, and said, "Change." And he had the courage to do that.

Mao Tse-Tung could not have become Deng Xiao-Ping, and vice versa. He couldn't have done it. He had a different temperament. He was a romanticist.

On the three leaders of the 20th century he would recommend teaching to Harvard students

I would teach them Winston Churchill, because I admired him. He changed the course of history when it easily could have been lost if the British hadn't stood up to the Germans and sought some peace, which wouldn't have lasted.His good fortune lay in having Franklin Roosevelt on the other side and in the stupidity of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. That saved the world. So I would say Winston Churchill, yes, for one.

Second I would study [French president Charles] de Gaulle. I think he's a cussed difficult man, but I think he's a very great man. He's a Frenchman, and he's a proud one. Without him France today would have lost its self-respect. He gave back to the French a sense of amour-propre and then revived their ideas of grandeur, which nobody else would have been capable of doing. But he was also a realist and he knew he had to come to terms with Germany. It's difficult to be a great man without power, but he was a great man. I loved and savored his audacity. When he went to North Africa and walked up to [Henri] Giraud, who was a French governor there, and he found American guards protecting Giraud, he said "Giraud, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, American guards defending a general of France!" What impudence! But he had that dare. "To hell with the Americans! We are French! We demand it, we run this country! This is Algiers, France!" You need a certain megalomania. It appeared he had it.

It goes without saying I would also study Deng Xiao-Ping. I think he's a very big man. He's very realistic. Without him there would be no China.

Who else? Quite a few. But if you say three, I would pick those three.

Questions and Issues

Is Lee Kuan Yew's suspicion correct that not everyone has the innate potential to become a leader? (Or is he referring specifically to political leadership?) For those who indeed possess leadership potential, what are the lessons they need to be taught, and are these lessons standard ones, as Lee claims? Given Lee's belief that political leaders require a very different set of skills from military and business leaders, do the lessons differ according to type of leadership? And if different situations call for different types of political leaders, as Lee points out, should the lessons taught to potential political leaders be differentiated even further according to the type of political context or circumstance (e.g., anti-colonial struggle vs. established democracy)?

Conclusions

Almost half a century of experience and observation have shaped Lee Kuan Yew's perspectives on political leadership. He has concluded that few have the potential to become the leaders of a country, but those who do can acquire all the knowledge and skills they need through direct experience and training. Political leadership in his experience is enormously challenging and requires a very different set of skills from military or business leadership. He has further observed that different political circumstances require different types of leaders. Whatever the circumstance, Lee believes that a political leader must possess a natural interest in creating a better life for the citizens of his or her nation. Without this interest, and with only a desire to become a great leader, an individual is unlikely to succeed in commanding the trust and belief of the citizenry necessary to grasp and retain the elusive reins of national power.

* Lee Kuan Yew's visit was made possible through the generosity of Ambassador Richard Fisher and Nancy Collins Fisher and the Collins Family International Fellowship.

Lee Kuan Yew led Singapore's independence movement and is considered the founding father of modern Singapore. He was the founder and Secretary General of the People's Action Party, entering politics as a Legislative Assemblyman in 1955. He became his country's first Prime Minister when he led his party to victory in the Legislative Assembly elections of 1959. He continued in this position through seven successful general elections until his resignation in 1990. His predecessor promptly appointed him as Senior Minister, a post he still holds. He is the author of The Singapore Story: Memoirs of Lee Kuan Yew (New York:Prentice Hall, 1999) and From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 (New York: HarperCollins, 2000).