Leadership skills

President: Park Geun-hye

 

Ms Park is the daughter of a former president 

Park Geun-hye, is South Korea's first female president, elected in a close-run contest in December 2012.The South Korean president holds full executive powers and the premiership is a largely ceremonial post.
 In 1974, at the age of 22, Ms Park became South Korea's first lady when a North Korean assassin shot her mother dead with a bullet intended for her husband.
Ms Park issued a public apology for human rights abuses committed under her father in September 2012, showing that she has zero tolerance over law breaking people, even if it's her relatives.
Ms Park, of the Saenuri Party, succeed Lee Myung-ba,  to strengthen South Korea's alliance with the United States and to take a tougher line towards North Korea  than his predecessor.
She promised to prioritise both national security and economic revitalization in her inauguration speech.
She offered a step-by-step trust-building process to North Korea but vowed she would "not tolerate any action that threatens the lives of our people and the security of our nation".
However, when the North announced it was restarting the mothballed Yongbyon nuclear complex, pulled its workers out of the Kaesong joint industrial zone and cranked up the bellicose rhetoric in response to US-South Korean military exercise, her relations with Pyongyang had turned into the first major crisis of her term. Not long after that, Ms Park has vowed to respond strongly to any provocation in order to protect the people of South Korea.
 
In May 2013, Ms Park had scheduled talks with the president of US, Barack Obama to strengthen ties between 2 countries so that the purpose "continued co-operation on denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and countering the North Korean threat," can be achieved.

Chinese President Xi Jinping (left) welcomed his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye as an "old friend".

Dong Xiangrong, a researcher at the Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think-tank, says China gave an "extraordinarily warm welcome" to Park Geun-hye by inviting her on a state visit only four months after she took office in an interview with the People's Daily Online.
From this, Ms. Park proves that she's a worthy leader as she has good relationship between leaders of other countries as well. As a result, a stronger bond between other countries can be build more easily. After much discussion, a unity between South Korea and China is formed to fight against the threat of the North's nuclear programme.




Samsung's Chairman, Lee Kun-Hee




Samsung, one of most famous company today and the arch rival of apple is founded in South Korea, but who is the chairman behind the success of this prestigious company?



 South Korean mover and shaker Lee Kun-hee.

He was a visionary, able to inspire his employees to greater heights at faster speed than anyone thought possible by presenting a vision of the future to them.He ordered radical reforms at the company in 1993, declaring that Samsung was "second rate" by global standards and famously telling employees to "change everything except your wife and kids".

Who would have thought 20 years ago that Sony executives would be studying Samsung leadership management, instead of the other way around? To dismiss Lee Kun-hee's leadership abilities by burying it in a mountain of allegations and accusations ,  while some of them may be true, is doing a disservice to the leadership lessons that his reign could impart to a future generation of Korean leaders.

``Leaders and followers are both following the invisible leader , also known as a common purpose. The best executives put this common purpose clearly before their group . They must have the ability to share that conviction with others, the ability to make purpose articulate and then that common purpose becomes the leader." , written by Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), one of the earliest American thinkers on leadership.

In short, Follett is speaking about the ability of a leader to convince his followers to see and achieve a certain vision of the future and the world. By doing this, the followers derive a sense of common purpose in life with the leader and one another. This common purpose then becomes the basis of everyday decisions, both big and small. The followers and the leader will then turn into a cohesive, innovative and efficient team that will inevitably be high-achieving as the common purpose(in a shared vision) acts as glue that binds them together.

Written by : Jason Lim a research fellow at the Harvard Korea Institute, researching Asian leadership models.

Despite resigning on April 21, 2008, Mr.Lee made a return on March 24 2010 to help solve Samsung's crisis. Under his leadership, he has successfully overcome the crisis and made what Samsung is today.

As of today, Samsung has managed to reach to biggest Smartphone Lead Over Apple since the first iPhone launch in 2007, not just in China but all around the world. what is the secret behind this? Lower selling price,  more varied models, and scrutiny from the top. Mr.Lee once said '' What surprised me most was that they( China Leaders) know very well about Samsung. They even have a group studying us.''  Of course, the other leaders of the company have to be given credit for the success, but there's no doubt that if it hadn't been for Mr.Lee's return, Apple would've dominated the electronics market by now.
  

This is what Lee Kun-hee did so successfully during his reign, and there's more to come.


Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22162818
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23094147
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21738115
 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-15291411

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/enterprise-it/strategy/How-Samsung-is-beating-Apple-in-China/articleshow/21359846.cms
 http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2013/07/26/samsung-reaches-biggest-smartphone-lead-over-apple-since-first-iphone-launched-in-2007/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8584702.stm
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2013/05/352_23249.html