GRE Graduate Record Examination Everyday Barron's wordlist 901-925
GRE Graduate Record Examination GRE Model Essay 26. "While some leaders in government, sports, industry, and other areas attribute their success to
GRE Graduate Record Examination GRE Model Essay 25. "To be an effective leader, a public official must maintain the highest ethical and moral standards."
consort V. associate with; keep company; N: husband or wife (or a ruler) conspiracy treacherous plot; secret plan against the law (by two or more people) conspire take part in a conspiracy; (of events) work together; combine; Ex. Events conspired to produce great difficulties. consternation N. great shock; dismay constituent N. supporter; voter; member of a constituency; component constituency N. voters represented by an elected official; district so represented; group of supporters (or constituents) constitution N. constituting; system of laws; composition of something; physical makeup or structure of a person; Ex. men with strong constitutions constraint N.. restraint; compulsion; repression of feelings; reticence; V. constrain: hold back; restrain; compel; oblige; confine forcibly; imprison construe V. explain; interpret; Ex. construe her silence as meaning that she agreed; CF. misconstrue consummate complete; V. contagion infection (by contact); ADJ. contagious; CF. infectious: that can be passed by infection in the air drastic strong; violent and severe; Ex. drastic changes/measures contaminate V. pollute contempt V. scorn; disdain; ADJ. contemptuous; CF. contemptible contend v. struggle; compete; assert earnestly; state strongly contention N. assertion; claim; thesis; struggling; competition s thesis opinion put forward and supported by reasoned arguments s boost lift by pushing up from below; increase; raise; N: push upward; increase contentious adj. quarrelsome; controversial; likely to cause arguments contest V. dispute; argue about the rightness of; compete for; try to win; Ex. contest the election results; Ex. contest a seat in Parliament; N. context N. writings preceding and following the passage quoted; circumstance in which an event occurs contiguous adj. adjacent to; touching upon continence N. self-restraint; sexual chastity; sexual abstinence; voluntary control over bladder and bowel functions; ADJ. continent contingent adj. dependent on something uncertain or in the future; conditional; happening by chance; accidental; N: a group of soldiers, ships to a larger force; CF. contingency: future event that may or may not occur; possibility; Ex. prepare for every contingency contortions N. twistings; distortions; V. contort: twist violently out of shape; CF. contortionist contraband illegal trade; smuggling; smuggled goods; ADJ. contravene v. contradict; oppose; violate (a rule, law, or custom); N. contravention contrite V. regret, penitent; repentant; N. contrition
a well-developed sense of competition, a society can better prepare its young people for leadership by instilling in them a sense of cooperation."
Which is a better way to prepare young people for leadership: developing in them a spirit of competitiveness or one of cooperation? The speaker favors the latter approach, even though some leaders attribute their success to their keenly developed competitive spirit. I tend to agree with the speaker, for reasons having to do with our increasingly global society, and with the true keys to effective leadership.
The chief reason why we should stress cooperation in nurturing young people today is that, as tomorrow's leaders, they will face pressing societal problems that simply cannot be solved apart from cooperative international efforts. For example, all nations will need to cooperate in an effort to disarm themselves of weapons of mass destruction; to reduce harmful emissions which destroy ozone and warm the Earth to dangerous levels; to reduce consumption of the Earth's finite natural resources; and to cure and prevent diseases before they become global epidemics. Otherwise, we all risk self-destruction. In short, global peace, economic stability, and survival of the species provide powerful reasons for developing educational paradigms that stress cooperation over competition.
A second compelling reason for instilling in young people a sense of cooperation over competition is that effective leadership depends less on the latter than the former. A leader should show that he or she values the input of subordinates--for example, by involving them in decisions about matters in which they have a direct stake. Otherwise, subordinates might grow to resent their leader, and become unwilling to devote themselves wholeheartedly to the leader's mission. In extreme cases they might even sabotage that mission, or even take their useful ideas to competitors. And after all, without other people worth leading a person cannot be a leader let alone an effective one.
A third reason why instilling a sense of cooperation is to be preferred over instilling a sense of competition is that the latter serves to narrow a leader's focus on thwarting the efforts of competitors. With such tunnel vision it is difficult to develop other, more creative means of attaining organizational objectives. Moreover, such means often involve synergistic solutions that call for alliances, partnerships, and other cooperative efforts with would-be competitors. Those who would oppose the speaker might point out that a thriving economy depends on a freely competitive business environment, which ensures that consumers obtain high-quality goods and services at low prices. Thus key leadership positions, especially in business, inherently call for a certain tenacity and competitive spirit. And, a competitive spirit seems especially critical in today's hyper-competitive technology-driven economy, where any leader filling to keep pace with ever-changing business and technological paradigms soon fails by the wayside. However, a leader's effectiveness as a competitor is not necessarily inconsistent with his or her ability to cooperate with subordinates or with competitors, as noted above.
In sum, if we were to take the speaker's advice too far we would risk becoming a world without leaders, who are bred of a competitive spirit. We would also risk the key benefits of a free-market economy. Nevertheless, on balance I agree that it is more important to instill in young people a sense of cooperation than one of competition. The speaker's preference properly reflects the growing role of cooperative alliances and efforts in solving the world's most pressing problems. After all, in a world in which our very survival as a species depends on cooperation, the spirit of even healthy competition, no matter how healthy, is of little value to any of us.
Whether successful leadership requires that a leader follow high ethical and moral standards is a complex issue--one that is fraught with the problems of defining ethics, morality, and successful leadership in the first place. In addressing the issue it is helpful to consider in turn three distinct forms of leadership: business, political, and social-spiritual.
In the business realm, successful leadership is generally defined as that which achieves the goal of profit maximization for a firm's shareholders or other owners. Moreover, the prevailing view in Western corporate culture is that by maximizing profits a business leader fulfills his or her highest moral or ethical obligation. Many disagree, however, that these two obligations are the same. Some detractors claim, for example, that business leaders have a duty to do no intentional harm to their customers or to the society in which they operate--for example, by providing safe products and by implementing pollution control measures. Other detractors go further--to impose on business leaders an affirmative obligation to protect consumers, preserve the natural environment, promote education, and otherwise take steps to help alleviate society's problems.
Whether our most successful business leaders are the ones who embrace these additional obligations depends, of course, on one's own definition of business success. In my observation, as business leaders become subject to closer scrutiny by the media and by social activists, business leaders will maximize profits in the long term only by taking reasonable steps to minimize the social and environmental harm their businesses cause. This observation also accords with my personal view of a business leader's ethical and moral obligation. In the political realm the issue is no less complex. Definitions of successful political leadership and of ethical or moral leadership are tied up in the means a leader uses to wield his or her power and to obtain that power in the first place. One useful approach is to draw a distinction between personal morality and public morality. In my observation personal morality is unrelated to effective political leadership. Modern politics is replete with examples of what most people would consider personal ethical failings: the marital indiscretions of President Kennedy, for instance. Yet few would disagree that these personal moral choices adversely affected his ability to lead.
In contrast, pubhc morality and successful leadership are more closely connected. Consider the many leaders, such as Stalin and Hitler, whom most people would agree were egregious violators of public morality. Ultimately such leaders forfeit their leadership as a result of the immoral means by which they obtained or wielded their power. Or consider less egregious examples such as President Nixon, whose contempt for the very legal system that afforded him his leadership led to his forfeiture of it. It seems that in the short term unethical public behavior might serve a political leader's interest in preserving his or her power; yet in the long term such behavior invariably results in that leader's down- fall that is, in failure. One must also consider a third type of leadership: social-spiritual. Consider notable figures such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, whom few would disagree were eminently successful in leading others to practice the high ethical and moral standards which they advocated.
However, I would be hard-pressed to name one successful social or spiritual leader whose leadership was predicated on the advocacy of patently unethical or immoral behavior. The reason for this is simple: high standards for one's own public morality are prerequisites for successful social-spiritual leadership.
In sum, history informs us that effective political and social-spiritual leadership requires adherence to high standards of public morality. However, when it comes to business leadership the relationship is less clear; successful business leaders must strike a balance between achieving profit maximization and fulfilling their broader obligation to the society, which comes with the burden of such leadership.
