INsight/ Conflict or Cooperation

Photo by Getty Images on Unsplash. 

Manila, 5 June 2025 — When asked to choose between conflict and cooperation, leaders see a better way. 

Story

It happened last week. Conflict or cooperation was the central question of Nikkei’s 30th Future of Asia Forum in Tokyo. It framed a commonly held view today. However, not everyone agrees with this narrow interpretation of the world and its problems.

In leadership development, we use different language, and for a good reason. Cooperation reflects a 3rd-person perspective and a systemic management view of reality. Hence, it’s not a complete view. Importantly, it leaves out 1st and 2nd-person perspectives. What do we mean?

That was answered by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and the interim leader of Bangladesh. As one of the speakers, he reminded the audience of the need to take a people-centered perspective, noting that Asia is home to more than half of humanity. Many of these are Gen Y and Gen Z, who brought him into his current leadership role. 

Challenge

So, how does the equation change when we take a 1st and 2nd-person perspective on working together? Yunus said that Asia, with its rich youth dividend, is at the epicenter of uncertainty as well as new possibilities for our challenged world. Whether we use these possibilities depends on the approach we choose. 

While hopeful humanity’s natural response to Nikkei’s question would be to favor cooperation over conflict, what we actually need is something better. From a leadership perspective, we call that collaboration. Is there any difference, you might ask? Yes, there is.

A people-centered approach goes well beyond systems and techno-managerial negotiations. It favors building a better world together, which is what collaboration means. Where cooperation is like a potluck dinner, where everyone brings a dish, collaboration is doing the planning, shopping, cooking, and enjoying the meal together. That makes the experience and result very different. 

Question

Building a better future for Asia and the world needs more collaboration, with innovation and joint problem-solving,  with learning together as the goal, with a synthesizing of different perspectives, and with the introduction of shared accountability. It needs a leadership approach that puts people first, starting with each of us challenging our own mindsets.

The same questions play out at all levels in our businesses and organizations. While preferring to avoid conflict, shallow cooperation will only achieve so much. For genuine innovation and transformation, we need more leadership than management. This week, fellow leaders in the Grow3Leaders community of practice shared their experiences that collaboration is about creating joint interest, ownership, and action, and that this involves building a shared vision, trust, and action at all levels.

Choosing collaboration over cooperation requires a people-centered leadership approach where trust is built between individuals, teams, and all levels in the organizations concerned. My question for you this week is how you, as a leader, plan to choose collaboration over cooperation in your team, workplace, and organization. We look forward to hearing from you. 

P.S. Thanks to Zaki Shubber and Fany Wedahuditama for contributing to this story.