An Early Assessment of the Lee Myung-bak Presidency: Leadership Style and Qualities

Abstract

As South Korea's first chief executive officer (CEO) president, Lee Myung-bak (LMB) has what he regards as the strengths of a CEO: vision, certainty, and decisiveness. His strengths as a political leader include bold thinking and consistent adherence to his chosen policies. Yet the defects in his style and quality include a tendency to act without sufficient deliberation, an unwillingness to admit the complexity of many policy issues, and a tendency to consider only a narrow range of alternatives. Interestingly, LMB's strengths as a CEO-type leader are also a reflection of his weaknesses, the so-called "dual nature of leadership style." LMB's leadership strengths led to policy victories when he was a mayor, but his weaknesses have led to political and administrative failures in his first one-and-a-half years as President. In this context, this paper examines the nature of LMB's leadership style and qualities, focusing on his political and executive leadership and their impact on the trial and error of the policy initiatives that he has carried out in the first one-and-a-half years of his presidency. This paper also explores the impact of the limitations of LMB's leadership style and qualities on the remaining three-and-a-half years of his presidency.