Jeong-hwan Choi is a KDI School 2004 MBA alumnus. Now he’s studying for his Ph.D in the Department of Human Resource Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in the United States. Mr. Choi thinks his experience at the KDI School was, "one of the most valuable ones in my life, not only learning managerial skills but also learning from people who were really energetic and self-motivated." The most important transition for him was starting to setup his own inquiry into leadership at the KDI School. This inquiry drove him to pursue another career track. In sum, "KDI School gave me the most important transition opportunity in my life:

In February 2009, Mr. Choi wrote a book called Kyogam Leadership-Sharing Sense: Leadership Principle for 4th Wave. This book starts with some critical questions such as, "Why we don’t have true leaders? Who kills leaders?” Mr. Choi said these questions arose when he studied at the KDI School, and he addressed them with both theoretical and practical insights. Then, he proposed a leadership principle - the "Kyogam-Sharing Sense." Many leadership scholars and practitioners have proposed various leadership principles, and he has tried to integrate and conceptualize them as the "Kyogam-Sharing Sense." To him, "sharing sense" means sharing emotion, affection, sympathy, touch, memories, gratitude, inspiration, admiration and thanks. In addition, the sharing sense is communicating not just with humans, but with heaven and earth as well. His rationale is that future leaders should engage themselves to lead people in the right direction to meet inquiries from heaven and earth by positioning them as agents of people, heaven and earth. This concept comes from Korean philosophy, and is an explorative effort to develop a new leadership principle based on a different cultural and philosophical background from contemporary ones.

When asked about his main motivations for writing the book, Mr. Choi said that before coming to the KDI School he worked at an international manufacturing company as an R&D Engineer. In the workplace, he found out that leadership is the most important factor in management. But there was little understanding of leadership there, or at best a very superficial one. So, he came to the KDI School to address the problem of, "What should leaders do to lead people?" In parallel with taking managerial courses at the KDI School, he started to write down his ideas and questions in his blog. These blog materials became the basis for his book.

Talking about his advice as a graduate of the KDI School and published author, Mr. Choi explained that he thinks a sharing sense is largely based on, "intangible things such as emotion, sympathy, gratitude, etcetera." In order to have this ability, he strongly recommends KDI School students to take "critical reflection time and try to answer the question of "who am I?”. Mr. Choi believes that sensing the inner voice through critical reflection can transform people into leaders. "We can sense that all KDI School students have a strong potential to be great leaders, but we have to make a lot of effort to become aware of the real needs and questions of people, heaven, and the earth."

By Zhonglei LIU (2009 MBA, China)