Understanding meaning of pragmatic leadership

WE are often advised by our leaders, both in government and business communities, to be pragmatic in addressing difficult and controversial problems. There are also arguments that we need to be pragmatic but principled. I suspect the word "pragmatic" and "practical" may have been used interchangeably, but I would like to draw a distinction between the two, as I will illustrate below.

I first learned of the term "pragmatism" as a leadership trait some years ago from the responses that our founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew (then in his late 80s) gave in two global conferences to the questions on what the critical success factors were that brought Singapore from Third World to the First within 35 years. He responded with the same answer on both occasions: Good Governance, Meritocracy, Anti-Corruption and Pragmatism.

I understood and readily accepted his first three factors of "Good Governance", "Meritocracy" and "Anti-Corruption". But it took me a while to understand how pragmatism was also featured as a success factor. I did some studies to understand his concept of pragmatic leadership. Whilst there are literally tonnes of management literature dwelling on various traits of leadership eg visionary, transformational, strategic, authentic, authoritative, charismatic, etc, there is hardly any research or substantial literature on "pragmatic leadership".