How to amp up leadership potential in children

As one of the most impactful and powerful skills, leadership is the ability to influence others to make a meaningful difference. In today’s chaotic world of unpredictable challenges and new learnings at every turn, it’s important to teach children to think creatively and take initiatives. Therefore, learning to lead in the right way, is extremely important.

Leadership is not a standalone skill but inspires learning of other skills and values like communication, integrity, honesty, empathy, teamwork, resilience, problem solving, inter-personal skills among others.

Why is leadership important

Leadership has a positive impact on children. Some of the benefits of leadership are:

Boosts self-esteem: Children learn to speak up for themselves and others. In the process, they become more self-assured and confident and are not afraid to give their opinions, feedback and even share their learning with their peers and teachers.

Self-awareness: The veil of hesitation and shyness falls away as confident young learners learn successfully to identify a problem or issues they are facing, how they feel about it and also think of possible solutions. They also learn to speak for themselves and for others in times of need.

A leg up for future skills: Skills like communication and the ability to be a good listener is a big plus in any organisation. These future skills, when learnt at school set a strong base to be team leader and people’s person going ahead.

How to encourage leadership

Leaders are confident, have the ability to lead and think out of the box while taking into account the concerns and feedback of their team. At Genesis Global School, best boarding school in Noida, children are taught about the importance of leadership from a young age to understand the finer aspects of this skill and how they can master the ability to create positive changes within themselves, others, and their common goals.

Here are ways in which leadership can be developed:

Volunteering activities: Leadership is not about leading people but understanding how people want to be led by understanding their concerns and issues. When children are encouraged to volunteer for projects or special activities they learn about the significance of taking and delegating responsibility, working as a team, understanding what the main goal is and find solutions to the problem at hand, in multiple ways.

Developing a growth mind-set: Developing a growth mind-set is a key to a successful leader. Children should be taught from an early that they need to work hard and learn new things which only help them expand their abilities and deal with any challenge.

Perseverance: It’s important to teach children to persevere while not losing sight of their goal. This not only helps them improve their skills, understand themselves and the situation better but plan meticulously towards their goal. In the real world, this is considered a great quality for a leader as it ensures a win.

The power of choice: Encourage decision-making and problem-solving abilities by asking them to choose from available options. It could be something as simple as choosing a snack for tiffin or teaming up with someone for a project. When opportunities are unfolded before children, they tend to develop strong decision-making skills, learn from their mistakes, and also learn about systems thinking.

One of the most important learnings about leadership is that it is not about self-growth but growing as a team, community, and nation. This can be encouraged via extra-curricular activities and sports where social behaviour comes into play. At Genesis Global School, top boarding school in Noida, youngsters are provided with ample opportunities to engage in these activities, fostering an environment where they learn diversity and inclusion, acceptance, giving a chance to other people, understanding multiple perspectives, and constructive criticism. All of these qualities are the hallmarks of a good leader.