Children are our future. They’ll take over from we where leave it.
Some of these children, the ones who somehow have figured out the right recipe, are natural leaders. Most, though, need to develop their leadership skills, just as many of today’s thought leaders, sports leaders, political leaders, spiritual leaders had to do themselves.
So if children are the world’s future, and we have any connection with kids – be it that we have our own children, teach, coach, or are in a position to somehow guide any—don’t we have a duty to help develop them into the best, most effective leaders they can be?
Teaching Children Leadership Skills involves having them:
- Determine what a great leader is
- Define an end goal
- Decide milestones
- Determine resources
- Be aware of attitude
- Appreciate negotiation
- Assess
Before we delve into each of these, let’s take a moment to get to discuss:
Why Teaching Leadership to Children Is Important
It builds their confidence
Any time skills are practiced, there’s the opportunity to do, tweak, and adjust, eventually improving the skills and gaining confidence along with them.
It builds interpersonal and problem-solving skills
Leading, at least to some extent, requires the use of interpersonal skills—communicating, listening, interpreting, and negotiating with others. Interpersonal skills will be needed throughout the rest of their professional and personal lives. The same goes for the ability to assess situations and solve problems. The sooner they hone these skills, the better off their experiences will be.
It builds their (and our) future
Skills children develop while they’re young are what they’ll call on when they need them later in life. And these children will be ones shaping our businesses, country, and world in a very short time.
Now let’s look closer at the steps in developing children as leaders:
Steps to Teaching Children Leadership
Have them determine what a great leader is
The first step to becoming something is to become crystal clear at what it looks like. They need to know what characteristics true leaders demonstrate, and be able to talk about what those characteristics mean.
Once they’re able to verbalize what traits leaders have, have them visualize some great leaders. Who comes to mind? What has each of them done that makes them great leaders? Have them describe HOW each of the people that came to mind have demonstrated strong leadership.
Have them make a list of the characteristics they came up with. Some might be:
- Integrity
- Charisma
- Strong communication
- Passion
- Persistence
- Strong problem-solving
- Compassion
Ensure that they have an example of a leader who represents every characteristic that they list. Why?
Did you know… that visualization takes place in the portion of the brain called the occipital lobe. It is the part of the brain which develops pictures for understanding a book with only printed words describing what is taking place.
By engaging the occipital lobe – visualizing what something looks like, events that have already happened, or events which haven’t yet occurred – we (figuratively speaking) “stamp” the brain with information that’s more likely to stay there while the brain is barraged with competing information.
This is one of the reasons why visualization in athletics is thought to be so powerful. Proper visualization of how an athlete wants to perform can be helpful in the athlete performing that way.
Children who can clearly visualize what a leader looks like, may more easily adopt those same traits.
Defining the end goal
Just as it’s important to be able to clearly define what traits a leader has, the first step for a child getting where they want to be as they accomplish something is determining where that is.
What is the problem? What do they want to accomplish? What does that LOOK like? Can they see it in their mind? Just as Dr. Covey says in “7 Habits of Highly-Effective People,” start with the end in mind.
Determine milestones
To an extent, this might be considered reverse engineering: they’re starting with their end goal and then determining smaller goals along the path to getting there. Milestones can help keep them on track, and provide a point at which they can re-assess how things are going. Just as in any goal, these should be S.M.A.R.T. goals.
To explain, SMART goals should be:
Specific: It should be very focused, and not to broad, and again, should be clearly defined.
Measurable: How will they know when it’s been reached? Is it quantifiable?
Achievable: A goal should be something that, somehow, some way, it can be reached. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Realistic: Goals should be something that makes sense.
Timed: There should be a time frame given to achieving a goal. A goal without a time frame is a dream.
Determine resources needed
Now it’s time they start to get into the execution planning. What resources are needed to reach the goal? These can be tools, technology, facilities, people, etc.
How will they get the resources and then how will they utilize each of the resources to reach the milestones?
If some of the resources are team members, what will each team member be tasked with? How can the child support the others on their team in accomplishing what they need to?
Be aware of attitude
Overall disposition
Optimism can be hard to teach since the degree to which a person is optimistic has to do with their own personality, usually shaped by experiences. But demeanor can be changed with awareness.
And, while it’s difficult to teach, optimism can often copied by children from what they experience with others they want to emulate. If they see a mentor who’s always optimistic, has emotional control, and a winning way about them, they are likely to want to copy them.
In an article featured by Psychology Today, Dr. Melanie Greenberg states, “You can’t always control what you think, but you can learn to identify when you’re sinking into a negative pattern, and then reboot and redirect your thinking along a more constructive or hopeful path.” She goes on to say that, with continued practice in redirecting thinking, it may even change the way the brain processes information as a way of adapting. (1)
Focusing on the small wins
When they’re young is a perfect time to begin teaching them the importance of celebrating small successes. It can help make their disposition more positive by practicing celebrating independently and with the team
Using failures as a tool
When they’re young is also a perfect time for them to understand that they have a choice as they encounter obstacles on their path to reaching the goal: they can look at them as problems, or they can view them as opportunities to learn and to adjust. It just boils down to a choice. When they’re young is the best time for them to truly understand this.
This means how they deal with obstacles themselves and how they deal with team members who have problems along the way.
Stepping back
Another good lesson to for a child to learn as they’re becoming a leader is when to step back from a situation. Sometimes, especially when really focused on a goal, it’s easy to become too close, too, emotionally involved. (That’s really easy for kids, because they haven’t worked on emotional control a lot at this point.) But as they’re developing leadership skills, it’s important for them to step back from the goal (or step back from obstacles), take a breath, and disengage a bit. This is frequently not done by adult leaders, so if they can learn this when they’re young, they’ll be that much better for it.
Resiliency
This could be its own bullet point, but we put it as part of attitude since resiliency happens because it requires the right frame of mind to bounce back. It requires the person bend, make adjustments. It’s keeping an eye on the end goal but making needed tweaks to get there.
Understanding negotiation as a tool
Negotiating is a key tool for children to learn as they’re developing leadership skills. Negotiating is the art of working through conflict so that the team members and the leader end up with a beneficial outcome. Ultimately, the best negotiations end up with both parties feeling as though they got what they wanted, or a win-win.
Did you know… Americans business people are not very confident at negotiating. In an article published by Business News Daily, ¼ of American professionals admitted to never having negotiated in a work setting, where 40% said that they weren’t confident in their abilities to negotiate. (2) Why? It’s probably a mixture of being in a culture focused on not offending others, and not focusing on it and practicing negotiation as a skill.
When developing leadership skills with children, it can only benefit them to practice negotiating, which includes other skills such as listening, problem-solving, communicating, and assessing.
Which brings us to the final step…
Assessing
Assessing where they are and needed changes should take place throughout their path to their goal. It’s the reasoning behind small adjustments. But it’s also what takes place as they reach their final goal.
How’d we do? What could we have done better? What would I change the next time? These are all questions that should be asked and provide the lessons that become the foundation of an emerging leader.
So these are all the basics to teach children, but how do you actually teach them to be leaders?
HOW to Teach Children to Become Leaders
Give them opportunities to lead
These opportunities will change based on your relationship to the child. If you’re a parent, work on a project together, giving them the lead. Tell them what you want as results. (That’s the end goal.) Then guide them through the rest of the steps. If you’re a coach, provide them a goal within your setting and work with them on the rest.
Empower
Give them the goal… and then let them go from there! In order to develop their skills as a leader, they have to experience leading.
In their book, “Parenting with Love and Logic,” Dr. Foster Cline and Jim Fay explain the problems caused by helicopter parenting, or keeping control as the authority figure, not allowing children to experience their own triumphs and failures. They explain that, often, we think we’re helping the children by helping them avoid problems. In actuality, what we’re really doing is keeping them from developing their own abilities to solve problems, assess them, learn from them, and become better the next time. They talk about the importance of letting children experience problems in that they’re actually small lessons learned early, which help them avoid bigger lessons later in life.
Communicate
Ask them questions. Clarify. Negotiate. Let them work through issues.
Celebrate successes
Have fun when small goals are met. Celebrate with them. On the other hand, reason through mistakes with them. Ask them questions about what the mistakes have caused. What can be done differently next time? Ensure that they understand mistakes are opportunities to learn.
Did you know… Thomas Edison has a couple of famous quotes on failure? When asked by a reporter about his failed attempts at developing the light bulb, he said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” He also said, “Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy.”
Use examples
Remember our discussion on visualizing? Kids love examples because it puts ideas into reality; it enables them to visualize what you’re talking about. Use examples to enable them to imagine the concept working.
Encourage
Who doesn’t like encouragement? It helps to ensure they’re on the right path, builds confidence, and engrains the power of optimism
Model a Leader
Go back to their list of leadership qualities. How many do you demonstrate?
Do you practice getting your ideas across in a clear, concise way? Do you communicate your enthusiasm when you communicate? How’s the attitude?
Are there any on the list of qualities that you need to work on? You can do that together!
Conclusion:
Children who the components necessary to become great leaders are few and far between. Even if they have charisma and the ability to communicate well, other skills necessary to become great leaders need to be developed.
Children who have leadership opportunities, along with mentors who can help them hone their skill set will certainly have an advantage as they grow both professionally and personally. And since children are sometimes the best teaching adults, their mentors may learn some things. as well!
Why It’s Important to Teach Children Leadership Skills and the Best Ways to Teach Them