Instill Leadership Skills In Your Child With These Effective Tips And Activities

Leaders are not just born; they can be made too. This means, that while some children have the innate ability to lead, others can become effective leaders by learning organizational skills and cultivating empathy. Did you know that home is the first place where children can develop these skills? Well, we will walk you through some practical tips and activities that will nurture leadership skills in children.

Leadership skills can broadly be categorized into personal skills (empathy, confidence, planning, and decision-making) and interpersonal skills (conflict management, delegation, and mentoring).

Developing Personal Skills

Empathy: The value of empathetic listening in an effective leader cannot be emphasized enough. Only if a leader listens to their team members and can fully understand their needs and problems can they make decisions in everyone's interest.

How to: 

• When your children fight, ask each child to see the situation from the other's point of view.
• Tell your child about the challenges you're facing in running the household. Even though they are children, listening to you will develop empathy in them.
• Use everyday situations to foster empathy in your child. Ask questions such as 'How do you think Dadi feels about staying home all day?'
• Show empathy in your parenting. When you're frustrated, stay calm and process your emotions before you react. When your child is overwhelmed with emotions, reach out with empathy, "I know how hurt you must be feeling about what happened. You might feel it's so unfair, especially after all the hard work you have put into it."

Confidence: Confidence is truly the cornerstone of leadership, as it helps a person guide others, take healthy risks, and communicate better.

How to: 

• Give your child chores at home (e.g., laying the table and folding clothes).
• Encourage them to take up challenges. For instance, if your child is not very tidy, keeping their stuff organized would be a challenge for them; if they are drawn to junk food, eating healthy would be a challenge.
• Expose them to new experiences such as learning something new like art, music, or a new language. New experiences offer opportunities to learn how to deal with the unexpected, to adapt, to know one's strengths and limitations, and to be inspired.
• Appreciate your child's effort as they work on each step of a task; this will help them make steady progress. Share your ideas, and give honest and gentle feedback.
• When your child is tackling challenges, offer support only if required.

Decision-making: A leader is deciding not only for themselves but also for their team or the entire organization. So, the ability to make quick and effective decisions is the hallmark of a good leader.

How to: 

• Allow your child to make small decisions, such as letting them choose the books they want to read or the online hobby classes they want to take up. Of course, you can offer your suggestions and help them decide.
• Encourage your child to make family decisions, such as which movie to watch together on a particular evening or what dish to cook for Sunday lunch. As a parent, allow your authority to be questioned and leave room for discussion.
• Ask your child to weigh the pros and cons, before they make a decision. Sometimes, writing down the positives and negatives helps.

Planning: Often, a leader is required to plan big projects. Poor planning can adversely impact the team or the organization as a whole.

How to: 

• Let your child come up with a daily schedule and display it prominently at their desk. The schedule must allow them to divide their time between studies, chores, and leisure activities.
• Encourage your child to make to-do lists whenever they have a lot of things to complete.

Problem-solving: A leader faces a variety of problems, so how they tackle them is a crucial factor in their success.

How to: 

• Discuss a few everyday problems at home with your child and ask them for advice. For instance, if grandparents are part of the household, keeping them engaged may be a problem. Your child may come up with solutions, such as reading the newspaper to them daily or playing music of their choice. Don't jump in to provide them with instant answers to little problems.
• Urge your child to come up with at least three solutions to any problem, and then help them analyze and pick the best one.

Strategy-making: An integral part of a leadership role is to create well-thought-out strategies and master plans to boost the performance of teams or the organization.

How to: 

• Encourage your child to ask why, when, and how questions when the rationale does not seem sensible to them. Often, these questions will lead to discussions on various issues and the strategies required to address them.
• Ask your child a lot of open-ended questions. For example, How can our family bond better? How can we reduce our carbon footprint? Let them come up with answers. Also, ask follow-up questions to help them explore the details.
• Expose your child to a variety of books about great personalities, and talk about how they addressed various challenges.
• While studying, encourage your child to develop a learning strategy that works for them. For instance, jotting down notes, using short forms while reading their textbook, or drawing something that will help them remember the key points.

Developing Interpersonal Skills

Team-building: The hallmark of a good leader is the ability to take your team along with you and work amicably with team members.

How to: 

• Sit together and play games such as dumb charades, Pictionary, and Jenga. If it's a team game, you can all take turns to be the leader. This way, your child will gain experience in management and captaincy, learn to take up responsibility, and observe others as they lead.
• Sports is an ideal activity to learn about teamwork.
• Cooking or baking something together is a great way to help your child learn how to work well in a team and toward a common goal.
• Put on a family play or a music show. You can divide yourselves into teams.

Mentoring: A leader is a mentor whom team members respect and look up to for guidance.

How to:

• Ask your child to teach their younger sibling or friend regularly, and encourage them to learn something from them too.
• Role-play suitable situations for example, you can ask your child to guide their friend on what interests they can pursue.

Communication: A leader should be able to communicate their ideas with clarity. If the communication is unclear or rude, it can lead to misunderstandings.

How to: 

• Conduct an extempore debate at home with your child and their friends.
• Organize a storytelling contest or a book discussion.
• Turn ordering food from restaurants into a communication exercise. Your child can ask each family member what they want and place the order.
• Think of various situations (for example, negotiating with the auto driver) and enact these conversations.
• Play word games such as Scrabble or Taboo, as they will help improve vocabulary.

Managing conflicts: A leader is bound to face conflicts within the team or with external parties. In both cases, they must learn the art of negotiation to reach an amicable solution.

How to: 

• Let your child know that resolving conflicts requires listening keenly to the other party and keeping a check on everyone's emotions. You can demonstrate this by listening keenly to your child as they explain their side of the story.
• When there's a difference of opinion in the family and a decision needs to be taken, get your child involved. For example, if one person wants parathas for breakfast and another wants idlis, encourage your child to listen to both parties, empathize with everyone involved, and then offer a suitable compromise by making offers and counteroffers.
• Role-play different possible conflicts; fights over the TV remote or arguing about how much junk food should be allowed every week. Let your child come up with a solution that's agreeable to everyone.

Listening: It's very important that leaders listen to peers and team members, and consider their opinions before reaching a decision. Team members will feel reassured that their views are heeded when a leader listens patiently.

How to: 

• Play listening games with your child. For example, story chain (one person begins a story, then another adds the next sentence, and so on). You can also play a good speech to your child and then ask them questions.
• Be a good listener when your child tells you something. Let them know that maintaining eye contact and not interrupting the other person are important qualities of a good listener.
• Read stories to your child.
• Get your child to cook something while you give instructions.

Delegating: Because one person cannot do it all, delegation is central to how successful a leader is.

How to: 

• Ask your child to take charge of any family activity and divide the smaller tasks between others in the family.
• Encourage your child to participate in team activities and volunteer to take up leadership roles in these activities. Ask them to delegate different tasks to different people, based on what each one is good at.
• After every team activity where your child was in charge of delegation, sit down and discuss how the project went. Ask questions such as 'Were tasks divided fairly?'

Leadership skills build self-confidence, facilitate independent thinking, and make a child self-motivated. So, go ahead and expose your children to a variety of experiences and challenges, and see them blossom into confident individuals.