Thanks for tuning in to Let’s Grow Leader’s Saturday Series for developing leadership in kids. On Monday we return to our regular leadership fare.
Today is a guest post from Curtis Fletcher.
Developing Leadership Qualities in Kids
Imagine almost any adult gathering you’ve ever attended. It could be a workshop, dinner party, political rally, anything. There are always those first few moments when the people who didn’t previously know each other begin to mingle and meet.
If you listen carefully to those conversations they contain some interesting probing questions about profession, education, hobbies maybe, but the answers are even more telling. The answers include job title, degree, or length of experience and credentials.
It’s almost comical how much adult conversation, especially introductory conversation, is spent in determining ranking. Who is going to play the dominant role and who is going to play the more subservient role? In short, who is the leader?
As adults we have all kinds of cues from which to draw hierarchy and we do it almost unconsciously all of the time. By way of example? How many are already wondering about my qualifications to be writing about developing leadership in children?
Because your typical kid doesn’t have this vast array of information to draw from leadership roles in childhood tend to derive from much more primitive characteristics: biggest, strongest, loudest, etc. You could even make an argument for parental social status rich kids win out over poor kids kind of thing.
As a result, unless we’re content to leave the development of future leaders to the whims of natural selection alone or some modern approximation of monarchical inheritance, we need to employ some adult wisdom in helping kids try on leadership to see if it fits.
This approach assumes that there is adult involvement in helping guide kids through the a leadership experience and so, as that adult, you need to help your young charge by taking four actions in regards to their leadership:
1. You have to Endorse it.
Adult endorsement helps kids overcome those tendencies towards natural selective processes. In fact, the less obvious the leader from the stand point of those bigger, stronger, faster characteristics the more important the adult endorsement.
Remember the objective here is not to see who naturally takes over, though there are times for that too, the objective is to help kids develop their own leadership skills, qualities and abilities.
2. You have to Define it.
Simply stated here you can’t just tell a kid to ”lead” you have to give them some boundaries. “You’re in charge for this project, or this class period, or this practice.” By establishing this kind of boundary you help the kid understand where their leadership begins and ends.
Just because you put a student in charge of the math circle doesn’t mean you expect them to be a kickball captain at recess but THEY may not know that unless you define the boundaries.
3. You have to Goal it.
As adults we hate being given charge of something for which there is no well-defined desired outcome. How much more so for a kid trying to sort out what it means to lead?
“You’re in charge Timmy, I need you to be sure everything is under control.” Yikes, I’d hate THAT as an adult!
“Suzy, I’m putting you in charge. We need to have everyone in their seat, tables cleaned up, at ten o`clock.” This is not only clear, but it is achievable. Even the language in this second example is better. Using the word “we” reinforces the endorsement of the leader.
4. You have to Evaluate it.
Feedback after the fact is important and a significant part of that evaluation should be living by the results of the choices the young leader has made. Let them know how they did but also let them see where their decisions lead.
We often think of natural selection as nature’s way of giving certain people an edge. If you want to give your young leaders their own edge in learning how to lead you can do so by making sure you Endorse, Define, Goal, and Evaluate their leadership experiences.
About the author:
Curtis Fletcher has been involved in teaching, coaching, and mentoring kids of all ages for most of his life, whether that was as a high school student corralling the younger kids at family camp, teaching in the classroom, or as a high school football coach.
Curtis currently leads as a Senior Manager with Hitachi Consulting helping corporations understand how to create excellent customer experience.
His blog is Unforced Perspectives
Note: Curtis is also great at developing grown-ups as well.
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