Leadership Skills for Kids: Deeply Understand, 10+ Useful Tips!

Leadership skills for kids refer to strengths and abilities to organize, manage others to reach a common goal. Realizing the great importance of leadership skills for children’ development in the 21st century skills for kids, Skidos would like to discuss about what leadership skills for children are, give several reasons why leadership skills are vital skillsets for kids to master and recommend some tips to facilitate your children to think like leaders in this blog.

What are Leadership skills for Kids?

Broadly speaking, leadership skills can be interpreted as a SET OF SKILLS that your kids use when organizing, managing and guiding other mates to achieve a shared goal.

To build leadership skills in children, other skills and characteristics such as responsibility, teamwork, communication, organization skills also need to be built together as a full package skillset to follow the process of building leadership skills.

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Leadership skills shall empower children, help them to better direct their lives toward their defined goals and gain success in a variety of areas. There are some phrases that are normally used to complement with leadership skills such as “self-confidence”, “problem solving”, “teamwork”, “communication” and “makes independent decisions and choices.”

Why are leadership skills important for kids?

Several parents and many other people may think that it is too early to teach kids leadership skills because they are too young; however, adults have been instructing their kids other important skills such as how to eat properly, how to ride bicycles, how to read, etc so why not teaching kids leadership skills?

Leadership skills are very important for children to master at the young age due to several reasons.

#1 Steve Jobs, Angela Merkel learnt their leadership skills since they were young

Firstly, kids will be future leaders and your children shall be interested in being leaders since their primary school years. Children may possibly be taking leader roles at school right now such as being class presidents, school captains, club captains as well as other roles outside the classroom. Kids shall grow up soon and take leadership roles in various fields tomorrow, therefore, parents do not need to wait until kids reach their puberty to teach them leadership skills, but instead start instructing them how to become great leaders from today.

It is true that great leaders such as Steve Jobs, Angela Merkel learnt their leadership skills since they were young. If parents want to prepare their children for future success, you can focus on nurturing skills which good leaders possess as a way to support them both in getting leadership positions and being successful, inspiring leaders.

#2 Build a set of skills in a same time

Secondly, leadership skills incorporate many other important skills such as responsibility, teamwork, communication, organization; given that we need a bunch of strengths and ability to become good leaders. If your kids are given opportunities to develop their leadership skills, eventually they can be good at many other skills too.

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For example, to take a leadership role, kids need to be responsible for themselves and help with looking out for others so that they learn to be responsible. Great leaders also need to collaborate well with teammates in their team projects, so children having good leadership skills should be good at doing teamwork too. A leader is expected to be capable of communicating with others a lot, to speak confidently and clearly so while building up leadership skills for children, we are helping them to improve their communication skills at the same time.

#3 Build Organized Skill while develop leadership skills in kids

Another skill that can be attained while trying to be good leaders is organizational skill. Because leaders are people who are well organized and often need to organize and manage other people and resources so your kids can be exceled at organizing schedules, projects and people if they are given the leader roles.

Another reason that you should teach your kids leadership skills early on is that just like other skills, leadership skills can be taught. Please do not think that somebody might be born leaders, actually, they learn to be leaders.

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Skidos believes that all kids possibly have great potentials to take managing roles and become great leaders. As parents and school activists pay more attention to raise kids, kids can acquire skills necessary to lead the team now and in the future. Leadership stimulates confidence, and assists children to solve problems effectively, work in groups and collaborate with others. It is vital that your kids are taught leadership skills from an early age.

Activities, Tips to build leadership skills for kids

To help you answer your question: How can I improve my child’s leadership skills? or if you are a teacher, What are leadership skills for students? Skidos would like to suggest some activities for nurturing leadership skills for children with 4 useful tips and activities.

#1 Bring them with you and assign tasks

Children usually love to see parents working and doing things and would be excited to join with parents to complete the tasks together. Parents can help kids to build leadership skills by taking them with you, exposing them to different people and environments as you work or travel and give kids concrete roles in doing something and to be responsible for finishing that task.

For example, on a family vacation, parents can teach and ask children to look after the belongings and themselves. You can also encourage them to look out for stuff of other people such as the family members, their peers in the class or teammates in their sport clubs.  It is a simple way to train their responsibility and prepare them to be leaders to be accountable and take care for the team in the future.

#2 Play team-building games

Parents can arrange team-building games and activities to teach children how to work in teams effectively and thus, help to build up children’s leadership skills. One of the best ways to foster group work is to encourage kids to play team sports or other group- related activities for kids to learn while playing with a group of friends.

The more your kids have interaction with a certain number of friends, the more he or she will be able to know each other, build trust, discuss solutions to the problems and gain teamwork spirit.

Furthermore, parents are expected to keep patient and stay supportive while children are playing team-building games so as to assist your children to know how to perform in a team (he can lead that team or learn leadership skills from the leader of the team) to solve problems and reach the common goal. With the great help of parents, children can be given a chance to improve their teamwork skills as a way to hone their leadership skills right at home.

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#4 Talk to kids the way like they are grown-ups

Good communication skill is certainly a key factor to become a great leader. Parents should guide children how to listen carefully and how to respond to others in a calm and respectful way.

Moreover, parents can show children how you communicate effectively with others. Let them see you praise people generously and disagree with others respectfully. For example, do not forget to give compliments such as “You did good job” when your kids succeed in doing something.

Also, parents can help young kids name their emotions by saying things such as “Are you mad because your neighbouring friend took your toy?” or “Are you sad because your brother beats you in the game?”

In that way, parents are making their attempts to assist kids to control emotions, to communicate with others which effective leaders always need to build relationships, inspire others, and manage the team.

#5 Have them meet up with other leaders

Because we usually are the reflections of people whom we spend much time with, it is important that parents tell your kids to choose friends wisely and search for positive, successful role models. If your child is interested in a certain subject, parents can find a good mentor who is gaining success in that field to instruct your child.

Parents can also try to connect and develop friendship with leaders who are managing teams such as the team-leaders, managers, directors or board members and expose their kids to meeting these types of people. By doing so, children can learn from the best leaders, get inspired and develop leadership skills.

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In summary, leadership skill is important for children around the world to master in the 21st century as it is a driving factor for children’s development in achieving huge success while leading teams and working with others in the future.

Skidos believes that there will be a great deal of useful suggestions for fostering children leadership skill available out there. If you have any other interesting thoughts or tips, please let us know!

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