significance and important activities of future leaders

8/3/2019 Significance and Important Activities of Future Leaders

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Significance And Important Activities of Future Leaders

Leadership is a quality that some are born with whereas many people have to work really

hard to acquire. Leadership qualities can be honed right from childhood through interesting

leadership activities. We'll see why such activities are important and then look at some

examples of them.

Benefits of Leadership Activities

Leadership activities help the participants to introspect and look at the positive and

negative aspects of their own behavior. Once they know their shortcomings, they can think

about improving themselves since they know exactly where they are lacking.

Leadership activities help to boost the morale and enhance the overall confidence of

people who participate in them. Participants get over their stage fear and are capable of

expressing their ideas and views more articulately to a group of people.

Leadership activities help to develop great team-building skills amongst the

participants. People who participate in leadership activities tend to pick up excellentorganizational skills and the knack of handling a group of people with coordination.

Leadership activities thus help in the overall personality development of an individual

making him better equipped for different kinds of tasks in the future. People who develop

strong leadership qualities acquire a habit to excel in every field, but most importantly, they

acquire a habit of taking their team ahead along with them.

Suggestions for Leadership Activities

Here are some fun and interesting leadership activities that you can use for children at

schools, colleges, and even employees at office.

1. The Leadership Task

If you are a fan of Donald Trump, and have been watching The Apprentice, this is an activity

that you will thoroughly enjoy. From among a group of people, short-list a few people by

means of a debate competition, or an essay competition. Make these short-listed candidates

the group leaders and make them choose other players from the group to be a part of their

team. Once the groups are formed with their individual team leaders, assign them a task. You

can pick any task like setting up a lemonade booth, and check which group manages to sell

the maximum number of lemonades. At the end of the tasks, hold a meeting and discuss the

success and failures of every team leader and the team as well. This activity will help the

leaders know what they did right, and where they lacked.Qualities you should be looking for

in a winner of this task:

Enterprising skills


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Ability to assign tasks to the group members

Coordinating the entire team towards victory with control and confidence

2. The Leadership Race

This is a very simple leadership activity that can be conducted in schools, colleges and even

workplaces. Make a handout that contains qualities and general statements that convey the

qualities of a true leader. For example: "I always take responsibility for my failures and try

and learn from every failure". Distribute these handouts to the participants and make them

stand at a common start line. Now, read the first sentence aloud and ask all the participants to

judge for themselves whether that sentence holds true for them, and if it does, they can move

one step ahead. While taking that step ask participants to narrate or illustrate a short example

to support their assertion. Continue the activity until you have a winner of the race.Qualities

you should be looking for in a winner of this task:

Confidence to accept one's positive and negative points

Honesty

3. The Thinking Hat

Ask every participant to write down his/her view about the essential qualities of a leader.

Give the participants a fixed time to write down their thoughts and then ask everyone to take

the stage and vocalize their thoughts with the others. Ask them to do it in an innovative way.

While a person is presenting his views on the dais, provide feedback forms to others and ask

them to rate the person at the end of his speech. Calculate the winner at the end of the activityand explain why he/she emerged as the winner.

Qualities you should be looking for in a winner of this task:

Ability to gather thoughts, pen them down and communicate with the audience

without prior preparation.

Ability to generate quality ideas and think rationally within a short span of time.

Also look for creativity and confidence during public speaking.

Such leadership activities and games go a great way in developing a sense of leadership and

responsibility in children as well as adults. So try them out and see the difference.

Leadership Activities for Groups

One of the best activities for finding and fostering leadership skills is of giving the

participants a questionnaire. Design tricky questions that can help you find a leader in the

crowd. Ask the participants to imagine they are caught in a storm and ask them to state what


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would they do to reach home. Ask them to imagine that day as the last day of their life. Ask

them to list down the things they would do then! Frame such hypothetical scenarios and find

how they would react to them. The questions of this type require quick decision-making and

logical thinking. The answers to these questions will reflect their skills of contingency

planning as well. The answers will represent the type of decision-making practices they

would follow if given leadership. Understanding people's reactions to situations is sure to

bring forward their personalities.

This leadership activity will require you to divide the group into teams of two. Ask one of the

participants in each pair to frame interview-like questions for his/her partner. Let the both in

the pair take their chances of putting forth questions. Each one's way of framing the

questions, the thought process behind each of the questions as also the answers obtained from

each of the participants can serve as a means to identify leadership.

Divide the group into teams. See that any two people who know each other fairly well are inopposite teams. Now ask each member of the team to choose one person from the opposite

team and say what should be changed about that person. This leadership activity helps the

people in the group assess each other. You can see how well they judge their fellow mates.

These judgments can give an idea about the way they think about each other. It is sure to

exhibit the feelings borne by the team members for each other.

Inviting each member to define leadership in his/her own way or ask each member, "Which

leader inspires you and why?" The answers to these questions would make explicit each one's

ideas about leadership. The person's answers will also reflect the type of leader he/she is.

Team building activities, fun games involving physical and mental activity, group activities

and outdoor games can also help bring about the true leader in a group. Such activities

involve team spirit, coordinated effort of the team and a competitive spirit. The person who

seems to be leading the team, planning actions, deciding moves in games is surely a leader!

These were a few of the leadership activities for groups, which will fit just fine for school or

college students and will indeed be effective for professionals. So go ahead with some of

these and tell me how you find them!

Leadership Activities for Youth

Small group projects are a good technique of involving youngsters in effective

communication, problem-solving, and cooperation. Search for new projects and activities that


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demand the youth to work in close cooperation over an extended amount of time. Make it a

point to choose recorders to observe and report what happens in the groups.

Encourage young people in the group to participate in community project work. Make

partnerships and get involved with government agencies, businesses and nonprofit

organizations. While being in a leadership role, it is very crucial for a leader to be poised andconfident. For this purpose, you need to teach young participants to carry out the training

tasks with poise and self-confidence.

Arrange conferences regarding public speaking techniques, interviewing, business etiquette

and some other essential areas. Set up a governing committee which consists of only young

people who would deal and handle community and society issues. Encourage the members in

the committee to suggest their own rules and ordinances.

Elect a different team of committee members each year and note which participants have the

leadership skills and qualities in them, and who can be prospective leaders.

Leadership Training Techniques

When it is regarding leadership activities for youth, leadership training techniques and

methods also play a very crucial role. Nowadays, with the advent of technology, there aremany training means which can be employed for the purpose; such as movies, documentaries,

educational and leadership videos, etc. Other efficacious training activities may also include

action research and education, decision-making games and case studies.

When carrying out and observing leadership activities for youth, you need to take note of

which participants are displaying qualities of a potential leader. Later, you need to train them

using specific leadership education methods and techniques.

Interactive Leadership Exercises

Leadership is a very essential quality which every individual should possess or develop as

there are many benefits of it. It is a positive quality which doesn't need to be used for

overpowering and dominating but to lead a group towards success. Leadership yields other

useful qualities such as; confidence, positivity, ability to make quick decisions, creativity,

ambition, endurance to bear consequences of wrong decisions and to pull up a team from

failure to success.


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Many corporates and their managements make it a point that a few interactive leadership

activities are a part of their recreation for employees, as they get a chance to emerge as

leaders. A few of these easy yet effective interactive team building activities are compiled in

the paragraphs below. All these exercises teach teammates to make decisions and work as a

team, considering all the crucial aspects of a project assigned to them.

Roping a Square

This is a very easy exercise, where you have to make a team of 4 and use a 20 m rope for the

activity. The instructions for the game are such that, the team of 4 participants have to tie the

rope in a circle and then make a square out of it, with blindfolds on their eyes. The team gets

about 15 minutes for planning a strategy, after which they will be blindfolded. They are then

given 10 minutes to turn the circle into a square without seeing, with all the team members

holding the rope. After you think the square is ready, keep the rope on the floor and move

out.

Tower of Hand Work

Well, just as the name suggests, a leader is a tower of hard work. He is someone who leads

his team to the top and stands on his and his teammates hard work. In this exercise, you need

to have a team of 5 participants, one piece of 30 feet rope and 10 or more water bottles,

which are evenly distributed to all the teams. The rules of the game are to build a tower of

water bottles in 10 minutes, as high as possible with the help of the rope. The tower should be

standing without support including the two components of the game, and you have 5 minutesto plan before the whistle blows! The highest tower wins. The skills of leadership and team

work are observed from this one of the fun leadership activities.

Playing with Tools

This exercise deals with a simple activity such as changing a car tire, but with a team! We all

the phrase, "too many cooks spoil the broth" and so, when too many people want to do one

work at one time, there are differences in opinion, leading to havoc. But, this is what team

work is, thus, a team of 5 participants is chosen and 30 minutes are allotted for the task. They

are given 5 minutes to work on the strategy, put together all the steps of changing the tire and

allot specific time limits for each step. Whichever team completes the task first and the tire is

as good as new, wins the task.

With these easy yet effective interactive leadership activities, hope you have learned the

importance of leading a team and listening to other team members. These activities are fun

and educational, so try them out in your office and make the most out of it!

significance and important activities of future leaders

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