Every parent would want to see a leader in their child. In fact, leadership is one of the essential traits to have in contemporary times. The world looks up to people who can lead positive changes and instill hope in their surroundings. While leadership is a vital skill for personal development and growth, it also drives collective good. Hence, to see your children make their own mark and have the ability to stand out from others, you would want your child to develop fine leadership abilities.
Leadership is the competitive edge that will play a crucial role in securing your child’s future. It is a well-known fact that the world has a dearth of inspirational leaders. The world indeed needs some strong and passionate leaders to bring positive overhauls. This can be validated with a credible insight from Infopro Learning. Although the maximum money is invested in leadership development in the corporate arenas, 71 percent of companies feel they do not have able leaders. Similar is the story of other verticals besides the corporate world where leadership is essential.
Moving further, the above-mentioned scenario also signifies the scope for excellent leaders. In a world scarce of leaders, your child can achieve enormous success in any domain with exemplary leadership skills. Leadership qualities will play a massive role in personal development, cognitive growth, excellence in academics, and career success. But what do you think is the best time for your child to master leadership? Such imperative qualities are most effective when learned at a young age. Hence, your child needs to incorporate these skills during the initial phases of their upbringing. For that, you will have to play a major role.
In this blog, we glance at the various ways in which you can inspire a leader in your child. Now that children are home most of the time due to the pandemic, you have the perfect opportunity. It is time that you step into the shoes of a mentor and assist your child in inculcating leadership skills. You will find some valuable and effective strategies in the subsequent section.
Worthwhile ways for fostering leadership skills in your child
- Promote Independent Thinking
The first steps towards being a leader include the development of independent thinking. Leadership is, in fact, a trait that branches out from independent and critical thinking. Having said that, you need to encourage independent thinking in your child, and children should be able to think on their own and decide for themselves. You can motivate that by letting them make small decisions on their own. Furthermore, to promote independent thinking, your child also needs versatile knowledge. Given that, you can have conducive discussions with your child on various aspects. To add, you can also promote reading habits in your child to grow their knowledge.
Moreover, other ways to promote independent thinking include asking open-ended questions. When you ask open-ended questions to your child, it inspires critical thinking in them. Critical and independent thinking will further promote higher creativity. To add, giving your child a conducive learning environment at home and encouraging brainstorming in children are other effective measures. Once your child develops a knack for independent thinking, leadership will become a natural expression.
- Encourage Your Child to Take Initiative
Do you ever think about what is the real difference between a leader and others? What is it that gives a leader the silver lining they exhibit? It is their ability to take initiatives that others are reluctant to take. Irrespective of how big or small an initiative is, not everyone dares to step ahead. So, to foster the true essence of leadership in your child, you should back their initiatives. You should promote the ability to step ahead and reward your children when they portray the courage to take the initiative. This will promote more significant curiosity in your child, which in itself is one of the most promising active learning strategies.
In addition to taking the initiative in the classroom, your child can do the same at home. The question is that how much you encourage and support your child in doing so. Be it about choosing a destination for a family vacation, interiors of the house, or the decision to learn something new, let your child take the initiative. Of course, once you let them express their opinions, you can guide them and correct them. You may disagree with their opinions every time, but you ought to encourage them to express their views without any hesitation. When your child feels empowered enough to take the lead, leadership will come to them by default.
- Focus on Developing Problem-Solving Skills in Your Child
While others crib about problems, leaders deliberate on solutions. Your child should have perennial motivation for evolving problem-solving skills. The better the problem-solving skills that an individual has, the more effective will be the leadership prowess. At an early age itself, you should let your child find solutions based on their independent thinking. From fixing small issues in the house to participating in solution-oriented discussions, let your child test their problem-solving abilities.
Problem-solving skills are core elements of crucial life skills as well as employability skills. Needless to say, such important employability skills will define the career prospects of your child in the future. These capabilities are also quite synonymous with a competitive advantage in contemporary times. They should grow in a consistent manner with age and experience. People look up to leaders to find solutions to even the most befitting problems. A true leader grows and glows in times of crisis. Your child, for all reasons in the world, should have such mettle.
- Help Your Child Master Communication Skills
Leadership and effective communications skills are complementary. A leader needs to hold conversations with team members and other people. It is not necessary that a leader should have strong public speaking skills. However, at least leaders should be able to communicate in a transparent, inspiring, and effective way within their teams. Hence, from a young age itself, you ought to focus on your child’s communication skills.
However, it is vital to note that communication is not limited to the art of speaking. Communication also includes active listening skills. It is critical that leaders listen to others and try to understand their perspectives. A good leader will listen to all of their team members, make genuine efforts for inclusiveness, and keep everyone on the same page. Given that, you also need to model active listening skills in your child. A leader’s ability will often be tested in terms of communication skills. The greater the impact of one’s communication proficiency, the more appealing will be the leadership style.
- Model Integrity for Your Child
Great leaders do not achieve things at the cost of their integrity. They know that in the longer run, integrity drives success and reputation. Hence, while teaching leadership skills to your child, you need to model integrity and honesty for them. Efficient leaders are honest to themselves and their team members. They are accountable for their actions and decisions, and they hold on to their moral values even in the most challenging situations. In fact, winning at the cost of integrity is always an easy option that everyone has. But those faithful to their integrity choose the harder path and win even bigger.
There are several ways in which you can teach integrity and honesty. These virtues are also imperative elements of your child’s moral upbringing. You should teach your child to be authentic and hold on to their uniqueness against all odds. You have to make them aware of the consequences of choosing the path of dishonesty. There are endless examples of how honest leaders achieved great things. Also, there are innumerable examples of how immoral leaders had to bite the dust in the end. It is imperative that your child knows about these stories and instances.
- Inspire Teamwork Abilities in Your Child
Before anything else, a leader needs to be a team player. A leader needs to motivate collaboration in others. Having said that, a leader should have exemplary collaborative skills. From school assignments to crucial office projects in the future, your child will need effective collaboration all through their lives. So, you need to model teamwork for them at home. There are multifarious games and a host of other team activities that can be conducted within the family. Such activities will give your child a hands-on experience of how to function in a team.
Even for various household chores, the family can work as a team and work in a coordinated way. All these activities will assist your child in learning various aspects of leadership. For a leader to be successful, teamwork is indispensable. A leader needs to act as a pivot around which the entire team will stick and feel the constant inspiration to achieve common objectives.
- Inculcate Emotional Intelligence in Your Child
Emotional intelligence is one of the highlight features of the revamped definition of leadership. Today, leaders are expected to have greater EQ than IQ. In simplest terms, EQ is the ability to understand, control and manage emotions positively. The objective of EQ is to make positive relationships, make informed decisions and negate negative emotions. Moreover, it also enables an individual to decipher, value, and respect the emotions of others. Furthermore, EQ can be further bifurcated into the following components.
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social Skills
As you can see, all the above dimensions are paramount for leaders. Together, these learning areas can make your child an accomplished leader ready for the world. You should help your child in developing an understanding of self-awareness. As parents, you would know your child’s strengths and weaknesses in the best possible way. You need to inform your child about the same and add to their sense of self-awareness. Moreover, you need to explain the essence of empathy and model it for your child. You must know that the relevance and significance of EQ will rise further in the future. It will become an imperative and indispensable criterion for leadership roles and positions. The sooner you invest in the development of these skills in your child, the better it will be.
To conclude, a child’s learning at home plays a key role in their advancement. As parents, there is a lot you can do in the home environment to prepare your child for the future. The world today has more purchases for skills than anything else. In fact, skills would account for an even larger part of success and excellence in the future. Among these skills that will always be sacrosanct, leadership takes the top bracket. You ought to inculcate leadership skills in your children in the initial stages of their learning itself. It will add immense value to their academic endeavors and also groom them for career success. In doing so, the above strategies can prove to be game-changing.
