Many working parents are leaders who try to happily balance a daily workload with ball games and family dinners. Many parents that occupy leadership positions soon discover how much influence they have over the minds of their growing kids.
The kids of today are the leaders tomorrow and it even becomes more so if they have parents in leadership positions.
Yes, leadership skills come naturally; however, kids pick up things and learn lessons as they grow that have drastic effects on them later in future.
In a bid to help parents, here are 16 great ways to help you inspire leadership skills in children, the future leaders.
1. Always Be the Role Model for Leadership
As parents you are leaders and role models. At work, you know how important it is to set good examples for the members of your team. This is even more important as parents. You to teach your children accountability through effective leadership by letting them see how you balance your personal roles and business life.
2. Encourage a reading culture
According to some studies, the benefits of reading for the fun of it during childhood include having children with superior intellectual abilities in a various subjects. When kids read, they learn and ask more questions about the world, even when what is read is frivolous in nature.
3. Put Emphasis on Determination
A core characteristic of the greatest leaders is the ability to cope with failure with the same poise with which they do success. Just like trainee pilots are trained with a flight simulator, it is vital that children, who are potential future leaders be exposed to disappointment instead of shielding them from it. Kids need to learn to cope with losses and move ahead when the opposing team wins or another kid is voted as class captain.
4. Promote Team Building Activities
Invest time in identifying the activities that your children love and give then incentives when they participate in group activities. Whether it is getting involved in sporting activities, going for camping activities, or joining the school choir, it is important that children, through these activities learn valuable but basic lessons about teamwork.
5. Groom Their Decision-making Abilities
Parents must teach their wards how to make good decisions very early in life. Children like adults, become overwhelmed when faced with many choices, show them how to funnel down options to two or a maximum of three, regardless of whether the child’s decision is about what colour to wear, which animation to watch or which a game to play. Let them know and then weigh the pros and cons of every of the three choices so they can make the most informed decision. Let this sooner or later become a way of life and it will help them in making the right decisions in their lives.
6. Teach Them How to Communicate Confidently
When you take your kids out for dinner or to buy things, turn these occasions in to opportunities to learn confidence-building. Let the place their orders with the waiters or the shop attendants. By letting them to do this, they will develop self-confidence; learn etiquette and simple communication skills required to get what they want.
7. Develop Their Negotiation Skills
Children are natural negotiators even though their methods are not the professional, it gets results. Great leaders understand the art of bargaining and compromise. Rather than giving your children a firm “yes” or “no” to their requests, make them offers and make counter offers with valid points. Train them on how to negotiate like never giving up on what they want without asking for something better or at least just as good in return.
8. Teach Them Financial Management
Miranda Marquit tells parents to teach their children money management by allowing them to make mistakes. Let them list out they want, then assist them in prioritizing their list and then encourage them to save for it by offering to match whatever amount they have saved. This will teach them valuable life lessons about how to afford, budget and plan for anything they want in future as well has know what they can and can't afford at any particular time.
9. Create a Family Game Time
These days, parents and children alike tend to get overly engaged with their gadgets. Rather than spending every evening staring at some screen, get more interactively engaged by playing some board games. This is not only a perfect family-bonding opportunity, it also provides a unique way to teach social and leadership skills. Children can be taught how to develop strategic thinking skills, handle losses and be a good sport, abide by the rules of the game, and celebrate wins while considering the feelings of others.
10. Develop Their Project Planning Abilities
While this may sound rather technical, understand that projects can be as simple as building a Lego house or molding a clay pot. So, make a list of your family events, from visiting relatives to vacations and plan them ahead with the kids making significant contributions in the process. This will help them have brainstorming sessions with you, give them opportunities to eliminate options and justify why and why not to include events in the project. Then delegate the smaller tasks to your kids after a concrete plan has been laid out.
11. Instill in Them the Culture of Work
Children love to help when they see their parents working. If your kids want to start selling cards, or set up a cookie stand, give them the support and encouragement they ask of you. Once they are old enough, persuade them to they can take up opportunities to serve and earn money like walking dogs, babysitting or mowing lawns as long as your neighborhood is safe. You can further encourage them by adding an extra amount to every dollar they earn. These can help to develop a sense of responsibility and build leadership skills in kids.
12. Teach Them Goal-setting and Imaging
Children need to understand the power of creation that they possess from an early age. A great way to them how to create and achieve what they have desire is through setting goals and using vision boards. Help them see what it is they desire to have in their mind’s eye and then let them describe how they saw it. Also help them to work on a vision board creating project. One thing is guaranteed, they will enjoy the creative imagination development and the cutting and pasting of pictures on their vision boards and also learn how to create imagery of what they want to accomplish.
13. Find a mentor
Get your kids a mentor that is not you. Parents are the first role models kids have and we tend to get emotionally attached to our kids. Getting your kids a trusted family friend or relative as a mentor can be very valuable, particularly if the individual has accomplished a lot in a field in which your kid has shown interest. You can also check out organizations that offer mentoring from screened members.
14. Don’t Interfere
As parents, we are tempted instinctively to want to help struggling kids figure out how to solve a puzzle, solve a problem in a project or activity or complete a task they are delaying on. Resist the urge. Rather, step back and watch your kids work through it and figure things out themselves. If they get frustrated and ask for help, ask leading questions that will help them think to a solution. After that, then review the obstacles and challenges that came up while they were working on the task, and show other ways to do things differently.
15. Reward optimism
Optimism is connected to success. In your family, develop a culture of optimism by rewarding kids that have a positive outlook at things, do even more if the optimism is related to attempting to achieve a goal.
16. Sign them Up for summer camp
Great avenues for teaching children team-building activities are summer camps. Usually from age 18, teenagers may even be asked to help as camp counsellors. Though many camps require counsellors to be at least 18 years old, a teenager who is a regular summer camper may be able to get a chance to be a counsellor’s assistant and will be assigned to lead groups of younger kids.
17. Teach Them How to Speak
The average human being thinks and speaks negative things (abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/story?id=460987). Out of the abundant thought in your heart, your mouth will speak.
Remember, you cannot give what you don’t have.
Parents must learn (http://business.financialpost.com/entrepreneur/three-techniques-to-manag...) and then teach their children how to speak the right words.
Speaking the right words is a function of thinking the right thoughts. Helping children say the right words means letting them say what they desire instead of what it is they are experiencing.
Rather than say to your kids, “We can’t afford it”, say to them, “How can we afford it?”
Instead of saying “I am tired”, say “I need some rest”.
Don’t say “I don’t have money” to your kids, tell them “I am expecting some money soon”.
Speaking these way gets your creative juices flowing and more importantly, you will have taught your how to say the things they want in spite of what is happening.
If there is a good thing to learn from Donald J. Trump, that is it. He never speaks negatively about himself and his business challenges.
Conclusion
Children learn at an unbelievable rate and most of the time is from what they hear and see their parents do. So, it the parents’ responsibility to make sure the children are taught in the way to thing, speak and lead.
These are some of simple yet powerful ways we as today’s parents and leaders can raise our kids to get ready for their roles as future leaders both in business and in life as a whole. These tips will help to make kids better leaders and also perform better in developing personal relationships as they go through life.
Olusegun ‘Roti Adedokun is the multi-talented Chief Writer/Editor and Head of Marketing at writ.i.ng and blogs at demandsupplier.com about "How to invest in Nigeria".
He derives joy in working with his happy team of talented writers who mostly work against the normal 9-5 schedule.
Until recently, they were strictly offering ghost-writing services.
Their work pattern is productivity-based and was designed to make sure that everyone lives a well balanced lifestyle that ensures that family, financial, wellness, spiritual, emotional, social and recreational aspects are well taken care of.
Building his writing business on this unique model gave his team the chance to explore other areas of interests and increased productivity by more than 300%.
The decision to find a balanced way of living resulted from the realization that banking was denying him of the opportunity to experience a fulfilling life just like engineering did.
Olusegun believes in the wisdom of balance. His philosophy is to live life to the fullest and help others to succeed.
He is loves nature and regularly explores the creative, culinary, fine and martial arts.
He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering and an MBA from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
He lives in the energetic economic hub of Nigeria - Lagos.