Helping Your Child Develop Leadership Skills

In this article, we share some ideas for helping your child develop leadership skills in early childhood.

We’ll begin by exploring the early origins of leadership. We then look at how you can help your child from their early years, to develop their own confidence and competence to lead.

When children develop leadership skills early in life, they are well equipped to work cooperatively with others in all spheres of life. They learn to solve problems and to build the confidence of themselves and those around them.

Encouraging Leadership in Young Children

There are many ways you can help your child develop their leadership skills including:

Shared Goals – great leaders listen respectfully to the ideas of others and bring the team (family) together around a shared purpose

Autonomy – allowing children to make their own choices (where appropriate) is an important part of developing their self-efficacy

Create Successes – creating projects that a child can successfully complete grows their self esteem and lets them experience how it feels to achieve a goal

Communication – teach children to listen well to others and express their ideas, by doing so yourself

Teamwork – show children how to work within a group by allowing all members of the family to contribute to shared tasks and activities

Integrity – one of the most important qualities to model for children is integrity. Being honest and showing children how to trust and be trustworthy and respectful of others gives them a powerful foundation for developing successful relationships throughout life.

Helping Your Child Develop Leadership Skills Through Leading by Example

As a parent, you are your child’s first and most influential teacher. One of the most important things you can do in helping your child develop leadership skills, is leading by example.

Here are two tangible examples of ‘role modelling’ for your child in everyday life:

Be a Lifelong Learner – spending time learning new things and not being afraid to be a novice at something new sets a great example for children to be brave in developing new skills and following their curiosity

Always Be Respectful – we’ll never agree with everyone but we can always choose to listen respectfully to others and be considerate in the way we respond to the people in our lives, even if we feel upset with them in the moment

We hope these tips and ideas will provide some useful guidance in helping your child develop leadership skills.