Raising the Future Leaders: Leadership Activities For Kids

One of the common debates in the world of psychology revolves around the question of whether our behaviors and traits are a product of genetics or are they acquired – “environment or heredity?”.

What affects the human soul more – the environment in which he lives and grows up or is it the genes that are passed on to him through a hereditary process?

The debate exists to this day, and there are no unequivocal results, each theory with its claim and the studies that confirm it. The most correct is the combination of the two approaches/theories, i.e. an innate trait that receives support from the environment can become more dominant in a person’s character and ways of behaving, and vice versa – an innate trait that does not receive support from the environment will hardly be expressed.

Personally, I strongly believe in education, that is, in the influence of the environment on the child. The environment is the parents, the family, the school, the friends, the country, etc.

That’s why I believe leadership can be both acquired and inherited. While some individuals may possess certain innate qualities or traits that make them natural leaders, leadership skills can also be developed and nurtured through education, experience, and practice. It’s important to note that not all individuals who possess natural leadership qualities may automatically become effective leaders without honing their skills and gaining knowledge about leadership principles and practices. Similarly, individuals who may not exhibit innate leadership traits can still learn and develop leadership skills over time with proper guidance and opportunities.

Whether your children will be leaders or not, you will know only when they grow up, but nevertheless there are some things related to the subject that you parents can do if this is the future you wish for your children.

Importance of Leadership Activities for Kids

Leadership activities for children are valuable because they offer numerous benefits:

Confidence Development – Engaging in leadership activities helps children gain confidence in their abilities to lead, make decisions, and guide others, boosting their self-assurance.

Communication Skill Enhancement– Leadership activities require teamwork and effective communication, allowing children to improve their ability to express ideas, listen actively, and communicate clearly, which are crucial skills for leadership and collaboration

Responsibility Cultivation – Leadership activities teach children about responsibility and accountability, helping them understand the consequences of their actions and make thoughtful choices, fostering a sense of responsibility towards their team or community.

Critical Thinking Promotion – Leadership activities often involve problem-solving and decision-making, encouraging children to think critically, analyze situations, and consider different perspectives to find effective solutions.

Collaboration Emphasis – Leadership activities emphasize teamwork and collaboration, enabling children to appreciate others’ strengths, work together towards shared goals, and develop cooperation, empathy, and respect for diverse opinions.

Instilling Leadership Qualities – Leadership activities nurture essential leadership qualities like empathy, resilience, adaptability, and initiative, empowering children to understand others, bounce back from challenges, adapt to changes, and take proactive steps.

Future Readiness – In the modern era, leadership skills are highly sought-after in various domains. By engaging in leadership activities at a young age, children acquire the skills and mindset needed to succeed in a rapidly evolving world.

Leadership activities for children offer opportunities for skill development, confidence building, and the cultivation of qualities that will benefit them throughout their lives. These activities prepare children to become responsible, empathetic, and effective leaders who can positively impact their communities and thrive in the future.

Fun and Engaging Leadership Activities for Kids

So, how can we, as parents, Influencing and guiding our child towards leadership?

Public Speaking Exercises

Public speaking is a wonderful opportunity for children to work on their communication, leadership, and problem-solving skills. By providing them with age-appropriate public speaking exercises, parents can help equip their kids with the skills they need to grow into confident adults.

Public speaking exercises can also be highly engaging as even young children are often fascinated by vocalizing their own ideas in front of others. Great public speaking activities include storytelling projects, debating topics in small groups or pairs, or simply having a fun back-and-forth conversation between multiple people at once. for smaller kids even talk to the seller in the shop can be kind of public speaking 🙂

When executed correctly these activities encourage active listening and introduce important concepts such as critical thinking and collaboration.

This helps them develop confidence in expressing their ideas, improving their communication skills, and becoming comfortable with public speaking—an essential leadership skill.

Trust Building Activities

Trust building activities for kids and teens are designed to help them learn essential skills such as communication, teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and confidence.

These activities can range from simple games such as human knot or blindfolded fetch to more complex tasks like the great puzzle race or flip the tarp team building activity.

In addition to developing important leadership skills, these trust exercises are also useful in building self-esteem by providing children with an opportunity to take risks and build resilience.

Examples of popular trust fall exercises include:

1. Buddy walk—where children must work together while walking across an area without looking at each other. It requires the participants to trust their teammates to guide them safely through obstacles.
2. Helium stick -where two people hold onto a long object that they lift up while trying not break the formation; These activities emphasize effective communication, active listening, and trust in the abilities of others.
3. Trust Walk: In this activity, participants are blindfolded, and they must navigate a course with the guidance of a partner who can see. This exercise builds trust as participants rely on their partner’s instructions and guidance, highlighting the importance of clear communication and trust in leadership.

Group Storytelling Challenge

A Group Storytelling Challenge is a great activity to develop communication, creativity, and teamwork in children. It promotes active listening skills as well as encourages students to come up with ideas for the story out loud together.

It is a game where a group of individuals collaboratively creates a story by taking turns adding sentences or paragraphs to the narrative. It is an engaging and interactive activity that promotes teamwork, creativity, and communication skills.

This game requires careful attention from all participants so that they can add on more details to the plot as it gets told by one another. The challenge allows each student’s input to be valued and their ideas added into the creative narrative process which help build their self-esteem and confidence while also improving their verbal communication skills.

The goal of this group storytelling exercise is often set towards making a collaborative tale filled with exciting characters or imaginative worlds! During these activities, kids will learn how stories are structured while developing essential social-emotional learning skills such as problem solving, understanding perspectives, negotiating different situations among peers, patience and fostering cooperation through collective work—skills that will be beneficial regardless of what career path they choose when they grow older!

Creative Writing Exercises

Creative writing exercises are an important part of developing leadership skills in children. Writing can help kids learn to be creative problem-solvers, practice effective communication, and strengthen their self-esteem.

These activities also provide the opportunity for characters to take on roles that may feel daunting in real life; with words as a form of control, these tasks become less intimidating and more fun for the child.

There are many different kinds of creative writing activities that can be done at home with young leaders (ages 5 – 12). Activities like storytelling prompts or narrative roleplays combine imaginative play and dialogue while introducing concepts like plot structure and character development.

Games such as “What If?” introduce scenarios where your child has to offer possible solutions or resolutions to a given problem – both great ways to develop critical thinking skills.

For older youth (ages 13 – 17), you could assign essay topics containing ethical dilemmas or theme-based questions about philosophy; this will further challenge them to consider multiple perspectives while articulating their own point of view logically using vocabulary they find comfortable expressing themselves with.

Leadership Board Games

Board games can be an effective and entertaining way to help children develop essential skills like communication, problem-solving, creativity, teamwork and leadership. Popular board games such as Pandemic Legacy, Escape Room: The Game – lockdown Expansion Edition or Forbidden Island are great for teaching kids how to identify strategy and observe social cues.

These types of games involve working together as a team in order to progress through tasks while adjusting the strategies according to ever-changing circumstances.

These types of experiences provide meaningful insight into interacting with other people; developing interpersonal relationships; learning communication and teamwork development skills; honing decision-making abilities as situations present opportunities for exploration or exploitation; improving creative imagination ;and understanding when to take risks.

Role-Playing Games

Role-playing games can be an effective and fun way for kids to learn essential leadership skills. Through taking on the role of different characters, both in groups or in solo activities, children are encouraged to think outside the box and explore situations, feelings, decision making processes and giving constructive feedback – exploring concepts that they may not have otherwise encountered.

Kids can take part in simple role playing exercises alone or with friends by pretending inventive scenarios inspired by real life experiences (or works of fiction) together where a specific problem needs resolving without any right answer.

This encourages creative thinking while teaching valuable lessons such as logical reasoning or empathy. Some popular examples include enacting conversations between two teachers talking about how to deal with a student who’s misbehaving for the purpose of teaching conflict resolution; disguising themselves like historical figures discussing famous events; or behaving like citizens within a fantasy universe discussing strange customs for example – all these activities help people develop essential interpersonal awareness needed to become successful leaders later on in their lives.

By introducing structured role play activities into home environment, we create dialogues between family members allowing future generations better face social complexities while providing high quality participatory entertainment filled with laughter – amusing enough so everybody remembers key themes learned!

Decision-Making Games

Decision-making skills are essential for kids as they grow up and become adults, guiding them through important life decisions.

One popular game is “Would You Rather?” That requires players to make a choice between two options while also considering the opinion of their team, great for developing negotiation abilities.

Another activity called “The Marshmallow Challenge” tests problem solving with a limited time frame, perfect for reinforcing critical thinking strategies like brainstorming and testing out ideas quickly.

Finally, there’s the classic game of Rock Paper Scissors which provides an opportunity to practice decision making without having any long term consequences.

Overall, decision-making games are great opportunities for children to hone their strategic thinking processes in a fun way that will transfer over positively to real life situations later on down the line.

Brain Teasers and Puzzles

Brain teasers and puzzles can be fun activities that help kids develop communication, problem-solving skills, decision-making abilities, and team collaboration. According to studies, these tasks require children to think in more creative ways which also affects their overall confidence.

By engaging kids in entertaining discussions around brain teaser questions or letting them work on a puzzle together with peers as part of a leadership activity, they are developing essential skills within an enjoyable environment.

There are plenty of age appropriate mental challenges tailored for specific skill levels from basic memory recall games all the way up to difficult pattern recognition problems.

For example, mothers can include charades which is great for teamwork development while incorporating humorous interactions among participants as well as a riddle guessing game where each clue leads to another related riddle working on critical thinking at the same time .

Scavenger Hunts

Scavenger hunts are an excellent leadership activity for kids. It encourages team building and can help develop critical skills such as communication, teamwork, creativity, problem-solving, and decision-making.

These activities can be held outdoors or indoors, with adult supervision if necessary. Scavenger hunts have also board games designed to strengthen leadership abilities among kids.

Tower Building Challenge

Tower Building Challenge is a great way of helping kids build leadership skills while having fun. The challenge involves dividing children into small groups and providing them with materials such as construction blocks, toothpicks or marshmallows to construct the tallest tower they can manage.

This activity helps strengthen teamwork, communication and problem-solving among children as they develop strategies to work together in building their structure and supporting it as it grows taller.

It also encourages children to be creative in building their structures while testing how well they can think critically and adapt if something does not go according to plan.

Final Thoughts

Leadership activities for kids are essential to their development and building key skills. These activities provide a great opportunity for children to engage in meaningful experiences that help them build leadership skills, understanding social cues, problem-solving abilities, confidence and self-esteem.

Not all leadership should be associated with big names like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Walt Disney and much more. A leader can be like that even among other “smaller” professions and still feel that he is fulfilling himself and his desire to lead an idea or an ideology.

I suggest to all parents not to educate their child to be “leaders”, but definitely to take care as much as possible of a warm, loving, supportive, encouraging, moderately challenging environment that gives and provides education and reinforcements.

All of the above leadership activities will help your child develop confidence, awareness, realizing potential (where it is) and the ability to look honestly at themselves and identify their true desire. If they decide that a leader (“small” or “big”) is what they want, they are probably know what they are talking about, because you, the parent, were sensitive and smart enough to identify and provide the necessary basis for this. Hence, all you can do is wish them success and continue to support them, if and when they need to.