Teaching Leadership Qualities Early-on

Teaching Leadership Qualities Early-on

As parents we want our children to be successful in life. We want to prepare them for the best in life. Of all the things one would want to teach their children one of the best practices that can be inculcated in our children is to guide them through essential leadership qualities.

Leadership qualities encompass most of the fundamentally crucial habits that would not only help them in their professional environment but would also make them wade through life better prepared. As parents one cannot eliminate the struggles that the children may encounter later in life but one can mitigate their chances of a breakdown and prepare them to handle their failures better.

People with leadership qualities perform better in life, both personally and professionally. Listing below 5 qualities (life-lessons) that can be taught to children right from the word go:

1. Discipline: I am not pointing out a military style boot camp with the children, what we need them to learn is the basic discipline. From getting up to sleeping we can have them in a routine, a routine that may suit your independent lifestyle and beliefs. Its important for them to understand that certain things need to be done in a certain manner on a certain time. A very small example is, brushing teeth after you get up, taking a shower before going to school, washing hands before meals. These are not only important activities during a child’s day but would also mould them to discipline, also to have them follow through. Once you sow the seed of discipline, let them carve out one for themselves and then stick with it.
2. Being Organized: A good leader is always organized, they know what they have to do and when they have to do. They are organized with keeping their things in place and are orderly. Children can be taught very early in life to keep their things in place. To be organized about their personal belongings, hence would start a habit of being organized.
3. Coping with Failures: Let your children fail. That means don’t let them win at every game that they play. They would obviously not be able to win the games that they play with parents from the beginning, so you let them win some (for encouragement) and then let them loose some (To teach them failing is ok). If parents let their kids win at every game that is played as a child then the child would not have tasted failure, no matter how trivial it may be. So its essential that we let them fail. Most children would crib and cry after they fail, we need to encourage them to start the game again and learn from their failures. This would not only help them handle their school grades better but would make them stronger in competitions at a school level. Eventually building a strong character for facing life that throws challenges at us at every juncture.
4. Sincerity: Of all the things in life sincerity would take them a long way. Tech them to be sincere about whatever they do. One task at time with complete honesty. Let them complete the tasks that they undertake. Leaving tasks halfway or running away before they get completed is something you should guide them against. Truthfully, honestly and whole-heartedly to engage in the project/activity/task in hand. This is something that would take time and a lot of patience from you, at the end would create immense value to the child.
5. Focus: Younger children have shorter attention span and they get bored quickly, the trick is to teach them to focus. Increase their attention span by minutes in very early age and then letting the focus carry on for hours leading to them being able to focus on an activity for days. Focus in life plays a huge part of one’s progress and ultimately leading to the persons success. Leadership skills also emphasize on Focus as a prime quality. Children can be lead into focusing on little things before and then focus on bigger aims, you may divide small-time aims and big-time aims to help them enhance this quality. And then help them work towards achieving them.

There are many more leadership qualities like teamwork, humility, creativity, strategy, planning, execution, etc that would help your child with realizing their dreams; those listed above are the basic building blocks of a strong character. We can cultivate these habits in the children by handholding initially till these become like second nature to them.