Teaching Youth Leadership Skills

This article proposes three topics to incorporate into your curriculum when teaching youth leadership skills. The concepts are based on the research of John Maxwell who is a noted author, speaker, and leadership guru. Youth are guaranteed to gain valuable insight to maximize their leadership potential.

3 Topics

    21 Laws of Leadership

Everything begins and ends with leadership. John Maxwell's 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership are packed with wisdom. Even a veteran leader benefits from knowing them. Maxwell presents the laws and gives interesting examples from leaders in various fields to illustrate the points. The law of the lid, for instance, asserts that leadership ability is the lid that determines a person's level of potential.

Hence, if one is low in leadership ability, he will score low in potential. Here, John Maxwell uses the McDonald brothers to explain the law of the lid. Although the brothers were able to break into the fast food business and achieve some success, their lack of strong leadership affected their ability to sell the franchise concept and grow the company like Ray Kroc. According to the law of the lid, the brothers' low leadership ability negatively impacted their potential.

    21 Indispensable Traits of Leaders

Youth need to know what great leaders are made of, and John Maxwell's 21 Indispensable Traits of Leaders is an excellent reference tool to rely on when teaching leadership skills. It covers the qualities of great leaders. Some of the traits include character, charisma, commitment, courage, focus, passion, and positive attitude. First of all, teens will learn which qualities are essential to being a good leader. Again, John Maxwell provides models to demonstrate how the traits relate to the leader's effectiveness. Secondly, participants discover which qualities they already possess as well as those that need to be developed. Be sure to mention that no one person has all of the characteristics outlined in the book.

    Levels of Leadership

In addition to introducing teens to the laws of leadership and the traits of leaders, instruction regarding the levels of leadership is essential. John Maxwell outlines five stages (position, permission, production, people development, and pinnacle) in his book 5 Levels of Leadership. These steps reveal the natural progression that is required to lead winning teams. The goal is to move from level one to level 5. At level one people follow you because they have to. However, at level five people follow because of who you are and what you represent. If youth understand them, they will gain momentum and be better prepared when tackling their first leadership position.

Bonus Tip: You're invited to visit http://www.specialreportontraining.com to receive a FREE special report on 7 things to avoid when designing youth leadership training. Stephanie Harbin, a motivational speaker and training specialist, has developed and presented a wide range of programs for business, government, educational institutions, and non-profits. Her focus is on leadership, strategy, training, career and personal development.