Leadership Skill-Building Activities

Written by: Connie Luayon • Edited by: Ronda Levine
Published Jun 23, 2010

Providing leadership skill building activities helps managers tap potential leaders. Develop your employees' leadership skills by empowering them, giving them a chance to make decisions, and by encouraging them to pursue personal growth.

click to enlarge

A good leader must be able to train his people to become leaders themselves. This is why leadership skill building activities should be provided to employees who may play bigger roles in the company in the future. According to management guru John Maxwell, "All the training in the world will provide limited success if you don’t turn your people loose to do the job." Maxwell believes that if you get the best people, give them your vision, train them in the basics, and then let go, you will get a high return from them.

This article suggests 3 activities which you can provide your subordinates during leadership training.

Activity 1: Dreamstorming

This activity aims to assist each trainee in creating a vision for the company. At the end of the activity, the participants must arrive at a shared vision.

Ask the trainees to visualize their dream for the company. Have them write down one vision statement on a small sheet of colored paper.
After 10 to 15 minutes, ask the participants to share their vision and dreams.
When everyone has finished sharing, conclude the activity by reviewing the dreams/visions generated.
Gather similar items together. This is also known as clustering.
Ask the participants how they felt while they were trying to create a vision for the company. What do they think of the visions shared by others?

Activity 2: Goal Setting

This activity aims to develop goals and plans that will enable the participants to achieve their shared vision for the company. At the end of the activity, the group should be able to identify who will be responsible for each goal.

From the previous activity, choose a vision that is shared by most of the participants.
Ask the participants how they can achieve that vision. Concrete actions and steps must be provided.
Assign specific people to work on each goal.

Activity 3: Problem Solving

This activity aims to train future leaders in solving cases by following logical thought process.

Break the participants into two or three groups.
Present a case study or a problem commonly encountered in your company.
Provide a step-by-step process for how managers deal and solve problems.
Have each group present concrete solutions.
The group with the best solution wins.

Additional Tips

Leadership skill-building activities also encourage your people to voice out their thoughts and opinions and improve their self-worth. Aside from conducting these activities, you can help them develop their leadership skills by providing extra support and help. This is done by making available the resources and facilities for staff to be trained on a continuous basis, setting achievable targets, and providing effective appraisals.

References

Buchholz, S, Roth,T. (1987). Creating the High Performance Team. New York. John Wiley & Sons.
Covey, Sean. (1998) The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. New York. Fireside.
Heller, Robert. (1998) How To Delegate. London. Dorling Kindersley.
Maxwell, John. (1995) Developing The Leaders Around You. Tennessee. Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Image credit: morgueFile.com