Leadership Development Activities

Leadership development activities don't have to be outlandish and involve bungee jumping off a 200 foot bridge. There are some safer and less controversial ways to develop leadership among your team and family members. If you're looking for leadership development activities for your team or family, here are a few fun things you can do right now. Cook together -- This works with family, friends, groups, and even work groups. You can have everyone bring a different ingredient and spend an evening together cooking. You can do a potato bar, or individual pizzas, or even cook a fancy meal together. Working together to create a meal, then sitting down together to enjoy it will foster a team environment, creativity, and practice leadership skills. Collaborate -- A lot of people think they are collaborating, when they're really just working collectively on a project. If each person is assigned one task to do, then someone puts the individual work together into one cohesive unit that is actually collective work, not collaborative. Try to work on a project in a truly collaborative way and see what happens. It could be a family scrapbook or written history, or a company marketing and promotion plan. Give power away -- Let different family members or team members express their leadership by stepping back. You can let a different child plan dinner each week, including giving them a budget, taking them shopping, and letting them cook it, or provide a budget to a team to maximize the return on investment. You let a different team member be responsible for a project and let them make the final decisions. Empowering people to practice leadership skills will enhance any business or family unit. The important thing with any activity is to allow any member to step up and share their opinion on how something should be done. Then allow them to do it the way they feel is best. Regardless of the outcome, use praise and encouragement them to learn what worked or could have been improved; in all cases acknowledge the effort. You can guide the effort by offering criteria of the end product in advance, but don’t put in too many parameters that will stifle the creating. By letting others stand up and use or hone their skills, you will create an environment that allows everyone to invent a new standard of leadership for your family or team. Even if it's something silly like allowing children to show you how they would set the table, even if it's "wrong" it's okay because you are letting the child express themselves and invent new ways of doing and being. The world will not come to an end if the dinner table is set differently, or someone changes your words in the collaborative project, or if you share your power one a day a week.