Leadership Activities for High School Students

There are many leadership ideas for high school students which can help in developing their confidence and making them assertive. As self awareness is the key to development, the leadership activities listed in the following paragraphs would help in self assessment and personality development.

What is Leadership?
Defining the term leadership is a difficult thing to do. However, it could be described as the process by which one influences people in order to get them enlisted in an activity for achieving a particular objective. Developing leadership skills in children from the high school days is important. The school is a place where a child can learn much more than the structured courses included in the curriculum, provided the right training is given.

Leadership Activities for High School Students
The various leadership activities for students mentioned below would help in personal assessment, developing potential leadership skills along with a sense of responsibility and identifying their leadership style.

Learning to Lead: The participants for this activity could be from a minimum of 4 to 20 at the most. It takes around 1 hour to complete this activity. The objective of conducting this leadership activity is to help the participants to identify their development needs and instilling in them a belief that nobody else but they are responsible for their development. The activity is started with a group discussion on self assessment followed by a questionnaire to be completed by the participants. The questions included in the questionnaire could be such that they test a person's behavior. One can prepare his own list of questions for the test (for example, which thing holds more importance to you, self-esteem or power?). The questions could be provided with multiple-choice options or they could be presented in the normal format. The participants should be asked to work in pairs and carry out the assessment of their peers. This leadership activity enables the participants to identify the self development priorities for themselves. It is necessary for a leader to understand his strengths and weaknesses before thinking about leading a group or a team. The 'Learning to Lead activity thus, proves to be the first step in the development of leadership in students.

Leadership Swap: The students are divided into groups of three in this activity. Objective of the activity is to enable the students to share their experiences and build rapport. A list of situations is provided to the students and they have to think of an experience similar to these situations. Here is a list of some of the situations provided to the participants:

• Something that generated a great deal of excitement.
• A pleasant surprise.
• A creative twist on a situation or issue.
• An 'Aha' moment.
• A clever improvisation.
• A really tough situation.
• A breakthrough insight or solution.
• A conflict resolved.
• An emotional situation.
• A blindside experience.

Learning from Donald Trump: In this activity, the students are divided in teams and the same activity is assigned to each of these groups. The activities should be such that the success could be measurable. Selling a product like lemonade, car wash, etc. could be assigned to the groups. Once the tasks assigned to the teams are over, the successes and failures of these teams are discussed. The team leader thus, understands the right as well as wrong moves made by his team. Such assessments help the teams in improving their performance during the next round of activities. To make the activity interesting, best team leader could be chosen.

Identifying the Body Language: In this activity, students are provided with a list of commonly observed behaviors in people. On the basis of this information, students have to interpret the expression conveyed by means of the behavior. Here is the list of some behaviors that are commonly observed.

• A person rolls his eyes after saying or hearing something.
• A person plays with the change in his pocket while communicating.
• A person refuses to make eye contact while he is speaking.
• A person talks with arms crossed.
• A person talks to others while invading their personal space.
• A person squirms or rocks while he is speaking.
• A person whispers to another person while in a group setting.
• A person turns his back on someone as the other person is entering the group.
• A person looks towards the ground or slumps his shoulders while speaking.
• A person shakes his fist or points finger at another person.

The leadership activities are important for realizing their potentials and for leadership development.