Unit 13: Leadership Skills
Role of a leader activity guide
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Unit 13: Leadership skills
Role of a leader activity guide
Estimated duration: 20 minutes Aim •
To encourage students to think about the qualities that a good leader possesses
Outcome By the end of this class, students will be able to: • Identify key skills that are used by leaders • Identify that leaders need to consider both results and relationships
Resources •
Whiteboard and textas
Activity Description Profile of a Leader Have students brainstorm by themselves for a few minutes who they think are some examples of leaders. This might include leaders who are local, Australian, international, sporting, government, organisations, etc. Draw a line down the white board and create two categories – good leaders and bad leaders. Ask students for examples of leaders and if they fit into the ‘Good leaders’ or ‘Bad leaders’ category. Ask the group why they have grouped the leaders in this way. Try to tease out the reasons why some people are good leaders and some are bad. Look at the good group. On the board, list the actions identified by participants that contribute to making them good leaders. Do the same thing for the bad group. Results vs. Relationships Ask the students: • What do effective leaders do? The role of a leader is to bring a group together to achieve a vision. What makes some people brilliant leaders and other people pushed off the stand and out the back door? It’s all about BALANCE. • Good leaders are able to achieve a balance between both results and relationships. Draw a picture of a set of scales on the board, with one side of the scale marked as ‘results’ and one as ‘relationships’.
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Ask students what they think is meant by results. The results are the reason that you have a group of people together in the first place. The results are what you are trying to achieve. This might be to win a game, or to get your group safely across a river, or to build a new bike shelter in your community. Again draw a line down the board to create two categories, this time labelled ‘results’ and ‘relationships’. Ask students what skills might be closely linked to achieving results. Add their suggestions to the results side, e.g. get the job done, make decisions, initiate… All leaders have to know what results they want. Next ask students what skills might be closely linked to the relationships side of the scales (e.g. listening, encouraging, including, etc.). Leaders need to be concerned with the people in their team or group – the relationships. As a leader you need to be concerned with the people you are working with. You need to know how to bring the best out of people so you can achieve the results. Add the skills the students suggest to the ‘relationships’ side. Summary •
•
The key to a group working successfully together is to ensure that members strike a good balance in getting the task done and communicating their feelings, values and opinions about the task. Hence the balance of results and relationships. A good leader is able to ensure both results and relationships are considered important. At different times either of these might be more important than the other and a good leader will identify what is the most important thing at the time.
Student Roles and Responsibilities Participate in agreed tasks Contribute to class discussions
Level of Teacher Support Facilitate discussion Organise materials and equipment Introduce tasks and activities
Assessment To use these learning activities as assessment tasks, collect evidence such as: Teacher checklist and observation Teacher checklist for class discussions
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