Wait! My kid is not a leader?
By: Eric Wong
Tags: Leadership, Parenting, Kids, Children, Education

The topic of leadership is a common one among us HR practitioners for ages. We’ve got so many books on this topic, and so many gurus out there. While the debate on whether leaders are made or born is still inconclusive, there are a couple of things that we all can agree on. First of all, not all of us are leaders, and there is a difference between a leader and a manager.

Something that caught my attention recently was this talk about leadership in kids among the parenting community that I was a part of. It seems that this had become quite a big deal in schools, or rather, this is now an essential part of the kids’ development. What bothered me wasn’t the fact that we as parents are placing emphasis on developing our kids’ leadership skills. I mean, this is a good thing I feel. However, what bothered me were the serious misconceptions parents have, and how they tried to push their kids towards something that could seriously hurt their kids’ development.

It could be the movies that we grew up with, instilling in us that leadership equals to playing the hero role in any given situation. And, maybe it’s that “smarter than everyone” character that stood out like a shiny star. The truth about real leadership? It’s often a lot less glamorous.

While I’ll not try to be that guru who thinks that I can put a clear definition of what true leadership is, but I can quite certainly point out what it is not. Here are the three common issues that I noticed.

The Alpha Mentality

You have to be the alpha in the group to be a leader. You got to be the one that knows everything and the one that gives the instructions. The rest are supposed to follow your direction. You need to be firm and forceful with group members who disagree and make them see things your way.

We see this alot in organizations and I have to admit that there are a lot of these alpha mentalities around.

However, this is not a style of leadership that suits everyone. What’s more, there are many other styles of leadership that are equally or more effective than taking an autocratic or authoritative approach.

One Person Team

This is a very scary observation especially to see this in kids. I’ve heard this so many times with parents telling their kids that they have to volunteer to lead. It is important to be the leader. But what happened to understanding the task? Or, the resources or group that you have to work with? To lead effectively, you need to be able to first understand the parameters that you’re working with, before charging head first into any situation.

Coaching kids to fight for the lead role and making other roles look lesser is a bad move. A good leader understands that he/ she is only as good as the team, and every role is important. Sometimes, the smarter move is to step aside and let someone else take charge.

More words than action

I actually overheard this conversation between a mum and her kid where she told him that he has to be a leader and tell others what to do. He shouldn’t be doing the work, but just instructing his team members to do the work. She added that, “That’s what a leader should do!”.

I was shocked! While I see her point in “delegating” and agree to a large extent that it is important, pushing the kid to hands off is another thing altogether.

From what I’ve observed with this kid, he was very comfortable with leading by example. He would work on a task with someone else in the team and once his teammate is comfortable with continuing the task, he moves on.

He was perfectly fine and was showing very good leadership in my opinion. His only “mistake”? He wasn’t vocal enough in “instructing” his team! Obviously, I disagree.

Is there a right way to develop leadership skills in kids?

I feel that too much emphasis is placed on the topic of leadership. “To lead is good and to follow is bad?”. To hear that out loud feels awkward for many of the parents I spoke with. It’s clear to them that they want to raise kids who can lead, but rarely do you hear parents say that they want to raise kids to be a good follower. The magic word we’re looking for here is “teamwork”.

Only when you are clear about the task and the roles of each one on the team can you function effectively as part of the team. Be it as the lead or as a member of the team, each role is important and essentially in its own way to accomplish the task.

As a first step to properly develop leadership skills in kids, I feel that the focus should be placed on developing team work. With a task focused approach, build on the kid’s collaboration skills and confidence. The leadership trait will develop naturally.

So, is my kid a leader?

I think he is, but not a conventional one.

In one of our conversations, I asked him if he thinks he’s got leadership skills and if he’s a leader. His response was a simple “maybe”!

Having played a number of games with my kid, I had the chance to observe his up close. There is an online game which I watched him play where he was playing with a number of other players. These are players from all over the world, and they would communicate via the text chat or sometimes via voice (using discord). There were a number of game tasks that the team needed to accomplish.

I’ve watched him and his team win and lose the game on many different occasions, and also him playing the role both as a member of the team, and as a leader dishing out instructions to the other members.

So, do I think he is a leader or is someone with leadership skills? I think so. However, I believe he’s more focused on trying to win the game by accomplishing the tasks. He would step up to lead if he needs to and follow where it made sense.

This Article

What I hoped to achieve with this article is to raise the awareness of the topic of leadership in kids.

Yes, it is important to have that as part of their development, but I hope that parents can see teamwork and collaboration as essential building blocks to establishing their very own style of leadership.

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About the author!

Eric Wong is a father of 2 amazing kids and is constantly learning from them. For work, Eric Wong is the Managing Consultant from The Talent Shark. His experience spans across the various human resource functions such as HR Information Systems, Business Partnering and Talent Management. Eric is also the Advisor for Workbond and currently sits on the Advisory Board of the Management Development Institute of Singapore (MDIS). Connect with him on Linkedin or follow him on Twitter @ErickyWong.

For more stories and articles on careers, job search and anything HR, you can also visit us at The Talent Shark’s Publication on Medium!

For more stories and articles on parenting, you can also visit us at The Joy of Parenting Publication on Medium!