Why Young Leaders?

Leadership requires practice and there are very few opportunities for young people to practise leading.

Only one person can “lead” at a time, so it is difficult to create opportunities for every young person in a group to practise the skills of leading.

Many people see leadership as a natural ability rather than something that can learned and practised as a series of skills. Leading and leadership is more about using specific skills than having natural ability. Being a leader is like being a sports person. Some children are born with attributes that help them play a sport well, but success in any sport requires thousands of hours of practice to acquire the skills needed for success. Regardless of genetics, and being tall, or having long legs, or "a good eye", there is no substitute for practising if anyone wishes to be world-class at any sport. Genetics and physical characteristics can give an early advantage but, ultimately, success in sport has much more to do with the skills honed through practice than advantage gained through genetics.

Some individuals have attributes that help them lead, such as being extrovert or being tall but, more importantly, there are other skills that can be learned and practised. These skills include listening, communication and teamworking.

A musician that practised for 4 hours a day for a summer would be better than another player that did not pick up his instrument during the same period.

Similarly, teaching our YLs to be effective leaders is an area of great opportunity.

But where do we practise leadership?

Section meetings provide YLs with a safe place and a group of younger people where they can practise their developing skills, it's a perfect laboratory for trying different skills and experimenting with leadership. Success is instantly rewarded with happy children working together. Failure also provides immediate feedback in the form of grumpy young people or confusion.

In YL Unit meetings, reviewing their leadership successes or failures with feedback from missions and other experiences helps learning by exchanging ideas, and since every YL is experiencing similar challenges, sharing what they have learned with each other is a key part of the YL scheme.

The key to any YL opportunity is to have a group of younger children. The age difference between the Young leader and the younger children in a section provides some (though not complete) authority when starting out as a YL that makes it easier to appear to be a leader.

When possible, YLs should be supported by effective older or more experienced YLs to partner with and to observe what they do when they interact with the younger people in the section.

So what?

In short, leadership is important, it involves a series of skills and these skills require practice. Teens who wish to develop and hone their leadership ability should seek out opportunities to work with groups of younger children to get this practice. If they do so, they’ll be pleased to learn how easily these skills can be transferred to leadership in all areas of their lives.