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Leadership skills are valuable for children to
learn. These skills provide your child the courage
and perseverance to pursue his goals along with the
ability to inspire others to do their best.
Here are leadership skills your child can start learning now.
1. Emotional Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence (EI) is
the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and
the emotions of others. Someone with emotional intelligence
can read how others are feeling and use this understanding to
build successful interpersonal relationships and inspire others.
The best way to develop EI is by modeling it. Your kids watch
how you handle your emotions, especially strong ones like
anger, and how you react to the strong emotions of others.
2. Ability to take risks and learn from failure.
Sometimes parents keep their child from pursuing a new
interest in an attempt to protect him from failure. However,
an understanding of risk
and how to manage it comes
from experiencing failure. Let
your child take a risk and try out
for the sports team or for that part
in the school play. If he fails, be there
to support him and encourage him
to apply what he learned from the experience to his
next endeavor.
3. Good teamwork. Many parents put a large emphasis on
individual achievement that their kids never learn to be part
of a team. Sign your child up for activities that enable him to
exercise his communication skills and work with others to
reach a goal.
4. Strong work ethic. Say ‘no’ to instant gratification.
Instead, ask your child to create a plan to earn what he wants.
Hold him accountable to it and let him experience the joy of
achieving a goal through hard work.
5. Being authentic and trustworthy. Teach your child to
mean what he says and follow through with it. Encourage him
to be forthcoming when he does make a mistake. Leaders are
human after all and are not perfect.
HOO’s PARENTING
Teaching
Leadership
skills
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