by Fatima Sheikh | Mar 3, 2021 | Personal Growth, Personal Life
In 2018, I was lucky to be selected to participate in the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) program for Cohort 6, West Africa. I was super excited and could not wait to show my true leadership skills. Before that, I was already the vice president of my Community Development Service (CDS) group. You might say I was craving leadership roles and all, but you are wrong. I am extremely introverted, a loner who loves her space and privacy. But I thought to myself, what exactly does it feel like doing something new, something out of the box, something I was not comfortable with? And I gave leadership a try; I did not only excel at my YALI program but aced it and was recognized amongst the top twenty-three participants in the Cohort.
What was my take-home from these experiences? A lot and I am willing to share with you. Are you an introvert who loves his/her space just like I do, or on a quest of improving your leadership career? Here are some tips for you.
Tips to Improve Your Leadership Skills
1. Master Public Speaking
This was my biggest fail, during the beginning of my leadership role. I will always have panic attacks before any of the meetings. But constant practice and rehearsal helped me out.
Some people are born public speakers, while others aren’t. Either way, great public speaking skills go a long way in helping you communicate effectively with your team members. Join public speaking clubs like Toastmasters, you will be glad you joined.
2. Learn to Delegate
Being a leader isn’t just about being the boss and carrying out tasks all by yourself. A good leader is always concerned about how the followers carry out dedicated tasks. As a leader, you must guide your followers, educate them, and also delegate tasks to them. Don’t be a jack of all trades and delegates.
This is one of the hows improve your leadership skills
3. Analyze Your Strengths and Weaknesses
We all have our strengths and weaknesses and knowing them and working on them goes a long way in improving our leadership skills. Take a personality test, ask your friends and family for their honest opinions on your strengths and weaknesses, and then work on them.
4. Get a Mentor
Getting yourself a mention is one of the ways to improve your leadership skills. We all have that one person we aspire to be like. We see ourselves being that person or even better. Get yourself a mentor. Learn from them or ask them to guide you on your journey.
Many are willing to help especially if you are serious-minded.
5. Become Discipline
Just like George Washington said:
Nothing is more harmful to the service than the neglect of discipline; for it is discipline more than numbers that give one army superiority over another.
George Washington
A leader is not a true leader unless he or she possesses self-discipline and masters’ self-control. Every leader or aspiring leader should have a professional order in carrying out their daily activities or assigned tasks. This will go a long way in molding you to be a refined and respected person.
If you are naturally disorganized or late to work or meetings, build a daily strict regime to help you perform better and stand out from your peers.
Conclusion
Leadership does not only mean leading a town or a nation. You can be a leader in your own home to your siblings, spouse, or children, and having these leadership skills will always come in handy. Fortunately, leadership is learnable, so take courses, read materials or watch your mentors and parents execute their leadership style and learn from them.
Being a better leader is not as difficult as it might appear. With constant practice and hard work, you will achieve your goal of being a better leader.
I hope you find this write-up helpful. If you do, kindly leave a comment for me in the comments section. You could also tell us about any leadership position you have held previously. Thank you.
by Happiness Hassan | Mar 1, 2021 | Family & Parenting
A large percentage of parents fail to realize that creativity is not inborn. Rather it’s learned through quality training. As a result of this, they spend their entire life criticizing their children for not performing up to their expectations. Likewise, the thought on how to encourage creativity in a child without experiencing stress keeps brooding through their minds.
Children at the tender stage are quick learners. Hence, it’s more beneficial to boost their creativity at such a stage. In this post, I will share 8 practical steps to foster your kid’s creativity.
Ways to Encourge Your Kids Creativity
1. Get Them Engaged in Creative Activities
Idleness and unproductive activities kill creativity in a child. Get your kids engaged in reasoning activities that enhance their intelligence quotient, encourage them to think outside the box, and do the extraordinary. These activities could include puzzle games, crambo, quantitative and verbal reasoning, camping, and treasure hunting.
It helps groom your child to view life from a broader perspective, outside the four walls of their classroom.
2. Encourage Freedom of Expression
Kids irrespective of their instant location love to live out their true selves, most especially amongst their peers. As a parent, your role in such a scenario is termed observation. Learn to study your kids while they display certain behaviours without scolding. The moment you scold that child fear of expression is inputted into his heart.
By observation, you detect what your child is keen about. Peradventure, you bumped into your child who had turned your living room in a trash bin with old papers, paints, and pencils used in drawing. Of course, I can relate to that initial annoyance to spank that child, seeing the mess the house looks like. Even at that, don’t shut that child up, allow him to express his creativity while you watch. In essence, it’s a pointer to your child’s interest.
3. Provide The Necessary Resources
When your child’s interest is known, step further by providing the needful resources to foster your child’s creativity. Are you parents who are interested in learning how to encourage creativity in a child? Then learn from Khadija’s story.
It was lunchtime, everyone was at the table except Khadija who was busy in her room. What could she be doing her mom ponders as she heads for her room. She had repeatedly called her name, but Khadija was engrossed with something no one knew about. On entering her room, she found her daughter stitching pieces of paper together to form little paper dresses and straps of her old dresses scattered around the room.
Khadija was so focused on what she was doing she didn’t notice the presence of her mom who watched her six-year-old daughter in amazement. Immediately, it dawns on her that Khadija was interested in fashion. The next day she ordered fabrics, buttons, sewing thread of different colours, and tape. Hence, she has succeeded in enhancing her daughter’s creativity in fashion by providing the needed resources.
4. Ask Questions
As a parent learn to stretch your child’s curiosity by asking them reasoning questions. Their imaginative faculty gets utilized as they think of answers to the questions asked. Usually, not related to the normal arithmetic and vocabulary studies in their school. Questions like; why is the sky blue and why do you have two eyes.
This set of questions deepen their curiosity as they attempt to provide an answer.
5. Show Interest in Their Creativity
To foster your child’s creativity, avoid criticizing their attempt to do something extraordinary. Always compliment your child whenever they did something good. For instance, your child walked up to you with a book containing a poem she had composed for you as a birthday present. Being a loving parent who is learning how to encourage creativity in a child, don’t start by highlighting the grammatical errors or spelling mistakes in her poem.
Rather, begin by complimenting her beautiful composition, showing how grateful you are, indicating your interest in her passion. Furthermore, don’t restrict your child’s creativity because it isn’t what you want for that child, neither should you pressure them into a career they don’t like.
6. Teach Them Different Methods of Solving Problems
Build your child’s creativity by instructing them on how to create an alternative course of action when faced with a challenge. This is perfectly illustrated in Ali’s story. This young teenager lost track of his mom in the market. However, he was able to locate his mom by putting a call through with the help of a trader’s cellphone.
In a nutshell, Ali would have spent hours crying in search of his mom, perhaps spending a night at the police station before being found by his parents. However, that wasn’t his story because before the incident his parents had taught him their respective phone numbers for emergencies.
7. Ensure Your Kids Achieve a Broader Knowledge
Ensure your kids acquire skills most especially soft skills which are rarely taught in normal academic settings. Acquiring more knowledge exposes them to a range of options. Also, enrol them in classes that enhance their interest. Perhaps, Your child produces Melodious sounds by skillfully hitting sticks on tables in the house. To encourage creativity enrol him in an instrumentalist school.
This is why it is important you consider several factors before choosing your kid’s school.
8. Inculcate Reading Habit in Your Kids
To encourage creativity in a child also entails reading books to gain more knowledge. Your child gets to picture what he or she reads from a book. They begin to create mental possibilities of the story plots in that book. This habit broadens their creativity.
Also, the more your child reads, they learn more about other fields of life and how things are done in different places around the world. It also helps to build their vocabulary and enhance quick understanding.
Conclusion
As a parent, learn to lead by example. It is vital when unveiling the steps on how to encourage creativity in a child. You shouldn’t expect your child to learn various methods of problem-solving when as a parent, you perform one task every day using one method. Likewise, you can’t force them to read while you watch TV shows. You should join them. Preferably allocate time for it.
Also, do share your thoughts regarding this post in the comment section below.
