Helping your students become college- and career-ready is the primary goal of your CTE program, and developing young leaders is an important part of achieving that goal. By integrating leadership soft skills into your CTE program, your students will have opportunities to actively practice skills like trust, professionalism, conflict resolution and integrity – and prepare for successful futures.
Earlier this month, we hosted a free webinar about integrating leadership skills into your CTE program. Hosted by Denise DuBois, longtime Realityworks product manager, the webinar reviewed activities and lessons teachers can easily incorporate to engage students in leadership concepts and develop leadership skills. Here are the 3 best practices, plus activities and lessons, Denise shared in her webinar.
Best Practice #1: Engage your students
In a 2018 LinkedIn study, 57% of business leaders rated soft skills more important than hard skills. Our first best practice for helping your students develop leadership soft skills is to engage your students. CTE in general is all about experiential learning, and it is no different as you introduce leadership soft skills for practice and application into your lessons.
Lesson idea: SPECIAL introductions
One lesson you can incorporate is the acronym SPECIAL: Smile, Posture, Eye Contact, Confidence, Introduce Yourself, Ask a Question, Learn and Listen. Helping students learn self-confidence important soft skill for any occupation (and we know that in a post-COVID work environment, things like handshakes may no longer be the norm). Practicing a professional way to introduce yourself and initiate a conversation, making a solid first impression, is a great way to engage your students.
Have students pair up and practice with each other, then discuss what worked and what didn’t work.
Teaching remotely? Have students practice introducing themselves on camera – the SPECIAL steps are no different via computers than they are in person.
Lesson idea: Confidentiality scenarios
Another way to engage your students is through the use of confidentiality scenarios. Using confidentiality is a great strategy for building trust. After all, you can’t expect to be an effective leader if you betray the trust someone has placed upon you. One of the most common signs of someone who cannot be trusted with confidential information is the person who says, “So-and-so told me this in confidence, but I know you won’t say anything.” While you may feel special that this person trusts you, what about the person whose information they promised not to divulge? Has this ever happened to you or with someone you trusted? Have students share any examples they are comfortable with.
Divide your class into small groups of three or four students. Give students a Confidentiality Scenario. You can use one for everyone group or come up with several so each group has their own. Have each group come to a consensus as to how they would recommend handling each scenario, along with the reason(s) why they chose their answer.
Best Practice #2: Instill professionalism into your classroom
From Denise: “I was recently in an Illinois CTE teacher’s classroom, and the instructor, who had come from industry, was lamenting the fact that her students couldn’t communicate, didn’t know the value of showing up on time, etc. Well, a great place to start developing those skills is in the classroom – especially if they are not experiencing those requirements anywhere else. By demanding professionalism, you’re setting your students up to succeed in the workplace.”
The key here is consistency. Every day, make sure your students know they’re expected to:
- Arrive on time
- Come prepared
- Use proper spelling and punctuation
- Dress for success
Now, we know you might not be able to do every one of these items every day. The idea is to mimic a work environment, and get your students used to those professional habits.
Lesson idea: What are the attributes of a professional?
Begin by introducing the definition of the term “professionalism” to the class. Professionalism integrates a number of different attributes which, together, serve to identify and define a professional.
Then, ask your students what they think the attributes of a professional are. Most of the attributes or characteristics of a professional can be summarized as how you act, how you look, and how you think. Ask students to share the attributes they identified in the previous step, and provide some thought-provoking questions to facilitate discussion. Are professionalism and leadership the same thing? Are there characteristics that you would consider professional, but not characteristic of a leader? Why or why not?
Lesson idea: Coaching as a leader
As a leader, there is a difference between telling people what to do and working with employees on professional development. A core competency for an effective leader is coaching, which focuses on developing employees. One way you can introduce the concept of coaching as a leader is through a Ted Talk like this one hosted by Mark Smith. If you google ‘coaching’ you’ll find many that could be used. Here is one example that I found that runs about 18 minutes
Teaching remotely? Videos are a good way break from an online presentation and can be watched when the students are ready, then discussed in writing or via an LMS application.
Best Practice #3: Integrate leadership skills into every class
Good, effective leadership is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved upon. And while we tend to notice the more obvious charismatic leaders with the loud and bold personalities, the fact is that anybody, even the quiet kid in the back who hardly speaks a word in class, can be a leader.
Lesson idea: Ice-breakers
One easy way to integrate leadership skills into every class is through the use of ‘ice breaker’ activities. These could be a 30-second introduction or a focused 5-minute activities, such as:
- Start class with a quick think-pair-share activity where students pair up for a quick discussion. Collaborative work helps build communication skills.
- Write a “big idea” question on the board and have students journal their answers. Open-ended questions help build problem-solving skills.
- Use a K-W-L chart at the beginning and end of class to help students reflect on what they know and what they’ve learned. Reflection activities help build critical thinking skills.
- Conduct “introductions with a twist,” where everyone introduces themselves and states something unusual about themselves that no one knows. Oral speaking assignments help build self-confidence.
- Give each small group a bowl with (pre-measured) dried beans in it and ask them to put in a few larger objects (i.e. fruit). Instruct each group to spill their beans, then pile them back in again. Then, show them the trick of putting the larger objects in first and the beans around them. This will illustrate the point of prioritizing the big stuff and fitting the smaller things around it. Interruptions for the rest of the day can be referred to as beans.
It is highly likely that at some point in their life, everyone will be called upon to lead in some capacity. With this in mind, it is crucial that we provide what training we can to prepare our students for leadership roles — to prepare them to be good, effective leaders that will take others in a positive direction.
You can watch the entire webinar on-demand anytime by clicking below:
Additional leadership and soft skill resources:
- Get more in-class ideas in our free soft skills implementation guide
- Supplement your program with these free employability skill lessons
- Explore our easy-to-implement Employability Soft Skills Program and Leadership Soft Skills Program
