6 Impactful Leadership Activities to Try at Work
The presence of a strong leader in the workplace is critical for a company to thrive. But you probably know that, right? I bet you’re very aware of your importance in the office, and I bet you’re trying to do your best to improve your leadership skills as well as your team’s performance. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be here, reading this post.
The best companies in the world are managed by exceptional leaders who care to acknowledge, accept, and improve their company’s value. As you might have understood already, a company that lacks the proper organization will sooner or later turn into chaos.
A true leader doesn’t expect things to happen on their own. Surprisingly or not, an effective and conscious company chief assumes responsibility for the team’s efficiency and the company’s performance knowing that without his persistent implication, everybody will have to suffer.
Now – you’re here to improve yourself and your team, so I’ll give you that chance in just a second. In this post, I’m going to:
Remind you of the qualities that great leaders throughout time possessed and leveraged
The practices that successful company leaders employ when dealing with their teams
The most effective leadership activities that you can employ to improve the efficiency of your team of employees
Therefore, sit tight, take notes, and make sure you implement whatever information you find useful. Knowledge without action is zero. Take that into consideration every time you spend time-consuming educational information. Let’s get started!
Essential Qualities of a True Leader
This is about you. Your way of handling your life, team, company, and career. The more knowledgeable and skilled you are the more impact your words, actions, and leading will have. Here are some of the essential qualities of a successful leader:
A true sense of responsibility – A true leader feels responsible for everything that affects the company’s wellbeing. He is also self-responsible. Never blames others, instead, he always tries to find the best solutions to suit the needs of everybody.
Communication skills – Every leader must always make himself understood by being concise and clear in communication. He needs to be able to truly listen and to be able to understand body language. Advanced writing skills are also critical for a leader’s ability to convey his ideas and objectives.
Transparency and honesty – A transparent and honest leader will always attract loyal followers. The employees will always feel like they’re working for a fair boss who is always going to represent their best interests.
Emotional intelligence – Exceptional leaders are in control of their thoughts, emotions, and behavior. They are self-aware, understand what’s going on within, and they never let themselves prey to impulsive behaviors. They’re empathic, caring, and good with people.
Creativity and proactivity – If a leader is using his advanced creativity in a proactive manner, the company’s going to grow consistently. Analytical skills, critical thinking, observation, and innovation are a few more “keywords” on the list.
Commitment to a clear vision – A clear vision is the first essential step a leader should develop. Without it, he won’t be able to truly inspire his team to fight hard to get closer to the goal. The more committed he is to pursue his company’s end goal the more persistent and consistent will he be in his pursuit.
Problem-solving skills – Problems are omnipresent. Instead of ignoring or denying them, a great leader embraces them and perceives them as normality. Because of this, he has developed great problem-solving skills that consistently help him keep up with the company’s and his employees’ struggles.
Key Practices to Develop and Nourish a Successful Team
In order for your employees to follow you in all directions, you must win their trust and make them feel comfortable yet stimulated while they’re in the office. Here are a few ideas of key practices that’ll help you do that:
Allow your employees to test their own ideas. Encourage failure instead of punishing it, and create an environment that encourages self-growth, creativity, and productivity.
Allow teams to have their own “autonomy”. Instead of commanding, begin influencing. Be the last who makes the decision, but let your employees have freedom.
Always communicate with your employees. Don’t hold any secrets, don’t leave people behind, and encourage everyone to be honest at all times.
Get personal every now and then. Keep a balance between professionalism and friendship and start bonding with your team members.
Establish the expectations and responsibilities of your team and keep it simple. Embrace changes and adapt to the current practices while staying aligned with your mission.
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Taylor Fars, HR Manager of a popular UK company that offers college homework help, brilliantly advises:
“Try to create a warming work environment that makes employees feel like they’re wanted and needed. Help them trust you, and you will win their trust. Once you do that, you can start organizing team building activities that will skyrocket your team’s individual and collective success. Pay attention! If you’re not respected and acknowledged as an effective leader, your activities will generate poor results.”
6 Exceptional Leadership Activities to Implement at Work
Before we start presenting several effective leadership activities, let’s quickly assess why organizing team building activities at work are incredibly beneficial for your company’s performance:
They allow the employees to introspect and observe their qualities, flaws, and behavior. Simply put, well-thought team building activities organized by a smart leader will improve the self-awareness of the participants. When and if they understand what they do wrong, they’ll be able to change their perspective and behavior.
Team building activities improve the confidence, skills, and motivation of the participants.
The bond between the team members, making them trust each other and communicate more effectively.
Group activities for adults turn a disorganized business into a highly efficient company that “knows what it’s doing”.
Now that you’ve been reminded of how important leadership activities are for any company and team of employees, let’s dive into the main topic of today’s post. Here are the 6 team building activities that’ll take your team to the next level:
1. The Leader’s Task
The first step of this activity: organize a debate or an essay competition that addresses leadership topics. Design the contest so that only a few people can win the first positions.
Create a few teams (two or three) and appoint the employees who won the contest as the leaders of the groups. Every team leader will be given an assignment, and his role will be to organize his team according to his own will.
Here are the rules: the teams that manage to achieve the goal will be rewarded. The teams who don’t, they’ll have to take some extra duties or some extra hours for a month.
2. 30 Seconds Left
Gather all of your employees and ask them to close their eyes and imagine the best moment of their life. Explain that they shouldn’t exclude moments such as personal breakthroughs, professional achievements, exciting adventures, experiences they’ve shared with lovers, friends, or family.
Give them exactly one minute to reflect on their most exciting life moments. After that, ask them to narrow down their search and seek the best 30 seconds experience that they’d like to share considering that (hypothetically) they’d only have 30 seconds left in this life.
Let them think for two minutes and let them know they can open their eyes once they are done. The last step is to allow them to communicate the best 30 seconds of their life. Ask for transparency and honesty.
This team building activity will allow your employees to get to know themselves better while allowing others to understand what they enjoy or care about the most. This is an intimate discussion that will encourage true bonding.
3. The Race of the Leaders
The race of the leaders is a simple yet efficient activity that helps you assess your employee’s self-confidence and self-esteem. This is an exercise that stimulates leadership behaviors and allows your employees to stand out from the crowd.
Write a list of leadership qualities on a piece of paper. Ten to twenty statements that express leadership qualities should be enough – e.g. “I’m responsible for what’s going on within and without. Everything that happens to me is on my account, and I never blame others for the problems I have.”
Read each sentence out loud and the participants to move a step forward if the statement they hear applies to them. Each step must be justified, so they must be ready to explain the reason why they believe that they possess those qualities.
Continue until you have a winner. By doing this exercise, your employees will get to know themselves better and their colleagues. You will find employees that have the potential to become great leaders, and you’ll be able to personalize their future experience in the company by assigning them leadership tasks and roles.
4. The “What If” Game
This is a simple activity that challenges your employees’ thinking and problem-solving abilities. Gather your employees (1 by 1 private meeting) and present several hypothetical problematic situations.
For example. “You have lost an important client because you haven’t followed the rules. You’ve lost our company a great deal of money. What is your justification and what is your solution?”
You can present these hypothetical situations individually or through a document that demands written answers. Make the questions rough and don’t give your employees too much to think. If the question is truly difficult, give them a maximum of five minutes.
By organizing this leadership activity, you can observe your employees’ analytical thinking, problem-solving, and leadership skills. You can also see how rational your employees are.
5. The Survival Game
Create groups of 5 to 10 people. Present a life-threatening situation: their plane has crashed, they have survived, and they found the leftovers from the plane crash.
Create a list of 20 to 30 items and ask the groups to choose only 5 items that’ll help them to survive. Allow your teams to reflect on the situation for ten minutes and have them present their answers.
Every team must justify why they’ve chosen those items and present the strategy that’ll help them survive. This exercise helps the participants practice their critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving skills, and allows for strategic thinking.
6. Shark Tank
Shark Tank is a famous entrepreneurship TV show that allows people to exercise their entrepreneurial skills.
You can do this exercise in two ways. You can split your team into several groups of people, or you can allow everyone to think and act for themselves.
The main objective of your employees is to develop a business plan that includes all the steps required for a startup to turn into a successful company.
Once they have the plan, ask them to develop a pitch that includes the following:
The brand’s name
The brand’s tagline (slogan)
The business plan (detailed)
The marketing plan (detailed)
The financial predictions (sales, profits, market)
The potential problems (competition, lack of resources)
If the employees are struggling to play the game, advise them to watch one or two episodes of Shark Tank.
Choose a few employees that you believe would fit the position of “Sharks” (the ones who grade the projects and offer the imaginary investments) and assign them imaginary roles (the Founder of Microsoft, the director of an NBA team, etc.) Make the roleplay fun!
As every team or individual presents his pitch, the sharks must assign investments and justify them. At the end of the game, the person or the team that raised most of the money will win. Make sure you reward this person/team in the appropriate way.
Takeaways
As you’ve already figured, becoming an exceptional leader that effectively manages his team, projects, responsibilities, time, and personal life at the same time is a complex matter.
However, if you don’t attain to reach your full potential as well as your team’s efficiency, you’ll never witness abundant success. You’ll hardly overcome the challenges that lie ahead of you, and you’ll barely manage to keep your team under control.
Keep growing, expanding, improving, and you’ll soon realize how important your consistent growth is for the ones around you. Take our advice into close consideration and be willing and confident enough to implement the leadership activities you’ve learned throughout this post. Keep your head up and remember: success is marked by consistent effort, smart thinking, and true commitment!
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