6 Inspiring Leadership Activities to Try at Work

Today, leadership skills are undoubtedly important for both leaders and employees, as leaders can manage their staff more effectively and employees can acquire helpful skills including decision-making and delegation.

Many business owners offer leadership activities to help employees test, practice and enhance technical abilities while tackling problems in ways that facilitate growth and innovation.

So what are leadership activities? Why do you need them for your business? And we also include 6 example activities that you can organize right away for your crew in this post.

What are leadership activities?

Leadership activities are activities that help participants enhance multiple skills and become effective leaders. They can be organized outside of the office or in the break time of a conference.

Some skills that employers and employees can acquire through leadership activities are communication, delegation, responsibility, teamwork, flexibility and so forth. These skills aren’t specifically necessary for business owners, but also for staff.

Why do businesses need leadership activities at work?

Before listing out some effective leadership activities, let’s see why organizing them at work brings unimaginable benefits to your company’s productivity and performance.

Employees can acquire leadership skills

While your employees may have educational backgrounds and work experience you desire, they may not have the necessary leadership skills to take charge of their projects, or work confidently with colleagues and clients.

Leadership activities help train your employees for the challenges that they may encounter in your company’s industry, from making conversations to managing groups of people.

Employees can know their strengths and weaknesses

Leadership activities allow employees to make use of different skills, thus helping employees reflect on their strengths and weaknesses.

Once employees can see and understand their mistakes and shortcomings, they can make adjustments accordingly.

Employees can be a better version of themselves

Leadership activities give participants a chance to challenge their limits, thus elevating confidence, skills, and motivation.

Leadership activities help company staff transform into a highly united and efficient team that works together to achieve company’s goals.

6 Leadership Activities to Try in the Workplace

1. Thirty Seconds Left

This leadership activity will allow your team to understand themselves better while letting others know what they love or care about the most.

First, gather your staff and ask them to close their eyes then think about the most exciting moments of their lives in exactly one minute. Those events can be personal achievements, professional achievements, memorable adventures, time with loved ones, friends, or family.

After that, give them two minutes to name only the best 30 seconds experience that they’d like to share if they’d only have 30 seconds left in this life.

Now, you can ask them to open their eyes once they are done. Then move to the last step in which they can share the best 30 seconds of their life in front of everyone. Remember to emphasize honesty in their stories.

2. What If?

This is a simple activity that challenges your employees’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Gather your employees for one-on-one meetings in which you give them some hypothetical situations with problems to solve.

For instance, you can present problems such as “You have failed to sign an important contract because of your miscommunication with the other party. This brings the company a huge loss. What is your solution?”

You can present these hypothetical situations by telling the employees directly or writing to them. Make the problems hard and don’t give them too much time to think. If the question is too difficult, allow them to think in five minutes maximum.

This leadership activity helps the company leader to observe the staff’s analytical thinking and leadership skills.

3. Back-to-Back Drawing

Ask employees to divide into pairs then each pair will sit back-to-back. Give one person paper and pen; give the other an object. The person with the object describes it without calling its name (you can forbid the close phrases as well), then his/her team member will draw it.

This leadership activity helps your staff improve their communication skills which are very important for teamwork.

4. The Survival Game

The first step to do is to split your employees into groups of 5 to 10 people. After that, give them a life-threatening situation: their plane has crashed but they managed to survive, and they found the leftovers from the accident.

Make a list of 20-30 items and ask the groups to pick only 5 items that will help them survive. Allow them to discuss for ten minutes before presenting answers. Every team must explain the reason why they’ve chosen those items and propose strategies to go along with the items that will help them survive.

This leadership activity helps your staff practice creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

5. The Leader’s Mission

First, organize a debate tournament or an essay competition that covers leadership topics. Format the contest so that only a few contestants can win.

Create two or three teams then make the employees who won the competition the leaders of the teams. Each team leader will receive a task and his responsibility is to lead his team to complete the task.

The teams that accomplish the mission will be rewarded. The losing teams, on the other hand, will have to take some extra tasks.

6. The Race of the Leaders

This is a simple, yet efficient leadership activity that helps managers evaluate the staff’s confidence and self-esteem. Not only does it encourage leadership behaviors but also gives every individual a chance to stand out from the crowd and shine.

The first step to do is to jot down 10-20 leadership attributes on a piece of paper. For example, you can write: “I’m responsible for any problem happening to my company. I am committed to solving the problem to deliver the best outcome for the company”.

Next, read what you have written out loud and the employees will move a step forward if they feel like possessing the quality. For each step they take, they must explain why they think that the quality applies to them. Repeat the action until you have a winner.

By doing this exercise, your staff will be able to know more about themselves and their colleagues. You will be able to identify employees who can potentially become great leaders and give them leadership roles.

Conclusion

Leadership is a skill that not only senior managers should possess and improve. Employees also need to cultivate the skill by taking part in leadership activities to boost confidence, dare to be different and know how to make the best use of their personal strengths.

Once staff are inspired by well-thought activities that you organize for them, they will be more likely to perform better, which is beneficial for them and your business.