KidLead Insights

I'm reading a book called "The Multiplier Effect."  It deals with the way school leaders often overlook the latent potential in their schools.  The book is a sequel to "The Multipliers."  Diminishers are smart leaders who get things done, but they tend to reduce the ability of others because they do so much themselves or intimidate others with their great talent or genius.  Multipliers are those who bring out the best in people and thus create a much stronger synergy in helping people work together.  By potlucking their abilities, they outperform the Diminishers, especially when we're trying to get more from less these days. In the context of young leader development, we often behave as Diminishers in schools, homes, faith communities and culture in general.  As adults we act like we have all the experience, talent, and ability, while failing to develop the potential of our young leaders as a result. Click HERE for the blog referring to Liz Wiseman'

Teams outperform individuals in most things. Many youth programs called "leadership" really just talk about team work, helping youth accomplishing things on teams.  But true leadership training is helping teams achieve more. That's what leaders do, they catalyze teams to get better. I recently saw an ad campaign to encourage people to ride the bus, but with a little tweaking, you can see the role of leaders in the clips, catalyzing the team to work together to accomplish what they could not as individuals. Click HERE to watch the creative vids.

I'm a bit surprised that so many parents invest countless hours and dollars into skills and things that will not necessarily benefit their children over a lifetime.  One area that is often overlooked is leadership development.  We hope our kids will become leaders, someday, but we do little to intentionally train them how to lead, now. A 2014 Pew Research project* compared satisfaction levels in bosses vs. workers. Naturally, we know all bosses aren't leaders, but the findings reflect what most of us sense intuitively that leaders feel more satisfied in life, work and with their pay.  These would seem to be things that we'd want for our kids, so helping them develop their leadership potential while they're pliable would seem a no-brainer.  Still, we appear more interested in things like sports, endless academic exercises, and entertainment.  We all know smart people with degrees who can't lead, so if a child has leadership potential, why not develop it along wit

As we roll out our leadership training curriculum for young female leaders, I'm encouraged to see how women leaders are rising in efficacy. In a recent Harvard Business Review blog, some statistics demonstrated that female leaders were better liked as leaders. Based on over 7000 leaders surveyed, 57% of male leaders were deemed effective, but 67% of women leaders were. Obviously this is a broad brush stroke, but the survey broke down the results in more refined ways.  Needless to say, a new day is dawning for female leaders.  KidLead is proud to be a part of this movement. Click HERE to read the blog.

Well, it's here, the new SheLead training curricula.  We've jazzed it up a bit, to reflect a more feminine yet strong approach to leading.  The four modules for both preteens and young adults at Lime, Raspberry, Grape, and Tangerine.  Lime and Raspberry modules are now available. One thing we know about most women leaders, is that they're passionate about developing young female leaders.  Perhaps it's because they relate to the struggles they've experienced or just a desire to give their sisters a head start.  We are excited about the warm reception this idea is receiving, around the world.  We believe it is truly a game-changer.

Amazing, just amazing; that's what I walked away feeling, after observing Laurie Vroom and Tammy Phillips run a leadership activity for 5 & 6 year olds at our design school partner in Silicon Valley.  Mrs. Vroom and Mrs. Phillips are consummate pros when it comes to teaching, but they also understand the social dynamics of organizational leadership, even at the Kindergarten level. These two teachers took their students through a leadership training activity on communication, designating a team leader, charged with creating a paper collage.  As I observed, Laurie and Tammy whispered subtle cues to the team leaders, beside whom they sat.  One student was a more natural leader and the other a more reticent one, but both teams accomplished their goals.  Then the teachers debriefed the activity with everyone, closing as they began, with a song about leaders listening and speaking.  I couldn't keep from smiling as I watched these two pros apply leadership training with studen

Most of us are familiar with individual Intelligence Quotients (IQ), typically measured as the ability to accomplish a variety of cognitive tasks at a certain rate and effectiveness.  But did you know that groups possess a cumulative IQ?  Research published in Science magazine (Oct. 29, 2010) notes that team IQ, being higher than individual IQs, also varies from group to group.  The hypothesis is that it is easier to improve group IQ than individual IQ. If the role of a leader is to help a team achieve more, then it makes sense that an effective leader can in turn increase the team's IQ.  Our belief is that by teaching kids to do this at a young age, we can help them improve their effectiveness as adults, because they'll have decades of more experience and will begin to consciously and subconsciously recognize best practice team development skills.  To read more about the article mentioned above, click HERE .