Demonstration of Leadership Skills as a Student Leader

In order to be an effective leader, one must demonstrate special leadership skills which include team work, planning, communication, adaptability and persuasion skills. Team work skills ensure individuals work cooperatively and collaboratively together. Planning skills focuses on creating strategies that can help achieve future expectations. Communication skills enable leaders to create an environment where members can express their ideas freely. Adaptability skills enable leaders to be flexible to lead in any given circumstances. Persuasion skills are equally essential since they enable leaders to influence others positively and skills for coaching and development of team members, decision making skills and transparency

Leaders not only need to acquire these leadership skills but to also demonstrate them while practicing. For instance, a student leader needs to have effective communication skills to enhance interpersonal and open communication among the members. To explicit effective communication skills, a leader must ensure that the students can freely share their feelings and ideas with him/her. He must be able to understand and listen to their grievances and give appropriate remedies to them. He must demonstrate ability to understand student’s non verbal communication and be trustworthy to keep confidential information private.

These skills can be demonstrated by encouraging networking among students to deepen their relationships and to encourage cohesions. Student leader need to promote communication by initiating strategies such as discussion forum where students express their opinions to one another, design activities that encourage team work and interactions and creation of an environment where student can express themselves without tension or threat.

Another leadership skill that a student leader must demonstrate is integrity. Integrity refers to a level of honesty and transparency that can be identified by the attitudes and behaviors exhibited by a leader’s integrity can be demonstrated by adhering to principles and behaving in an ethical way with those you interact with. A leader must keep in mind that the students look up to him/her as their role model and he/she therefore need to behave in a way that can be emulated. He must ensure that ethical standards are followed and he must be able to strongly and boldly reject or condemn any behavior that conflict with the ethics even when it involves risk taking. To accomplish this level of integrity, a student leader must provide ethical rules to be followed and be the first one to practice in order to lead others.

In exhibiting leadership skill during practice, a leader may encounter inevitable situations that present difficult challenges. For instance, students may disagree with some of their leader’s decisions which may conflict with their plans and beliefs. Students may also disagree with each other due to issues such as biases, self esteem, peer influence or lack of self realization. When faced with such a situation, a leader should first identify the course of the problems then employ strategic plans aimed at encouraging teamwork to deepen their interactions and initiating effective communication skills to help students to open up and share any underlying issues. The leader must ensure that the problems that arose during the challenging situation are not left unresolved by addressing them together and ensuring that all the students have settled successful and their grievances has been dealt with accordingly. This will ensure a good start in the future decision making process where all past matters has been resolved