You Don’t Need a Badge to Lead

On Tuesday last week, yLead visited the Year 7s to teach the cohort about leadership and teamwork, through a range of fun games and activities. This enjoyable experience taught many people about the importance of taking action and recognising strengths and weaknesses of each individual.

yLead is an organisation which strives to teach young people to become leaders.

yLead stands for:L- Learning from mistakesE- Encouraging othersA- Acknowledging strengthsD- Developing connections

They used engaging games and a variety of activities to help us learn different aspects of teamwork. We started off with a simple handshake between two people. The handshake had to show our different hobbies and personalities. This taught us how we could develop connections with other people via simple methods such as handshakes.

An activity we did that helped us learn about learning from our mistakes was ‘Cops and Robbers’. This was definitely one of the highlights of the morning. It was also a time to have a run around and get involved. Through this game we learnt valuable skills: to cooperate with others, to learn from other people’s mistakes and encourage each other to do the best we possibly can. This also helped acknowledge our use of problem-solving skills and finding strategies to succeed in the best way possible.

Another activity we did was group work. We realised that each member of the group has unique abilities and strengths. When each strength is combined, the team is more powerful when we work together as a whole and not individually. Through this activity, we learnt how to lead the group with each of our strengths to perform the best we can as a team. The highlight of this activity was designing and creating a futuristic school uniform out of rubbish bags, including useful gadgets. Our captains for that specific area had the honour of modelling the ‘outfit’.

Through these games and activities, we learnt the true meaning of the acronym, and just how important each letter is and how each letter is important to us. Throughout the morning, we definitely realised there is much more to leadership than just a shiny badge. You don’t have to be in Year 12 or be a captain. Leadership can start from any age and continue to apply throughout our lives.

On behalf of the Year 7 cohort, we would like to thank the yLead team for this entertaining morning and amazing messages we will take with us for a life time. We would also like to thank Mrs Rowe for organising this lovely session with the yLead team. It was a delightful experience and we hope that they will visit again.