Our students are smarter than we think.
They are savvy and as you know, they tend to have a pretty good BS detector! They are good at spotting what I call "Lip Service Leadership". When it comes to student leaders, your school might have the roles and badges, student leadership meetings and a selection process. But if it's inauthentic, students pick up on it. It creates dissonance between what leadership really is and what we show young people that leadership is. Lip Service Leadership in schools damages the future leaders of our organisations, communities, schools, hospitals, businesses and industries.
How do you know if your school is cultivating lip service leadership? You will get a sense from your answer to the following questions...
Do your student leaders have authentic roles, with responsibility, decision making (appropriate to their age and maturity) and the scope to make a contribution?
OR
Do your student leaders occupy tokenistic roles where they are not really able to make an improvement?
Are your student leadership meetings filled with student-driven action?
OR
Are your student leadership meetings filled with teachers telling a select group of students what is happening at the school?
Do your student leaders see leadership as a reward or a responsibility?
Last year, I wrote the AUDITING TOOL FOR AN AUTHENTIC STUDENT LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROCESS (grab your copy at the link). There are 10 steps, with questions at each step. Only you can answer the questions in the audit for your school. If you are serious about ensuring that your student leadership development, nomination, selection and action are authentic, spend 10 minutes auditing your student leadership development process with the tool.
Don't give lip service to leadership. Leadership either is a genuine thing at your school, or it's not. You're either pretending about leadership or you're for real about it. But your staff, parents and students aren't silly- let's give them the credit they deserve, and let's ensure our process is authentic.
I think it's super important that leadership development is done well. If you would like some help to make a shift to a more authentic student leadership process at your school, reach out and we can arrange a short consultation to identify where there might be some misalignment between what your school says about leadership and what it is (inadvertently) teaching your students about leadership.
If you know that your student leadership process at your school is ready to be more authentic, I'd love to help with that- so email me back and let me know.
Sincerely,
Luke McKenna
Director- Unleashing Personal Potential
UPP workshops have had a positive impact on more than 250,000 Australian students since commencing in 2015 and are highly trusted by Teachers and Principals across Australia. Click to find out more about our Primary school workshops or Secondary school workshops.