13 Activities That Can Help Business Owners Nurture Future Leaders in the Company

Business owners have a lot of responsibility and duties towards not only their clients  but also to their employees.

It’s not only about raking in the profit. After all, your business is operating with the help of a number of people who are your staff members. If you want to be a good leader, then you have to nurture good leaders yourself.

A lot of business owners are afraid of developing leaders because they are afraid of relinquishing control over what happens to their business. However, this shouldn’t be the case at all.

Business owners must learn to nurture leaders in their company. Providing staff with the means to be leaders themselves makes them better workers and more loyal to the company.

On that note, here are several activities that you can do to help members of your business to become future leaders in the company.

1. Leadership Envelopes

Organize time for your employees to get into more training or workshops that will make them into better leaders. One such activity is called the Leadership Envelopes.

All you would need for this activity is a set of envelopes and paper, as well as a writing material.

Look into different leadership principles and write them on the paper then put one principle in one envelope. Then, make your employees form into different groups. With each group, you will assign one leadership principle for them.

Their task is to find a way to incorporate or show these leadership principles during practical business actions. This activity makes them understand how they can come out as a leader even with the activities they do frequently at work.

2. Leadership Quotes

Another activity that will make you understand what each person in your staff thinks is a good leader is the Leadership Quotes activity.

In this activity, all you need are printouts of quotes about leadership and some tape. Tape these quotes on the walls of a room (just make sure that you aren’t taping them in an area that might remove the paint on the wall). Then, make your employees stand beside the leadership quote that resonates with them the most. Once everyone’s finished deciding, then you can go to each person and ask them why this quote resonated with them more than the others.

It helps you understand what sort of leader they want to be and what type of leader they may want you to be.

3. Tallest Tower

Being a great leader means being able to work well within a group setting. Thus, it is important that you incorporate activities that are in a group setting like this activity called Tallest Tower.

Tallest Tower has a simple objective, the group that has the tallest structure standing without support outside of the building materials wins.

All you’ll need are any materials you can build things with. Consider blocks of wood or toothpicks. Whatever floats your boat. With that said, everyone must work together to create the tallest tower without it falling apart.

Competing with others makes it exciting and will make them do their best. Make sure you give the winners a reward of some sort.

4. Leadership Crest

Having a crest serves as a symbol for what an institution, a family, a group, and more stands for. This symbol can mean anything depending on what values these factions hold dear. With that said, this idea can be made into a simple leadership activity for all.

Give everyone a paper and drawing materials. Then, tell them that they need to make a Leadership Crest that will symbolize what they think makes a great leader. After they all finish, get them to talk about what they drew.

Consider drawing one for yourself so that you can start things off before they present theirs.

5. Improv Night

The ability to improvise well is not something that a lot of people are blessed with being able to do. However, honing one’s skill at improvisation can get them to exercise their quick wits and their creativity at the same time.

On that note, you should organize an Improv Night with your team to get their creative juices flowing. Not only will it make them better at thinking and acting on the fly, but it‌ ‌will also make them more self-confident individuals.

All of these qualities are crucial to making a leader so hosting an Improv Night should occur occasionally.

6. Leaders You Love

There are certain qualities that we look for that tell us that this person is a leader. Oftentimes, we try to imitate these people and look at them as a reference to how we want to act. With that said, this next activity will let you know what sort of leader do people not only respect but like overall.

Get your staff to think of one leader that they admire greatly (and no, it can’t be you). Then, within a small group, get them to discuss who these leaders are between one another and why they admire this leader.

After everyone has discussed their leaders, get their attention again and break the groups. Then, discuss what common qualities these leaders that people admire are. It’s insightful and enlightening to find out what qualities these leaders do have in common between them.

7. Center Stage

Set up a small skit first for your participants through the help of some volunteers. In this skit, you’ll be highlighting the different leadership styles one by one.

The situation is that an employee is frequently late or misses meetings often recently. Three different leaders with three pre-decided leadership styles will then show how they deal with this situation.

After each leader shows their leadership style, get the participants to form a circle and put a couple of chairs in the middle. Then, ask your employees how they felt about each leadership style and what they thought was effective and what wasn’t.

8. Minefield

For this activity, you’ll need a bit of space and some obstacles, perhaps chairs. For each group, there is one member who is blindfolded and has to navigate the area and avoid “mines” or obstacles using only the direction and help of their team members.

Set up caveats as they can only communicate using directional words. This activity is quite fun but it also teaches people to work together. At the same time, it challenges people’s communication skills given these constraints.

9. Magic Carpet

Leaders need to learn to work together with others to achieve a common goal. At the same time, leaders must know when it’s a good time to lead and when it’s a good time to follow.

With this activity called Magic Carpet, these qualities will be put to the test.

The objective is simple. A group is standing on top of a rug or a carpet. No one is allowed to go outside of the carpet. With that said, their goal is to flip the carpet over without anyone having to step out of the carpet.

10. Stand Up

The objective of this activity is for two people to stand up. Simple but it’s much harder than one would think.

Have two people sit back-to-back against one another and their arms hooked with the others. Then, make them stand up. Not only is this fun to watch but it teaches people coordination and patience, as well as teamwork.

Plus, it’s quite funny to watch for everyone else because of the goofy predicament and movements that these two people are bound to do just to be able to stand up.

11. Who Ya Gonna Call

In this activity, you get each participant to write at least a paragraph of a specific work instance that may need the help of a work leader.

Take all of these and then give each participant a different paragraph. Then, get them to identify what leadership style will work the best in this situation.

Switch the paragraphs again once everyone’s done so that people get a different perspective on the problem.

12. Walking Through a Maze

Get two groups based on the number of participants. One team will be blindfolded and the other team will make a maze out of ropes that you provide them. Then, the team that is blindfolded will have to navigate through the maze.

The team that has to go through the maze will start together but will go through the maze one-by-one. It’s challenging and fun.

13. One-arm Strength

With a team made up of up to 6 participants only, you will need a rope for this activity. Then, get each player to hold one part of the rope.

Once that’s done, tell them that the objective is to create a knot without anyone in the team letting go of the rope. This activity will help teach the team coordination and one leader is sure to crop up during all the confusion.

 

 

By taking the time to cultivate a sense of leadership in your employees, you are making your business operations go much better. Your employees will be thankful for the opportunity to give to the business. At the same time, you are learning how to be a better mentor.

As long as you execute these activities correctly, you should be bringing up leaders in your business soon enough. It’s always good to nurture growth not only for yourself but also for others.