7 Ways to Boost Leadership Skills in College

Everybody talks about leadership these days. This is a popular topic for many discussions. Teachers encourage students to acquire leadership skills early as it helps become more successful and reach ambitious goals. We want to suggest several activities that can help you develop excellent leadership skills in college.

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Participation in Out-of-Class Activities

As a rule, students avoid extracurricular activities because they’re overloaded with homework and other social activities. Participation in out-of-class events is a chance of showing leadership skills and revealing your hidden talents. You can create a small sports club, a fraternity or a sorority to do something interesting and useful. This will help you become a better leader as you should communicate, organize, and coordinate other students.

Volunteer Activities

Local communities readily accept students to volunteer for their benefit. Here are several examples of how to show leadership in college by participating in volunteer activities: 

  •       fundraising and charities (preserving rare species, landscaping, children’s treatment, etc.)
  •       volunteering for extra credit (various activities helping local communities like disaster relief or hosting events)
  •       other activities to help the local community (volunteering in high schools in the community, building houses, gathering clothes for people who can’t afford it, etc.)

Compassion, willingness to help those people in need, and a positive attitude are important features of any leader. You can develop these qualities by helping others.

Learn from More Experienced Leaders

Learning from other leaders is one of the ways to become an effective leader. Steve Jobs, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King are good examples of effective leadership. You may think that you will never reach their level, but start small, and soon you will see where this can lead you. It’s not necessary to follow global leaders; you can find good examples in your community.

It can be useful to read several entrepreneurial leadership essay examples to learn more about leaders and leadership. Students are often assigned to write a college essay on leadership. By completing a leadership essay, each student can better understand the concept of leadership and learn from the examples of global leaders.

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Take Classes on Leadership in College

You can develop leadership skills by attending special classes offered in your college. This is the easiest way for freshmen to get familiar with this concept. For example, teachers explain how to develop leadership skills in students and the differences between leaders and managers. Besides, by taking these courses, you can learn how to communicate as a leader, how to initiate organizational change, and how to use these skills for teamwork.

Learn to Work in a Team

Participation in group projects is another way to develop leadership for college students. A college education is built on several group projects. You can use these projects to become a better leader. As a group member, you can help organize regular group meetings or assign the roles within this project. Also, you can brainstorm the topics of interest or make a group essay plan. Students can discover different leaders’  talents in them as leadership is a multifaceted notion. You just should take the initiative and practice more to boost your skills as a leader.

Get a Job

This approach helps students get organized, discover, and practice leadership skills. You can start by applying for any on-campus job available. In this way, you can learn how to be a leader in college in practice. At the workplace, you can apply your natural leadership skills by performing your duties, observe leaders around you, and learn from them. Also, you can learn to respond to workplace challenges or use your creativity when solving various problems.

Help Newbies

The job of an orientation leader can be useful to develop leadership skills as it’s associated with multiple challenges. Facing these challenges is the most useful experience for any leader. You will work with different departments, organize events, cooperate in a team, prepare venues, make schedules, work under pressure, speak in front of large audiences, etc. Only the best students are assigned these roles. This is your chance of expressing yourself at best.

Here we listed several ways to become leaders in college. However, they are not limited to these approaches as you can invent your own patterns of developing or polishing your leadership skills. Look around, and you can find multiple opportunities to become a better leader. You just need to be active and creative. Leaders are different, and you can develop your own leadership patterns.

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