“Leaders in conventional organisations prioritise maximising gains and hitting goals one after the other. They assume the functions of the planner (creating the strategy and turning it into a plan), the director (delegate responsibilities), and the controller ( ensuring everyone does what they’re assigned to do). However, today’s organisational environments are sophisticated, demanding a novel leadership approach,” says well-established news site journalist Olivia Jones of 8News.

Has a leader’s role evolved? If this is the case, what characteristics define leaders in 21st-century organisations?

Visionary

Leaders, who are known as visionaries, help the development of a strong, unifying mission and vision that serves as the organisation’s North Star and transcends it. They do not get to this understanding in the conference room. Instead, they develop their visions organically inside the organisation by watching and listening to individuals throughout the whole system, putting up suggestions for thought, and fusing them with their innovative thinking.

In addition to acting as visionaries, leaders collaborate with their teams to transform the concept into measurable goals that empowered teams may pursue.

Architect

Leaders take on the role of architects when they are clear about what must be done. Instead of developing a strategic plan, architect leaders play the more complex task of creating a transparent, empowered system that can continuously plan, carry out, and modify the flow of resources throughout reduced work intervals in pursuit of its goals. They encourage a more thorough analysis of the frameworks at the organisation’s centre, opening up possibilities for new opportunities.

Catalyst

Leaders act as catalysts, releasing energy everywhere in the organisation. They accomplish this in four main ways:

• Removing obstacles that stand in the way of empowered teams from putting ideas into action.

• Fostering interconnection across the organisation.

• Assisting individuals in connecting their work to the organisation’s mission and aspirations.

• Promoting a welcoming and inclusive wellness atmosphere where individuals can help put their genuine selves into the workplace, work in empowering and sustainable ways, and continue pursuing the full spectrum of their organisational goals.

Coach

As individuals are given the authority to fulfil organisational objectives, they must acquire better professional experience, develop the ability to think strategically and hone their collaboration skills. The development of attitudes, knowledge, and skills is a crucial area that leaders must focus on.

To do this, leaders as coaches promote a culture of learning within the organisation by fostering a wide variety of official and informal learning programmes. They create conditions that encourage experimentation and stimulate discussion of successes and improvement areas. Additionally, they include coaching throughout their team meetings by seeking out diverse viewpoints to broaden the range of possible solutions and looking for answers than they do offering advice.

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A 21st Century Leader?

While it could appear like 21st-century leadership is quite tricky, it can also be gratifying if done well.

Burn Bright, along with our goal of developing young leaders, believes that successful leadership traits are relevant to both an individual leader and a leadership team. The cornerstones of this efficient leadership approach are the uniquely human qualities of leadership. Organisations must continually look for leaders who exhibit these qualities or develop the leadership skills of their current staff.

Do you impart the crucial success characteristics listed above to your organisational leadership teams? What difficulties do you now face, and how do you intend to deal with them?

Reach out to us and allow us to help you develop the 21st leader innate in you.

By Maya Carter Jones

We’ve all heard the saying that “leaders are born, not made.” But is that really true? What traits make someone a leader? And can those traits be learned or developed?

Nevertheless, leadership is not about position or title. It’s an approach to life and work that anyone can adopt. And when you do, it will show how you live, work, and relate to others.

“It is easy to see who are leaders and who are not. You see it in the way they act and command awe from others. Leadership is a lifestyle; you will know someone is a leader when you one,” says Lincoln Beck, human resource specialist of Biz Hero—the premiere resource website for all things business.

Do you have what it takes to be a leader? Read to find out!

1. You Are A Visionary

A leader knows where they want to go. They have a clear vision of the future and can articulate it in a way that inspires others to follow them.

You have the capacity to see the bigger picture and have a clear understanding of the goals you want to achieve. When you’re a visionary leader, you see opportunities where others see obstacles.\

2. You Are Confident

Leaders are confident in their abilities and believe in their own vision. They are not afraid to take risks or make decisions. When you are a leader, you take risks and make decisions without being afraid of the consequences. You can handle criticisms well and learn from your mistakes.

3. You Are Passionate

The passion of a leader is evident in everything they do.  Leaders have the power to motivate others with their passion and commitment. They have a strong sense of purpose and are always looking for ways to make a difference.

When you’re passionate about something, you put your heart and soul into it. You’re always looking for ways to make a difference and inspire others to do the same.

4. You Are Innovative

Leaders are always excited to look for new and better ways to do things. They are open-minded to change and willing to experiment.

Having an innovative mind is one of the key traits of a leader. You also have the ability to think outside the box and come up with creative solutions to problems.

5. You Are Resilient

When you’re a leader, resiliency is one of your most important qualities. Leaders are able to bounce back from setbacks and learn from their mistakes. They have the strength to keep going when things get tough.

No matter what life throws at you, resilient leaders always find a way to get back up. You learn from your mistakes and use them as opportunities to grow and become even stronger.

Unleash The Leader In You With Burn Bright!

If you want to develop your leadership potential, it’s important to start with the right mindset. Believe in yourself and your capacity to lead people. Be open to new ideas and willing to take risks.

Burn Bright’s Leadership Camp is your key to unlocking your true leadership potential. Explore your passion as you make a difference in the world. When you have the right mindset, anything is possible.

Start developing your leadership skills with Burn Bright’s Leadership Camp today to reach your full potential. Contact us now!

The COVID-19 pandemic presented another economic and global threat that tomorrow’s youthful leaders need to address.

“Millennials are a resilient generation. Amid the pandemic’s unparalleled health and socio-economic upheaval, millennials stay loyal to their ideas and views,” says smartphone and laptop for rent distributor Karina Wolfin of Direct Appliance Rentals.

Young leaders have the power to guide us through challenging times and lead us toward better futures. Here are the top six skills we believe will make them stronger leaders in the 21st Century

1. Self-awareness

Everything begins with you.

The first step in being a successful leader is to understand who you are: What motivates you? What are your skills, interests, and values? Gaining self-awareness can help you identify your blind spots and hidden prejudices, increasing your credibility and earning you the confidence of your peers.

Self-awareness, fortunately, can be learned and practised. Young leaders need to reflect on their talents, interests, and beliefs to create a vision of the kind of leader they want to be.

2. Goal-Driven Mindset

Effective leadership is enhanced with a clear purpose. Many leaders think that an organisation’s goal is critical to its success, yet its meaning isn’t embraced as a reference when making decisions.

Young leaders are looking for a sense of meaning and purpose in their personal lives and work lives. Essentially, young leaders whose goals and purposes are linked with the objective of their organisations are more likely to succeed.

3. Visioning

Visioning is what we mean when we say “coming up with ground-breaking ideas.” Today’s complexity necessitates innovative ideas and solutions, yet having a vision does not necessitate being a visionary. 

Young leaders should incorporate a range of visioning techniques, including reframing, backcasting, and brain sketching, to develop large, bold ideas that will have a beneficial impact.

While everyone’s visioning process is unique, here are some pointers to get you started:

• Go at your own pace.
• Seek inspiration in unlikely places.
• Get used to taking chances (and experimenting!).
• Allow yourself to get carried away by the experience.

4. Adaptability

Adaptability is perhaps the most critical skill to master as a 21st-century young leader. In an ever-changing economy, you must be prepared to learn and adjust as needed. Of course, it’s a challenging process since you’re forced to compromise your beliefs or organisation model to remain competitive.

For one thing, you need to make your whole organisation adaptable, which includes encouraging individuals to voice their concerns and ideas about where the organisation ought to go next.

5. Emotional Intelligence 

Your EI must be excellent if you want to be a successful leader. Put another way; you must be aware that people’s emotions can influence their conduct and push them in a particular direction. Also, mainly when the circumstance is severe and unpleasant, you must learn how to cope with and control these emotions—whether these emotions are yours or your colleagues.

6. Creative Problem-solving

As a leader, you’ll encounter various challenges as you progress, from resolving difficulties to formulating new strategies. No two issues are alike; in fact, complications are divided into archetypes, each of which necessitates a distinct problem-solving approach.

Creative problem-solving skills enable leaders to deploy the appropriate tool for the right job at the right time, resulting in increased productivity and success.

Take Steps To Become A Better Leader

Don’t be concerned if you’re not confident in your present leadership skills. These abilities, fortunately, may be taught and improved through time. There are a variety of methods to learn, develop, and advance your leadership skills. Attending Burn Bright’s Leadership Camp is one of the most dependable ways to enhance your leadership abilities and prepare you to handle the rigours of life. Give us a call, send us an email, or drop a message using this form to learn more about our leadership camps.

Written by Maya Carter

Whether they ask them aloud or not, these questions are always lingering on the front of our young people’s minds. In social settings we see them finding ways to adapt to people around them, weighing up who they should respect and who might be their allies.

Navigating life as a young person can feel like searching for the next puzzle piece without knowing what the bigger picture looks like.

Your community is the puzzle.

Finding a community gives us a place to feel like where we belong and can thrive. For a young person, that community can be their school friends, an activity group, a sports team, or a local group. Whatever it may be, there are some foundational factors that all communities have in common that allow them to exist sustainably and consistently develop with the people who participate in them.

Before we dive into what those factors are, why should we care about communities? Why does it matter if we help young people build them?

The formation of a young person’s identity is a consistent process of decision-making, explicit and implicit feedback, and self-evaluation to inform our next decision. As this process occurs in the minds of our young people and we watch them change and develop each time, we recognise very quickly that we can’t determine the outcome of a process. We find out that young people will arrive at their own conclusions based upon the inputs provided to them and make the best decision for action that seems appropriate in the context they find themselves in.

While we can’t control the process and output, we can influence the factors the environment this happens in and the context they find themselves having to make decisions for. We influence this by helping them to construct communities around themselves that align with their values and encourage growth in positive ways.

But community for community’s sake isn’t always appealing. That’s where our foundational factors of community come in.

For a young person to participate in the community, they have to want to be a part of it. In fact, that rule applies to more than young people. It matters to us all. When we participate in something because we feel we have to, not because we actively choose to participate – our commitment doesn’t last long enough for us to actually see the results. Don’t lie, we’ve both been there. (Like that gym membership that’s paid for every month without ever setting foot in the gym, am I right?).

This brings us to the first foundational factor: A Common Goal.

A Common Goal

Communities that are built upon a common goal create a mechanism for people to unite over something they both care about. It also provides a general direction in which a person can find ways to participate in activities with their community. For example, a community with the common goal of making you a better dancer is an opportunity for you to practice a passion of dancing and provides a very actionable way of acting out the goal: dance classes. It is a both reason to involve yourself in a community, and something that keeps you coming back to stay involved over time. But what about when we aren’t feeling like it and are struggling to find the motivation to pursue our goals?

Skin in the Game – Investment

Accountability is a significant factor in building a community. It keeps us involved and helps us to stay on track with our goals. One of the most significant forms of investment for young people is social investment. Knowing that other people are counting on them is a good motivator to keep young people involved. If social investment isn’t doing the trick, it may be worth exploring what is most valuable to the young people you are working with and investigating ways they can leverage that to become the investment that grounds them in their community.

It’s important to remember, we aren’t trying to trap young people in a community. Rather we are providing a way for our young people to involve themselves in their community on a more intentional level. When a young person has a deeper level of investment in their community, their community is able to bring them more fuel to pursue their goals and grow in themselves. Once it feels established and begins to become habitual, then it can start to become a symbiotic relationship between the young person and their community. This relationship, however, can’t be all work and investment – it has to be enjoyable too.

Know Your Community. Like Your Community.

Communities are built on solid friendships and shared experiences. When we make the conscious choice to build those friendships, we take a large step forward in finding a place where we belong.

For young people, making that conscious choice is not something that happens out loud. We don’t often see young people starting conversations with “I would like to be your friend”. We do, however, see them naturally gravitating towards people who share the same interests. Finding common ground is a great launchpad for a friendship. It allows you to have enough meaningful conversation and shared activity that you become comfortable enough to learn more about someone else.

If we build these communities on the basis of a common goal, we already have a uniting factor and common ground between people. The last thing we need to provide is room for those friendships to develop in the conversations between activity. If everything is wall-to-wall, we limit the interaction of the people to whatever is structured for them. In our communities, we must allow young people the opportunity to build those relationships both intentionally with relationship activities and organically with space between structure and an open environment.

Where Do We Begin?

So these are the foundations of how we can begin supporting our young people to build their communities. Starting the process is the most difficult part, especially if you are looking to convince your young person to start involving themselves.

To begin, take a look at what your young person already actively involves themselves in. Starting with something that they care about gives you the answer to the first step here: a common goal. It also makes for a slightly easier sell 😉

Looking For a Head Start on Community Building?

Since 2014 Burn Bright has invested in building connected communities for over 77,000 young people across Australia and New Zealand. We believe every person has the ability to lead themselves and lead others, and doing so asks our young people to understand who they are influencing and how they are influencing them.

If you would like your young person to further develop the way they interact with their communities and understand their leadership capacity, take a look at our High School Lead With Impact Pack where we have 4 digital courses that guide your young person on a journey of exploring their own leadership and how it can be used to create positive change, powerful communities, and service-based leaders all around us.

Leadership Isn’t About Me

My ideas around leadership have evolved quite a bit since I was ten. And one of the biggest things I’ve learnt and been learning is the concept that leadership isn’t actually about me. That was a bit hard for me to grasp. Of course, I would have always said that I wanted to lead to make the world a better place. And I probably believed it too. But deep down, leadership has always been about me. Making me feel important and special, putting me in a position of power, getting to be part of the exclusive crowd, having my voice heard, having meaning and work to do. 

True leadership is pretty much the opposite of what I thought. Deep down, I was always me-focused. But leadership is actually others-focused. Putting others above yourself, desiring the best for them rather than yourself. That is called servant leadership. 

So what does a servant leader actually do? 

They put other people’s needs as highest priority. They listen, they help, they find ways to benefit everyone around them. Find out where you can do good, what matters to people. If I had understood this in primary school, I would have wanted to be a leader not so to have fun and feel important, but so I could better support the other students around me. So look around. How can you put someone else’s needs first today? 

Leaning Into Your Strengths

You know what your priority is by what your mind thinks about. When you think of leadership, do you think of yourself? How it might make you look, feel, the experiences you might have? Or do you think about people, about the world, about things that can be improved or need to be changed?

Now I try to stop myself every time I start to get excited about a position of power. I try to use my time and energy to help those around me.  We all have the opportunity to be true leaders, to be others-focused.

Looking to Develop Your Young People into Servant Leaders?

Student Leadership is at the core of creating positive student culture in schools. But how do we motivate students to understand and apply their leadership? Click here to access Burn Bright’s 5 Ways to Empower Young People to Lead document and watch your students start harnessing their influence today.

A goal is a desired result which is planned for in the future. 

So why do we need goals?

A goal is the target to shoot your arrow at. Without a goal, you’re aimless, wasting effort and energy. 

If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time. – Zig Ziglar

Goals help you to measure progress. 

Goals give you mental boundaries. They help you to choose what to do and what not to do. For example, if you have the goal of going to bed at 10pm, you know that staying up to 11pm is past that goal. 

Goals give you motivation, they trigger behaviour. If you have a goal, you know you need to DO something. 

What’s the different between goals and vision?

Vision is a big picture goal. Goals are the practical steps towards that vision. We need both- vision to keep us inspired and focused, and goals to know how to actually get there and what to do next. 

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.” –Lawrence J. Peter

Keep it small

Set small goals. Often when we get a vision we get super excited and we set big hard-to-achieve goals. Then we don’t know how to actually get them done, or we get discouraged or distracted. Don’t set yourself up for failure, break it down. Set small, bite-sized goals- just like when you get a big piece of food you chop it up into pieces before you put it into your mouth; do the same for goals. 

Have a plan

First work out what you want to achieve, your big picture vision or your goal. It could be something big like seeing every person in the world have access to education or a bit smaller like going for a walk everyday in the sunshine.

 Then work out every step to get there, from the first thing you need to do to the last thing until it’s achieved. Don’t skip anything. Then get started with the first step. 

When we break things down into achievable steps we are much more likely to hit those goals than if we have a vague idea of what we want to do but have no idea how to get there. So make sure to sit down and actually write out a clear step-by-step plan of how to achieve your goal. 

Here’s your reward!

Make sure to have a reward at the end for when you achieve your goal or an incentive for each step of your goal. I’ve had charts where I’ve ticked off if I did a task each day, and at the end of the week if I did five days, I gave myself a trip to a café. Having a reward gives you an extra reason to achieve your goal, and hey it’s good to celebrate wins!

Practical Goal Setting in Our World

At Burn Bright we work with young people running student leadership and wellbeing programs in schools. One of our passions at Burn Bright is for the adults in young people’s worlds to help them with how they set goals and encourage them in their goal setting. Helping them to set goals in a good way may just benefit their wellbeing and mental health. If you’d like to explore practical ways to encourage thoughtful goal-setting habits in your young person, click here to take a look at our courses that explore topics such as goal-setting, values, leadership, and wellbeing.

If you’ve ever felt this way, I have good news for you. You’re right. And you’re not alone in feeling this way. Every leader has a moment when they need to determine what their imprint looks like and when that time comes, there are some things you need to consider about how you will define yours.

What calls to you naturally?

It’s important for this process for you to know that you aren’t going to be the only person who leads and influences others. It is ok to not be across every base. It is ok to not be the champion of every cause. The power of your leadership is tied to the power of your uniqueness and how willing you are to bring your authentic self to the table. What are your passions? What are the things you care about? What brings you joy? What do you desperately want to change? These questions aren’t always straight-forward to answer but they are a step in the right direction to uncovering the legacy of your leadership on yourself and those around you.

Ground it in the here and now.

Let’s step away from the future for a moment and set our sights on the present. Having the vision of your leadership’s impact is awesome but we won’t get there if we can’t figure out how we lead on a day-to-day basis. So to look at this, we shift our focus inwards. We need to consider questions like: How do I interact with the people I care about? What is it about the people I follow that I admire or makes me want to follow them? What are my strengths? What am I good at? What do I stand for and how can I bring more of those values into my day-to-day interactions? These questions exist to make us take a good look at who we are surrounding ourselves with and begin to think about if our interactions with our people are actually up to the level we want them to be. As leaders, our words and actions set a standard for people around us and if we aren’t living by what we stand for and actively making a choice to build relationships in a meaningful way – the standard we are setting likely doesn’t lead us to the legacy we want to leave behind.

Develop the foundations for successful leadership

On the journey of stepping into our leadership we can sometimes feel a lot of weight has been put onto us and now we have to carry it wherever we go. Though a part of this is true, we also need to start putting the right foundations around us to make sure that the journey of defining ourselves as leaders doesn’t harm us more than help us. We all feel burnout, we all experience those days where you just can’t get anything to happen the way you want it to. When we experience these days, we need the networks of people around us and the internal awareness to also know that we might need to spend some time shaping up our own wellbeing and getting ourselves back to a place of being well and ready. So take a moment to think about what brings you energy and what drains your energy. Maybe you prefer to spend some time alone to recover after a big week. Maybe you like to hang out with your friends. Maybe you need to shake up your routine and try something new. Maybe you need to go back to something that feels a bit more comfortable. There are no right or wrong answers on how to best find your wellbeing. It is most important that you are just aware of what you need and intentionally finding time to actually let that process happen.

In a nutshell, defining how we lead is hard but when we break it down to understanding where we are going, who we are right now, and what we need to take with us for the journey – we set ourselves up with a unique understanding of what it means to bring our full, authentic self to the table. 

As leaders, being our full authentic self is one of the most powerful things we can do.

Start building your young person’s leadership foundation today.

Burn Bright has worked with over 75,000 young people across Australia and New Zealand to develop their sense of leadership and influence, and continue building on their potential.

If you are looking for ways to empower leadership in your young people, click here to get a free downloadable resource that has 5 actionable ways to empower your young person to lead.

Why Perfection Isn’t The Goal

The portrayal of perfection is false and misleading, and if shown, leads me to the question: What is happening that no one knows about? Not one leader can claim to not have had struggles or to have overcome each one perfectly. Not one leader can say that they haven’t made mistakes or acted in ways that they wish they could redo. Not one leader can say they have never experienced heartbreak, lost or failed at something they truly desired or been in a situation that was unfair and unjust. I believe that there is strength in weakness and having the courage to own it vulnerably. That doesn’t mean that mistakes, pain or shortcomings is something we should aspire to, however when it does occur, being willing to sit in that space and acknowledge it should be. The next question however is, what have we learnt and how is that going to impact our actions, thoughts and behaviours in the future?

Leaders Are Complex and Interesting

If I reflect on the people that I admire, they are the ones who have lived messy lives and made mistakes along the way all whilst still trying to make a difference or work towards their goal. The reason why I admire and have connected so strongly with them is because in them being open and vulnerable they have made me feel like I’m not alone and that there is hope for the future.

It is my belief that an essential part of being a leader is instilling hope that there is something better and we can work towards that together. We need leaders of hope. We need leaders of authenticity. We need leaders of courage willing to share their story wholeheartedly.

Empower Your Young Person to Lead

Student Leadership is at the core of creating positive student culture in schools. But how do we motivate students to understand and apply their leadership? Click here to access Burn Bright’s 5 Ways to Empower Young People to Lead document and watch your students start harnessing their influence today.