5 Life Skills for Effective Leaders

As a leader (or teacher) in the childcare field you might feel overwhelmed by the massive amounts of responsibility that lands in your lap. Administrative duties feel like they will never end, but as a leader there are life skills that you can develop that will help you manage and take control.

Focus and Control

With everything moving quickly around you and day-to-day priorities constantly shifting, improving your focus will help everything run more smoothly. Developing your working memory and exercising self-control (stick to the plan!) all help in creating a stress-free day.

Taking Another’s Perspective

Being able to look at every situation and how it will impact the lives of those around you is essential to leadership. In a childcare setting there are three perspectives that you need to focus on: Being a child at your center, being an employee at your center and what parents think when they enter your center the first time.

Communication

Key to any of life's relationships, as a leader you must be able to effectively communicate with those around you. Effective communication involves the skill of being able to communicate what you want and also understanding how others will understand you.

Making Connections

To effectively manage you have to be able to take the skills that you have learned and effectively apply or “connect” them to life.

Critical Thinking

When managing a group of employees or a classroom of small children, being able to look at a situation and deciding “what causes what” to happen will create a better and less stressful environment for everyone in your center.

Developing these five essential life skills for leadership will help you in being able to manage all that is thrown your way. Want to learn more?