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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

My leadership experience

Share your experiences as a leader with your group by helping teach them something new
Plan a session with this activity

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You’ll need

  • Any equipment needed for the activities

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
  • Before this activity, ask everyone to think of a small skill or activity that they could teach someone else and bring it with them to this session

Show your skills

  1. Explain to everyone that this session will give them the opportunity to demonstrate their leadership skills by teaching their group a new skill or activity.
  2. Ask everyone to gather into small groups of up to five people, and ask them to discuss what leadership experiences they have had in the past.
  1. After everyone has finished discussing their experiences, ask people to decide as a group what order they would like to go in to teach their skill or activity.
  2. When the groups are ready, ask the first person to start their activity.
  3. When the five minutes are up, ask the person who led the activity how they thought it went.
  1. Now ask the rest of the group how they felt the activity went.
  1. When all the discussions have finished, move onto the next person in the group. Repeat steps four to six until everyone in the group has had the opportunity to teach their skill or activity.

Reflection

Leadership is something that develops over time and there is not one way of getting it right. It needs you to adapt and develop to the situations you are in. This activity required you to communicate and develop your leadership skills by teach other members of your group a new skill.

How did your activity go? What went well and what would you do differently next time? Think about how you spoke, how you gave your instructions and how you helped others.

Throughout the activity there were also lots of discussions about leadership, your previous experience and then also some constructive feedback from your friends about how your activity went.

How did it make you feel to talk about your experiences and how you ran your activity? Why is it important to listen to others, and how does it help you develop as a leader? Think about how it helps you to hear how you could develop further and what that means for your leadership style afterwards.

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games

The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.

  • Instead of someone teaching something on their own, they could pair up or even go in small groups.
  • Consider giving everyone more time to teach their skill or activity, as this could help them to teach something more complicated and help develop their skills further.
  • If someone is not comfortable with teaching something on their own, give them the opportunity to work in pairs or in a small group to teach something together.
  • If a skill being taught is very fiddly, make sure there is support around to help anyone who needs it.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.