Can Every Student Be a Leader?

By Doug Franklin November 1, 2012

Often times youth workers tell me they would love to have a student leadership program but their students are not ready or they love the idea of student leadership but they don’t have the right students. This leads me to ask the question, can every student be a leader? I think if you asked youth workers this question and it wasn’t about their students directly they would say, yes, every student has leadership potential. But that’s not really how they act. This may be because some of our students are so rough the idea of turning them around seems impossible. But think about this for a minute, if we thought every student could be a leader how would we treat them differently? How about if we thought every student could be a kingdom leader and have huge influence in our culture for the sake of Christ, how would we treat them? If our mindset changed about student leaders how would change our actions?

I believe every student can be a leader (If a student has some psychological  issues leadership is off the table for the near future). Leadership is just a set of principles that we apply to any given situation. The key is to learn these principles and be prepared to apply them. This requires confidence and confidence comes from experiences.  This is why I am a big believer in teaching principles through experiences. Check your attitude towards students, do they have to reach a performance level before you begin to train them or will training bring out their ability to lead?