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The perils of cookie cutter leadership
When we think of leaders, we often picture someone confident, outspoken, and ready to take charge. But the truth is, great leadership comes in many forms. If we expect all student leaders to fit the same mould, we risk stifling their potential instead of helping them thrive.
At Yellow Arrow, we believe it is important to help students discover and embrace their unique leadership style. When students understand their strengths, they lead with more confidence, authenticity, and impact.
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Understanding Your Students' Unique Leadership Strengths
A lot of research has been conducted into how our personality affects how we relate to others and show up in the world. Here are some personality frameworks that you can explore with your students:
🧠DISC Model: Categorizes people into four styles—Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), and Conscientiousness (C). Helps students understand how they naturally communicate and make decisions.
🧠Enneagram: Identifies nine personality types, each with unique leadership strengths and challenges. Great for self-awareness and understanding team dynamics.
🧠The Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN)​
This widely recognised framework assesses five key dimensions of personality (Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism)
🧠StrengthsFinder (CliftonStrengths)​
This tool identifies an individual's top strengths across 34 themes, such as “Achiever,” “Relator,” and “Learner,” helping students discover what they excel at and how they can use those strengths in leadership roles.
Want to help your students explore their strengths? We’ve created a quick leadership styles quiz to get them thinking.​
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From our blog
In this blog, we explore six different leadership styles and how each can shape the development of student leaders. From authoritative to democratic to transformational, each style offers unique strengths and challenges. By understanding these styles, teachers and student leaders can identify which approach resonates most with their team and cultivate leadership skills that align with their values and goals. Whether you're guiding students through their first leadership experience or helping them refine their approach, this blog offers valuable insights for fostering effective leadership in students.
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6 Leadership Styles and Their Impact on Student Leadership Development
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Activity Toolbox
Encourage your students to research a famous leader they admire or even one they disagree with. By examining these leaders, students can gain a deeper understanding of the responsibility that comes with leadership and how their own actions can shape the future.
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Video recommendation 🎥
The Danger of a Single Story – TED Talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
In this powerful TED Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explores the dangers of reducing people and cultures to a single narrative. She highlights how relying on one perspective can limit our understanding of individuals and their potential. As leaders, it's important to recognise that everyone brings a unique story and set of experiences to the table. By embracing diverse viewpoints, we can lead with greater empathy, understanding, and effectiveness—especially when guiding our students to find their own leadership style. Adichie’s message is a timely reminder for us to move beyond the “cookie-cutter” approach to leadership and to appreciate the richness of diversity in those we lead.
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Meet our team!
We have a wonderful group of facilitators who deliver our programs. For this edition we will be spotlighting Anthony!
With 15 years experience working in schools across urban, rural and remote settings, Anthony has a deep understanding of how to help young people develop into the best version of themselves that they can. He is passionate about maximising their sense of wellbeing, connection and belonging, while facilitating growth in leadership, skills and knowledge, so that they have the best opportunities to showcase their strengths and help make the world a better place.
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Join our free teacher community!
Professional learning is best when it is done as part of a community (at least we think so). This is why we have created agogue, our learning and development community for professionals who support the development, and potential of young leaders.
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We're here to help!
Have a question or something you need support with? Reach out to our team at hello@yellowarrow.com.au!
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