Youth Leadership Development and Training - What Motivates People To Give 100%?

It is possibly stating the obvious to suggest that different things motivate different people.
For example, there is a widespread perception that money or some other form of material reward is the prime motivator for many people in terms of giving 100% effort rather than something less.

It sometimes surprises people to know that numerous studies have shown that this belief is significantly mistaken. In fact, some of the most motivated people around who are always willing to go that little bit extra are not those who will necessarily receive any sort of material benefit from doing so.

You only have to consider the example of charity workers and the phenomenal hours and effort they put in, often for no monetary reward whatsoever, to see the truth of that statement.

In fact, as many indigenous leadership programmes seek to show, the strongest and most compelling motivation often comes from inside the person. To put it another way, bundles of cash and morale-boosting speeches often aren’t quite as effective as some may think.

What is usually important in getting people to stretch themselves that bit further and to start to fulfil their full potential is to get their comprehension of a set of objectives and their emotional commitment to the importance of achieving them. In the case of most people, once they understand why something is being done and emotionally commit to its validity, then their self-motivation will be far stronger than anything possible as a result of financial incentives.

This inevitably says something about the importance of effective communication at leadership level. If a leader is unable to clearly encapsulate and articulate why something needs to be done and what is needed of an individual to help achieve it, then they are unlikely to ever get the best out of the people they are working with.

That’s why many leadership development programs place great emphasis on inter-personal skills and associated communication.

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How do You Deal with somebody who is Disruptive?

It’s perhaps every leader’s nightmare – an associate or somebody in the team who is proving to be disruptive in one way or another.

In fact, this can even occasionally be encountered on things such as training and development courses.

Disruption can come in many shapes and forms. In some cases it may appear to be directed at attempting to undermine the leader or presenter by constantly suggesting, with little justification, that he or she is mistaken. In other instances it might be an intentional disconnecting from the session or enterprise and a refusal to play a contributory and participatory role in it.  

Perhaps the first thing to try and do is to ascertain the probable motivations behind the disruption. That can be far from easy but if the person is involved in something that is outside their normal routine, are they there because they wish to be or because someone else has told them they must? If it’s the latter, that can cause resentment.

In other situations the motivation may simply be a misguided sense of intellectual challenge.  That often manifests itself in attempts to ask consistently difficult and pointed questions of the leader. This can often be a symptom that the individual concerned feels frustrated with their role in life or in the specific activity underway.

Of course, no indigenous leadership program can provide a single answer as to how to deal with this. Each individual situation will have its own unique parameters that need to be assessed.

The best thing to do is to try to get the person to engage productively in the session and confrontation or recrimination should be avoided at all costs.  Public squabbling usually serves no purpose other than to make others feel uncomfortable.

If the position cannot be handled subtly within the team or session, it may be necessary to take the individual quietly and discreetly to one side during the coffee break and have a heart-to-heart with them to ascertain quite what’s going on and what can be done about it.

Under no circumstances should the problem simply be ignored though, as a poor attitude and team spirit can become infectious if it is not dealt with quickly and effectively.

For, more related articles, kindly visit Youth Leadership Development Website.

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TOP TIPS for Keeping People’s Attention!

If you are running any form of seminar, lecture, workshop, training course or youth leadership development program, keeping the attention of your audience can sometimes be a challenge.


Even if the attendees are attending voluntarily, there are some aspects of human psychology you need to be aware of if you are to avoid people potentially mentally ‘switching off’ and disengaging.

•    If you are presenting something, try not to talk for more than 20 minutes without some sort of break to give people a change from needing to listen to just one voice.

•    Try to throw the session opened to questions, comments or group exercises at least once every 30 minutes.  This can help avoid people mentally dozing off.

•    It is an extremely good idea to stop for some sort of physical out-of-the-room break every 45-60 minutes.  Try to get people on their feet and moving around for a coffee or something else, even if only for 5 minutes before the session re-starts. It gets the blood oxygen flowing.

•    Try to speak spontaneously rather than reading verbatim from prepared notes. 

•    Make sure you use plenty of visual or other aids.  Looking at somebody’s face and listening to them speak for extended periods can be extremely tiring.  Projections, flip charts, and other graphical aidsall help stimulate people’s visual interest.

•    Ask the odd spontaneous question.  This isn’t meant to intimidate people and your questions should be open without a right or wrong answer.  It is an old technique but if delegates suspect they may be engaged with a question at any time it can be effective in keeping their adrenaline levels up.

•    Keep plenty of fresh air circulating.

•    Share the podium and avoid ‘grandstanding’.  A change of face, voice and delivery style can help freshen up a session and stop attendees becoming stale.

These are all basic tips but can be very useful in helping to keep your youth leadership development program or other sessions on course and delegates firing on all cylinders! 

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Youth Leadership Development - Can anyone make a leader?

Whether leaders are born or made has been one of the greatest philosophical debates in leadership development over thousands of years.

It doesn’t matter how many learned academic works you read, you won’t find a single cohesive answer in response to the question.  It tends to be an emotive subject and one in which passions can occasionally run hot.

Many authorities would agree that before starting the debate, you need to decide what type of leadership you are talking about.  Some people provide what is termed inspirational leadership by setting an example of desirable behaviours others can follow.  They may not have a position of authority as such but they show people around them what can be achieved by having the right mind-set and application etc. 

In a sense, that is a pretty sound definition of leadership.

Of course, leadership is sometimes rather more direct and requires people to motivate a group of individuals around them and occasionally make decisions where consensus cannot be reached.  Those individuals also have to position the group to help them deal with failure or problems just as effectively as they do success.

These issues and challenges are universal.  Groups need to be motivated and led just as much in say European societies as they do in Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander leadership societies.  

Almost anyone who has worked in coaching people to step into leadership roles where decisions will need to be made, will perhaps privately admit that some individuals are rather better positioned, in terms of psychological makeup, to assume the mantle of such a role than others.  That doesn’t mean that other people are not capable of being developed and grown into such positions but the techniques required to do so may be different to those applied to individuals who have more latent orientation in that direction.

In a sense, it is possible to make a case for saying that some people are born with a greater predisposition towards assimilating leadership responsibilities than others.  However, that doesn’t mean that they will necessarily make good leaders unless they have appropriate training. 

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