5 More Ways Leadership Roles in School Will Help You Succeed at Work

School really is a great place to jump start your career. As discussed previously, there are many advantages to being a student leader including confidence, effective communication, and responsibility. Here are five more handy skills you can learn while in school:

Strong leaders have effective management skills that somewhat come naturally. When you’re a leader, even in just seemingly minute school events, you have to oversee a lot of things, create priorities, make budgets, and other duties required. Doing these in high school and college can teach you that while you may sometimes make mistakes, you learn to handle all these while you’re young and it’s a great preparation for future office duties.

More often than not, student leaders have to face so many obligations that people start to wonder how they juggle that with maintaining their course work and personal responsibilities (and a social life!). When you’re a student leader, you get to put on your most creative problem-solving shoes in order to get all of these done and keeping a balanced life in check. It’s a mix of multitasking and logical thinking.

A group or student body leader usually becomes the representative or face of that set of people. In turn, the ample amount of pressure makes them do exceptionally well, which then allows them to get recognized whether officially other leaders, heads of committees, faculty members, or by the rest of the student body. Such distinction can help a person build character and self-awareness, as well as sensitivity to the problems of those around them since they have that “power” to create change.

Becoming a student leader opens a person’s eyes to so many things they normally would not do. For instance, while leadership usually involves handing work to others and making sure they’re accountable, there are instances when push comes to shove and these leaders have to help complete certain tasks on their own. For example, in small groups, you sometimes have to portray the role of creative director, accountant, or organizer for a small campaign. You discover a talent for things you might not have considered before, which may also become useful in the future.

Employers recognize when a potential employee has responsibilities back in school, and often respect the initiative those people take when heading an organization or team in high school or college, no matter how big or small that group is. With this type of leadership experience in your resume, it’s a great talking point during an interview and will most likely catch the attention of a hiring manager.