Volunteering gives you an opportunity to become a great leader. A leader shares his leadership skill with a group. Volunteers are actively involved in volunteering activities but do not assume leadership roles. Volunteers and leaders have important roles in the organization and they are interdependent to fulfill their roles.
Volunteering helps bring positivity in life. It helps you give your best for the society and that positive attitude is needed for leadership. Volunteering gives you the confidence that you can make changes to the society and also helps you in connecting with people.
Volunteering leaders have a fearless approach and have tremendous patience. They have creative thinking and are eager to take up new initiatives. They can work as a team and are driven by passion. They are very humble and contribute to the society. Volunteering helps develop leadership skills by having the right approach. A volunteer has a good chance of developing himself into a future leader. Here are some of the ways to acquire leadership skills through volunteering.
· Giving
Volunteering is giving. According to Sadhguru “Volunteering is a way of learning to make our lives into a process of just giving and being willing. Not just willing to do this or that, simply willing”. You help people to surpass different types of challenges. You help to make the society better and it is the kind of passion you need for successful leadership. Choose a cause you are passionate about, contribute your time, money or effort for that cause, maintain the enthusiasm throughout the process of volunteering.
· Pushing your own bars
When you volunteer, you have to work with new people and explore new surroundings. To be a great leader you have to be outside your comfort zone, It makes you tough and prepares you to face any situation. For e.g, volunteering activities to provide medical aid to injured people during war, volunteering as a part of natural disaster response team etc gives you experiences that helps you face tough situations.
· Acquiring Knowledge
Every volunteering activity is an opportunity to enhance your knowledge and sometimes it is even an eye opener. Irrespective of how much ever you know, there are always somethings that you can learn. You have to maintain the thirst for learning as it is essential for becoming a great leader.
· Enhancing your soft skills
Developing technical skills is very important in life, but at the same time it is also important to enhance the soft skills like authenticity, positivity and confidence. Volunteering helps in being in contact with people belonging to different locations/languages and serving them. It helps in improving your communication skill, your body language and also makes you great listeners.
· Improving your written communication
When you volunteer as an employee through CSR activities or as a student through your college, you can share your volunteering experience. It is an opportunity to enhance your writing skills. You can even create a blog and share your experience with a wider audience. Your narration could bring out your passion and your rich experience, that could motivate your coworkers, friends or your classmates to volunteer.
Good written communication is important for great leaders. It helps you communicate with clarity and ease to a larger audience.
· Building a network
When you volunteer, you might get in touch with great leaders. It could be any volunteering activity like attending to people in a spiritual discourse or serving the people in a slum. Whatever the activity may be, you will still be in contact with people from all walks of life. It helps you network with a lot of people and gain their trust which is very important for a great leader.
You can lead by example and create your own operational and personal network.
· Strategizing
Volunteering give you space for trying new things. It gives you an opportunity to take risks, venture into uncomfortable zones and handle different situations differently. In a way it is enhancing your leadership quality. It gives you more fun and opportunities to experiment more than you can imagine. You can raise the profile of volunteering in your organization through your own volunteering strategy. This is very important as volunteering activity should develop in relation to the current challenges in the external environment in the area where you volunteer.
Being an effective volunteer leader
You can demonstrate your leadership skills that you have acquired throughout your carrier by being professional and showing your commitment for the volunteering activity. You can empathize with your fellow volunteers and support them, hold them accountable as well as demonstrate your accountability through your own activities and enthusiasm. You can communicate the objective of the volunteering activity to all your co-volunteers and also the impact it has created on the society by sharing the results. Your passion should inspire your volunteers to give their best to the volunteering activity, thus resulting in a volunteering team who have the complete satisfaction of giving whatever they give.
