How can we empower the leaders of tomorrow?

Empowering the youth of tomorrow — a phrase not unheard of especially in today’s 21st century. We tend to downplay the potential of our youth today by giving them labels such as the “snowflake generation” or even “strawberry generation”. Our role as stewards is to influence and support youth. In the midst of many fast-changing externalities in the environment around us today, we need to enable ourselves and our young people to be more agile and adaptable. Creating a mindset of Entrepreneurial Leadership in youth is the building block of driving change today. However, what exactly is Entrepreneurial Leadership in the first place?

As youth development practitioners we often channel our conversations on fundamental building blocks of Character, Mindsets and Skill sets. In this journey of “practising”, here are some important foundations and reminders (for ourselves) on our work.

1- The power of self-belief

We should not underestimate the power of self-belief. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, ‘Believe you can and you’re halfway there.’ Entrepreneurial thinking takes root with the right anchor in self-worth and self-belief. Once a young person starts to believe in himself, his perspective of the world changes. However, it is not always as easy as it seems. After speaking with many young people, I have realised that the majority of them do not even see themselves as leaders and are unaware of their tremendous innate potential. All they may need could be that extra little push of encouragement and inspiration, and they could uncover their hidden gems. Once young people are inspired, it does not take much time for them to go forward and blossom, flourishing new creative ideas.

2- Repeat until ingrained

Entrepreneurial thinking is like a muscle. Much like how you would go to the gym to do repetitions of bench presses and pull-ups to build your physical muscles, we need to continuously exercise the muscles in our minds until entrepreneurial thinking gradually gets strengthened into part of our everyday lives.

Entrepreneurial thinking is not just about our future endeavours, it involves seeing things from a different lens. It opens our eyes to new learning opportunities and allows us to grow as a person. It is not a mindset that can be developed overnight and this is where mentors, facilitators and even parents can play a part. From sharing entrepreneurship stories to talking about day-to-day innovations happening around the world today, it can help cultivate such a unique form of thinking in their adolescent minds.

Entrepreneurial resilience is not a one-time trial — it is all about hard work and perseverance. This resonates with what Steve Jobs once said, ‘I’m convinced that about half of what separates successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.’

3- Personal Modelling

It is easy to be great advisors of others but sometimes we can be poor critics of ourselves and most of us can agree with this as we see it happening on a day-to-day basis. Let’s just take the workplace for example. How easy is it to provide constructive feedback to our peers as compared to taking the same valuable advice we give to others?

Any kind of change has to first start with us. We cannot model the way for others if we fail to model the way for ourselves, right? This is where self-reflection is important so that we have time to reflect on our actions and improve ourselves. Our actions are the strongest mouthpieces of what we actually claim to advocate. “Actions speak louder than words” is a phrase that a lot of people stand by when it comes to personal modelling.

While we forge ahead to make change and ripples in the community, it is also important we take a step back and reflect on how we can possibly use a different approach to push towards the same goal of preparing our youths for the future. It’s hard work, but it’s necessary work. It is all the more important to drive the entrepreneurial mindset in young people today as we are unsure of what the future holds for us. We need multi-prong approaches to create an entrepreneurial leadership ecosystem and hence we all have to play our part in moving an entire generation forward to a better future.

This is adapted from a speech by Ivy Tse at the SheXO Forum 2021 organised by Deloitte Singapore.