The best leadership development opportunity for a student is finding ways to help others. This can be achieved through coaching, tutoring, counseling, or assisting younger children.
Along the way, an aspiring leader must observe and spend time with leaders. One way to do this is to read about them. Reading great biographies is not only enjoyable, it’s a good use of time. Biographies expand one’s knowledge, vision, and self-awareness. And they introduce one to new worlds, virtues, and opportunities.
In difficult times, one can think back on biographies read for inspiration, motivation, and wisdom.
A high school student can benefit from men, women, missionaries, business leaders, scientists, musicians, preachers, and politicians.
Some leaders, like Winston Churchill, are worth reading over the course of one’s entire life, for their lives offer numerous and profound lessons.
Winston Churchill — war correspondent, war hero, grandson of a Duke, brilliant writer and speaker, member of Parliament, Prime Minister, savior of Western Civilization, gardener, brick layer, painter, historian, husband, and father — is hard to beat.
Over one thousand books have been written about him. The late Paul Johnson’s Churchill is arguably the best short single-volume biography of his life. Superbly written, the book introduces the life and times of a great man who had rare courage.
