Ready, set, lead!
Introducing our new resource to help Guides grow their leadership skills
Know a Guide who’s ready to take the lead? We’ve worked with girls to design a new leadership resource to help them become the leader they dream of being!
What is Ready, set, lead?
Ready, set, lead is our new resource. Co-created with Guides, for Guides, it’s been designed to help girls to grow in confidence when taking the lead. Plus, they can earn 2 cool badges!
Ready, set, lead does what it says – it gets Guides ready to step into leadership. Leadership is more than just a role; it's how we approach the world, it’s our behaviour and how we create the right environments for people to feel empowered. In guiding, we know how important growing leadership skills is – it helps our girls know they can do anything. Our 2024 Girls’ Attitudes Survey showed girls feel that confidence will be one of the most critical attributes to their future success.
Our volunteers already do amazing work to boost girls’ confidence, by listening to and working with girls to make change happen. Great leaders keep learning and growing and encourage others to learn and grow too.
How was it developed?
For the last few years, we’ve been working on our leadership offer and last year we launched the young leader development programme. This was the start of our new set of leadership resources for young members. But even then, we were working on something fun for Guides!
Back in 2023, 11 Guides were recruited from around Girlguiding to help create a resource that worked for them by:
- Working out what the resource needed to do (grow their confidence as leaders).
- Deciding on what sort of resource it should be and what topics should be covered.
- Coming up with all the tasks in the resource.
- Testing the activities.
- Helping to design the badges!
- Eating a lot (and we mean a lot) of biscuits.
They did this through monthly meetings, 3 residential events and a lot of trial and error.
Who can do Ready, set, lead?
All Guides can get involved with Ready, set, lead but it will be especially useful for those who already have a leadership role. This includes Guides who are patrol leaders and seconds, or Rainbow and Brownie helpers.
Younger Guides might need a bit more of your help, but they all should be able to do it.
Girlguiding glossary:
Patrol leader (PL) - A Guide who is nominated by their patrol to be the leader of the patrol.
Second (or seconder) - A Brownie who is nominated as the sixer’s deputy.
Six - Members of Brownie units are usually divided into smaller groups called sixes. These usually contain between 4 and 8 members.
Sixer - A Brownie who is nominated as the leader of a six.
Rainbow helper - An opportunity for Guides to help at a local Rainbow unit. This helps Guides begin to understand the role and responsibility of being a leader.
Brownie helper – A Guide who helps at a local Brownie unit.
Want to learn more about how Girlguiding works? Read our full A-Z glossary.
What skills does it cover?
The resource includes challenges that dig into 5 different areas of leadership:
- The leader I want to be – explore the skills and behaviours that good leaders have and create a strong foundation to build on.
- Keeping safe – find out and put into practice ways to keep yourself and others safe when you’re planning and running activities.
- Making a difference – make the world a little bit better by helping those around you.
- Planning activities – discover how to make great plans and prepare for fun in your unit.
- Running activities – give it a go and practice running activities.
What’s included in each area?
The Guides told us that the resource needed to be interactive and fun, so they decided there should be games and immersive group activities. Whether that's chatting about role models, planning meetings , or supporting each other. All these things help to build the behaviours that we see in great leaders.
The activities in each topic help them discover more about leadership in a way that’s designed for Guides by Guides. And then they have tasks which help them put their leadership skills into action.
The 3 parts to Ready, set, lead
1. Get ready
Guides start with quick warmup activities to help them understand who they are as a leader, set goals, and learn how the unit works. They then decide what to do next: building up their confidence and skills through the ‘get set’ section or putting them straight into action.
2. Get set... (Guide leadership challenge)
This section is packed with challenges, games and activities that Guides can do by themselves or in small groups. Before beginning, Guides complete the ‘colour me confident’ page to show how confident they feel about each of the areas of leadership. Then they can choose which challenges they’d like to complete to grow their confidence.
If they do 4 activities from the 'leader I want to be' area, and 2 from each other area they can gain their fab new leadership challenge badge. You can also put on special events in your local area through Guide leadership challenge events.
3. Lead! (Leadership in action)
Now it’s time to put their leadership skills into action! This section has lots of tasks that Guides can do in their unit to practice being a leader. They choose the tasks and show off their skills.
What you need to do as a volunteer
- Have a read through the Ready, set, lead resource and the leader guidance, so you are ready to support Guides who may be interested in completing it.
- Encourage girls to think about doing the leadership resource and developing their skills. The resource is for everyone but may be particularly exciting for girls who are patrol leads and seconds, or Rainbow or Brownie helpers.
- Support girls to complete the ‘get ready’ activity sheet and talk to them about which section they would like to do next.
- Help girls to choose activities and tasks which will work for them and for the unit. Give them the time and space to make their own choices and to carry them out.
- Sign girls' planning sheets for the activities and tasks when they have completed them. Sometimes things might not go to plan, but that doesn’t always mean that the task hasn’t been completed – Guides can still grow and develop from this and see what they could do differently in future.
- Order their badges and celebrate the Guides who have completed the resource!
Check out the leaders’ guidance we wrote to help you put this into action in your unit.
Top tips for leaders from Guides
Now it’s time to put their leadership skills into action! This section has lots of tasks that Guides can do in their unit to practice being a leader. They choose the tasks and show off their skills.
'Encourage them all the way!' - Emily.
‘Get Guides to do it with a friend’ - Agatha.
‘Celebrate their achievements’ - Lily.
‘Listen to the Guides and let them take their own time’ - Poppy.
‘Be ready to help when they need it’ - Harriet.
‘Have fun! Guides and leaders!’ - Emily.
‘Remember that any Guide can do it if they want to give leadership a shot’ - Ruth.
‘Make sure everyone is having a good time!’ - Erin.
‘Give them time, don’t make them do it too quickly’ - Poppy.
‘You can adapt the activities and tasks to make sure it’s enjoyable for them’ - Daisy.
How can I get involved?
Here's how you can get involved:
- Join our support call on Thursday 4 September to go through the resource and a question-and-answer session.
- Look out for guidance on how to host leadership residentials as a way for girls to connect with other Guides in the local area.
- And check out our leaders’ guidance to help you bring ready, set, lead to life with your Guides.
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