Ready, set, lead

How does ready, set, lead work?

There are 3 parts to ready, set, lead:

Get ready

Start with this quick warmup activity sheet to help you understand yourself as a leader, set goals, and learn how your unit works.

Then decide what you want to do next – build your confidence and skills first, or put them straight into action…

Get set – leadership challenge

Are you looking to find out more about leadership, grow your skills and build your confidence as a leader? Then the Guide leadership challenge is for you!

This section is packed with challenges, games and activities that you can do by yourself or in small groups. Before you begin, complete the ‘Colour me confident’ page to show how confident you feel about each of the areas of leadership. Then choose which challenges you’d like to complete and see your confidence grow.

You could also complete the Guide leadership challenge at special leadership events for Guides in your local area. Speak to your leader to find out if any are happening near you!

Lead! – leadership in action

Time to put your leadership skills into action! This section has lots of tasks that you can do in your unit to practice being a leader. Choose the tasks you want to do and show off your skills!

If you’re a Rainbow or Brownie helper, you can do some of the tasks at the Rainbow or Brownie unit you help with.

Areas of leadership

The leadership challenges and the leadership in action tasks dig into 5 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.

Are there badges?

Of course! You can achieve 2 badges by completing ready, set, lead.

Leadership challenge badge

Choose and complete 4 challenges from ‘the leader I want to be’ and 2 from each of the other leadership areas to achieve your Guide leadership challenge badge. 

Get the leadership challenge badge from the online shop.

Leadership in action badge 

Choose and complete 15 tasks in total to achieve your Guide leadership in action badge. You should do 2 tasks from each leadership area. The other 5 can be from any of the leadership areas, or you create some tasks of your own to match things that you do in your unit.

Get the leadership in action badge from the online shop.

You don’t have to do both badges unless you want to! You can choose to do just 1 of them if you like.

Your Guide leader can record that you’ve completed each badge on GO. They are listed in the ‘other badges’ tab of the Guide programme recording section.  

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Why should I do ready, set, lead?

Completing ready, set, lead will help you build lots of different skills including: 

• Confidence.
• Organisation.
• Problem-solving.
• Resilience.
• Self-care.
• Communication.
• Inclusion.
• Presenting.
• Listening.
• Observation. 

And more! But it’s not just about building skills and confidence. Take a look at this video from some of the Guides who helped to create the resource to find out why they think you should do ready, set, lead:

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How do I get started?

Talk to your leader and let them know you’re interested in completing ready, set lead. There might be other Guides in your unit who want to do it too, and you can work on the Guide leadership challenges together.  

You should complete the ‘get ready’ activity sheet to give you an introduction to the resource, and then talk to your leader about what section you’d like to do next.

There are planning sheets for both the leadership challenge activities and the leadership in action tasks, so you can use these to note down the challenges and tasks you’ve chosen, and your leader can sign to say when you’ve completed them.  

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What can I do when I've completed ready, set, lead?

Remember that leadership is a skill you develop and grow throughout your life. So keep putting your skills into practice and you’ll see your confidence grow and grow.

Some other things you can do to continue your leadership journey include:

• Working towards your Guide camp permit.
• Completing the lead skills builder.
• Trying out the Guide eco award.
• Starting your Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (age 13+).
• Becoming a Rainbow or Brownie helper.

Once you finish Guides you can discover and explore even more empowering leadership by:

• Becoming a young leader and doing the young leader development programme.
• Becoming a peer educator.
• Joining Rangers for more adventures and leadership challenges. 

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Resources for leaders

Check out the leader guidance notes for further information to help you support Guides to complete ready, set, lead.

If you have a group of Guides in your unit working on ready, set, lead together, you don’t need to print a full copy of the resource for all of them.

We’ve pulled together the 8 pages from the resource which each individual Guide will need to complete - the ‘get ready’ sheets, and the tracking and planning pages. You can just print these pages for each Guide working on the resource.  

They’ll need 1 full copy of the whole resource that they can access to make sure they have all the information they need and can see all the challenges and tasks they can choose from. This could be a printed or digital copy.   

Get set – leadership challenge event plan 

We've created a plan for a weekend-long event that could be run for Guides at district, division, county or country or region level to help them complete the Guide leadership challenge badge.

It was co-created by the Guides who helped to create ready, set, lead and includes an agenda, session plans, activity adaptations, top tips and background information about youth leadership in Girlguiding.  

If you’re interested in putting on an event in your local area, speak to your local commissioner and other leaders and go for it! 

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