(Family Features) Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. Young people who aspire to become prominent business professionals can now get a head start on the knowledge and skills necessary to become successful entrepreneurs before they ever leave high school.

Training for a particular field is an essential step in career preparation, but success comes from more than academic training. Developing ingenuity and creativity can take young professionals far, and those skills aren’t necessarily found in a classroom.

If you, or a student in your life, is set on embarking on a challenging and rewarding path toward economic success, explore those entrepreneurial interests with these tips from the experts at Junior Achievement (JA), whose research shows 61% of teens would rather start their own businesses than have traditional jobs.

Tap Into Your Network
Role models can provide immeasurable insight into the world of business and economics, demonstrating what it takes to build a successful and sustainable career. Identify someone in your circle who can serve as a mentor as you plan for the future. This might be a teacher, neighbor, someone who attends your church or a business owner in your community. Meeting and chatting even a couple of times a month can help you channel your ambition.

Participate in Leadership Events
Leaders put their skills into action. As a student, you can begin practicing your leadership skills by participating in events that challenge and engage you. For example, the JA National Summit allows student teams – through the support of leading businesses like Staples, the Pacific Life Foundation and Chick-fil-A – to demonstrate their business acumen, creativity and entrepreneurial thinking in a competitive environment, showcasing their companies to Members of Congress.

Through one of the four dynamic competitions, the Company of the Year Competition, students launch and operate real business enterprises under the guidance of dedicated local business volunteers, conceptualize and market a product or service that addresses unmet consumer needs and attracts investors for their ventures. By most effectively demonstrating its company’s achievements, as well as the personal development of each team member, FlameGuard, which offers a variety of fire safety products, was crowned this year’s JA Company of the Year.

Understand Your Intended Industry
It’s never too early to begin following notable happenings in professional fields that interest you. That might mean monitoring news stories and setting up search terms to alert you to the latest articles. You may also be able to subscribe to publications dedicated to the industry and join professional organizations connected to the field as a student ambassador. Researching the field can give you a stronger idea of how you can become more directly involved as a student.

Expand Your Education
As a student, you may have limited opportunities to explore your career field while also meeting the requirements for your high school diploma. However, you can join (or start) a club to sharpen your focus on areas you have a special interest. You can also look for ways to learn more about your chosen field outside of school hours by attending camps, seminars and workshops. You may even be able to land a part-time job, internship or apprenticeship that provides greater visibility to your future career plans.

Find more ideas to support your growth as a future business leader at ja.org.

SOURCE:
Junior Achievement

The Bridge is a section of the STM Daily News Blog meant for diversity, offering real news stories about bona fide community efforts to perpetuate a greater good. The purpose of The Bridge is to connect the divides that separate us, fostering understanding and empathy among different groups. By highlighting positive initiatives and inspirational actions, The Bridge aims to create a sense of unity and shared purpose. This section brings to light stories of individuals and organizations working tirelessly to promote inclusivity, equality, and mutual respect. Through these narratives, readers are encouraged to appreciate the richness of diverse perspectives and to participate actively in building stronger, more cohesive communities.

https://stmdailynews.com/category/the-bridge

ARAC Scholarship Programs

The Archer-Ragsdale Arizona Chapter (ARAC), paying tribute to Tuskegee Airmen, is accepting applications for two scholarships. The William A. Campbell Memorial Scholarship, named after Col. Campbell, offers up to two $1,500 scholarships to STEM-bound high school seniors. Applicants must have a minimum 2.7 GPA and submit a 500-word essay by May 31.

The Ashby-Herring Scholarship, named after original Tuskegee Airmen, awards two $1,500 scholarships to African American high school seniors with a GPA of 3.0 or higher and financial need. The deadline for the Ashby-Herring Scholarship is May 1.

Diana Gregory, ARAC Scholarship Committee coordinator, expressed pride in facilitating higher education through these scholarships, encouraging eligible seniors to apply promptly. For more information, contact rtoli@cox.net for the William A. Campbell Memorial Scholarship and scholarship@azfoundation.org for the Ashby-Herring Scholarship.

https://www.azfoundation.org/

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Newswise — A new study sheds light on the vital role of communication and expertise within organizations, revealing their impact on group performance. Researchers examined how individuals become part of communication networks and the effect of selection processes on group performance. The study found that people who communicated more during training were more likely to be chosen as a central member of the network. In addition, teams that chose their central member performed as well as and often better than teams whose central member was randomly assigned.

The study, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and Clark University, is published in Frontiers in Psychology.

“The people in network positions and the processes by which they arrive at those positions play a significant role in determining team performance,” says Linda Argote, Professor of Organizational Behavior and Theory at Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, who coauthored the study.  “For centralized network positions which require occupants to transfer information to other members of the network, it is critical to have good communication skills.”

Communication networks serve as the conduits for knowledge exchange, and central members in a network are often responsible for gathering and sharing that information. Researchers drew on studies on communication networks as well as the Carnegie research perspective, which studies the ways organizations gain efficiency through learning, developing routines and structures, and exchanging knowledge.

To test whether group members who choose the occupants of network positions select themselves and others that best suit skill requirements of the position, the authors compared the performance of groups whose members received their choice of who occupied which network position to the performance of groups whose members did not. They conducted a lab study that involved nearly 125 university students. They had two experimental conditions: in one condition, members received their choice of who occupied the central position; in the other condition, members did not receive their choice.

Allowing group members to choose who occupies which network positions enabled teams to optimize their position assignments based on individuals’ skills and expertise (e.g., organization, delegation), which boosted groups’ performance. Team members were more likely to choose individuals who communicated frequently and those who appeared to have task-related expertise to occupy the central network position. Teams receiving their choice of central member performed better than teams not receiving their choice or teams in which members were randomly assigned to the position. 

Among the study’s limitations, the authors note that they investigated the effects of choice as they pertained to network positions in a single network structure, not whether groups performed differently when they could choose their network structures.

“The Carnegie perspective speaks to formal and informal communication structures in organizations but not about the processes through which workers come to occupy network positions,” explains Jerry Guo, Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, who led the study. “We extended this perspective by showing that the process through which individuals come to occupy network positions affects the performance of networks. In this way, we contribute to an understanding of how the development of a network, not just its structure, influences performance.”

The study was funded by the Center for Organizational Learning, Innovation and Knowledge at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon, the National Science Foundation, and the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. 

Source: Carnegie Mellon University