Exclusive to GCU students and developed in partnership with the Social Enterprise Academy Scotland, the SLP is a series of free workshops designed to help identify and develop leadership skills. The workshops enable students to: develop as a leader, build confidence, improve employability prospects (GCU Students’ Association, 2024).

We aim to provide students with free, accessible learning opportunities that teach them meta-skills and give them extra-curricular tools that will help them achieve their goals outside of the classroom.

With the current cost-of-living crisis and individual circumstances of students, we provide these workshops in both a live format, delivered by our student trainers, and as self-guided modules on GCU Learn. This enables students to access the workshops when it suits them and around the varying demands of higher education.

With an average of 48.7 applications per job in November 2024 (Employer News, 2024), the graduate job market is becoming increasingly difficult. Not only this, but society is continuing to put more and more value on performance, with buzz phrases like ‘peak performance’ (Skills Development Scotland and the Centre for Work-based Learning in Scotland, 2018) and ‘go above and beyond’. This means students are not only competing for the best grades, but the ‘learning burden of both gathering knowledge and developing the skills that integrate that knowledge is quickly shifting to the individual’ (Skills Development Scotland and the Centre for Work-based Learning in Scotland, 2018, p.4).

With the volume of information generated online increasing exponentially, a more complex information landscape will emerge (Marr, 2025, cited in Skills Development Scotland and the Centre for Work-based Learning in Scotland, 2018), meaning that although there have never been more information rich resources available, sifting through this to find the golden nugget has never been more overwhelming. So, as an organisation whose Mission is to ‘represent and support GCU student to have the best university experience possible’ (GCU Students’ Association, 2024), we asked ourselves, how can we support students to feel full prepared once they graduate GCU? The Student Leaders Programme aims to do just that; to help students cut out the noise when developing essential skills that increase their chances of landing that dream job.

Moreover, with the advent of easily accessible Artificial Intelligence, we are seeing a new and unknown labour market emerging, where machines have the potential take jobs consisting of routine tasks away from humans. This leaves ‘tasks that are much harder for machines to carry out such as working with and supporting others and using creativity and drive to solve complex societal challenges’ (RSA, 2027, cited in Skills Development Scotland and the Centre for Work-based Learning in Scotland, 2018, p.7). These roles are becoming more and more valuable and therefore given to those who are highly skilled and truly passionate about succeeding. The Student Leaders Programme aims to nurture these skills in GCU students, giving them the chance to hone skills that are essential for the growth of industries across the globe. We’ll now take a look at how our workshops develop the meta skills of empathy, curiosity, communication, and more.

In order to hone in on each of these meta skills, the Student Leaders Programme comprises of 12 individual workshops that delve deeper into each skill. See Table 2 for a breakdown of the meta skills and their appropriate workshop (capitalised)

Each workshop is delivered as a live session, either online or in person, with 7 of the 12 workshops also available as self-guided options.

Depending on the workshop format, students engage with a variety of different tasks. These range from self-reflections and individual tasks like quizzes and puzzles, to smaller and whole group discussions and group activities. The interactive nature of the workshops is to encourage active participation and to practice the use of meta skills, rather than passive learning.

An example activity from the Connecting with Empathy live workshop is to introduce the session with a quote from Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view – until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (Lee, 1960/1997). Students are asked to show each other their shoes in silence and make brief notes about their first impressions. They are then each asked to share a significant story about a time they have worn those shoes, with others being invited to reflect on the story and compare their initial judgements. A simple exercise that inspires students to engage in empathy without relying on a copy and paste writing exercise, and rather a chance to embody the skill in real time.