Personal Leadership & Communication · Northbrooks Secondary School · June 2026
The Student Leaders Who Learned to Lead a Room Without Raising Their Voices
In a bright hall at Northbrooks Secondary School, a line of coloured blocks sat on the floor between nine student leaders, each one holding a single card of instructions no one else was allowed to see. The rule was simple and unforgiving: no showing, no writing, only talking. Within minutes the line was wrong, voices were talking over each other, and the frustration in the room was real.
That was the point. Sequence Right, the activity Leaven Academy built to expose how conflict actually starts, is not designed to be comfortable. It is designed to make miscommunication visible before it becomes a bigger problem in a CCA meeting or a class council. For thirty-five Secondary 3 councillors, class leaders, and CCA leaders, this was the moment the workshop stopped being theory and started being personal.
Northbrooks had asked Leaven Academy for a facilitation skills workshop, not a leadership talk. Their students already held the titles. What they needed was the capability to match.
By the end of the three-hour session, the same students who had struggled to line up blocks without talking over each other were standing in front of their peers, projecting their voices with intention, and mapping out exactly what they would do the next time a CCA disagreement flared up.
What Northbrooks Secondary School Needed
Northbrooks’ Sec 3 student councillors, class leaders, and CCA leaders carried real responsibility on paper, running meetings, coordinating events, managing their peers, but many had never been taught how to do any of it. Facilitation is a skill schools assume will develop on its own once a student is handed a title. Northbrooks did not want to leave it to chance. The teacher in charge of the school’s student leaders were looking for a workshop that would give their appointed leaders the practical tools to run a meeting, project their voice with confidence, and handle the interpersonal friction that comes with leading peers their own age. Leaven Academy was engaged to build that capability directly, in a single focused session, before the demands of the CCA calendar caught up with them.
How We Designed It
The programme was built around the Leaven Learning Cycle, our adaptation of Kolb’s experiential learning model that moves students through Experience, Reflection, Insight, Behaviour, and Consequence rather than stopping at theory. Students did not start with a lecture on public speaking. They started by being a radio DJ, using only their voice to hold a room’s attention, then reflected on what a professional broadcaster does differently before being taught the actual mechanics of projection and resonance. The same pattern held for conflict: an activity that manufactured real miscommunication under Sequence Right, followed by a guided debrief, before the C.U.R.E.S conflict framework was introduced as language for something the students had already felt in their bodies. The final segment turned insight into a plan, with every participant leaving with a personal CCA Action Plan built on a SMART goal, three concrete actions, and a scripted response to one difficult situation they anticipated facing.
The Moment That Mattered Most
The debrief after Sequence Right was where the workshop earned its keep. Students who had just spent thirty minutes growing frustrated with teammates they could not fully understand were asked a single question: was the conflict they just experienced actually bad, or was it just poorly managed? The room went quiet in a different way this time, not from awkwardness but from recognition. Several students named the exact moment they had assumed a teammate understood them when they had not, the same mistake that plays out in real CCA meetings every week. That reframe, from conflict as failure to conflict as a normal part of leading a team, is what turned an icebreaker game into something students carried out of the hall with them.
Northbrooks Secondary Students engaged in the different activities during the workshop
What the Numbers Said
Across the two groups and 35 participants, the programme scored 89.8% for overall programme effectiveness and 96.3% for coach effectiveness. Every participant in the CCA Leaders group rated their coach's clarity a perfect 5 out of 5. In plain terms, the students did not just tolerate the session, they found the coaching clear enough that almost none of them had any confusion about what was being taught.
Three Things That Made the Difference
Making conflict happen before teaching how to solve it. Sequence Right was not a warm-up game, it was a controlled way to let real misunderstanding surface between students who normally avoid friction with their peers. Teaching C.U.R.E.S after that experience meant the framework arrived exactly when students were most ready to use it, not before.
Splitting delivery by leadership context, not just by class. Councillors and class leaders worked with Coach Victor in one group while CCA leaders worked with Coach Lynette in a separate room, letting each coach tailor examples to the kind of leadership situation that group actually faces, whether that is a class council decision or a CCA rehearsal gone sideways.
Ending with a plan the students would actually use, not a certificate. The session closed with every participant completing a personal CCA Action Plan naming one SMART goal, three concrete actions for the next four weeks, and their own C.U.R.E.S response to a difficulty they expect to face. The workshop did not end when the session did.
Thinking About Something Similar for Your Students?
Leaven Academy works with secondary schools, polytechnics, ITE colleges, junior colleges, and youth organisations across Singapore to build the facilitation, leadership, and communication capability that formal titles alone do not teach.
If you have student leaders who could use the same kind of practical, hands-on preparation, we would be glad to talk through what that could look like for your school.
“he conflict management activity because it was something I have never tried before and it was eye opening that we had many misunderstandings.”
“I enjoyed Coach Victor’s way of presenting as it taught me to be more confident in myself. The way I talk or present to a group of people, I will apply what I have learnt here.”
“I liked the way my instructor taught us the different methods to cope with conflict.”