Re: Am I Over-reacting?
Bruce Major (major@GATOR.NET)
Tue, 28 Apr 1998 22:19:08 -0400
You should be taken aback. Leadership starts with the example, a point
repeatedly stressed in the BSA literature and a basic tenet of leader
training. For your top leadership to have failed to grasp that concept is
sad indeed. You should find a way to gently communicate that to them.
Perhaps, as with the coffee spill, there was an explanation for their poor
uniforming. In that case, they should have offered it, with an apology.
One of my favorite stories concerns General Dwight D. Eisenhower during WW
II. He was visiting an Allied base in France and toured the facilities,
including the mess hall. It was mealtime. Ike was not particularly hungry
but the CO persuaded him to sample the chow. Although he asked for small
portions, the servers, impressed by their guest, loaded down his tray.
He figured he would just eat a few bites and then leave, but as he sat down,
his eyes lit upon a sign posted on the mess hall wall. It said "Take all you
want. Eat all you take." He sat there until he had eaten every bite.
That is leadership.
Bruce Major
Alachua District Training Chairman
Gainesville, Florida
-----Original Message-----
>As Troop Committee Chair, fairly new to my units and council and in need
>of an additional member of a Board of Review, I asked my Unit
>Commissioner to attend. He came... wearing jeans, a uniform shirt, no
>neckwear and a Redskins (or some other team) baseball cap. On another
>recent occasion, I assisted at a District sponsored Youth Protection
>Training and there met my District Commissior and my District Training
>Chair, neither in uniform as according to all that I teach as an
>instructor in Cub Leader Basic. I'm confused... should I be taken aback
>by this, or is this more of the 'norm' than I would like to believe?
Terry Howerton Sakima Group, Inc. SCOUTER Magazine Kansas City |
