Eagledad

I didn't say anything about authority stosh. I said persuaded change. Don't pull in all these other stipulations to define a simple outward act. Throwing a ball is one simple act. Making a decision is one simple act. influencing others to follow change is just one simple act. Some can do it, some can't. I don't know why, but I can't throw a ball. But I have vision and sway change as a result. Authority can influence change simply by having authority, but influencing change doesn't require authority. Gandhi or Hitler did not start out with authority. An example with a Scout: At summer camp in Colorado a scout caught a trout and took it back alive to his patrol. Another member of the patrol said lets eat it. The camp is a mess hall style camp and we where due to eat supper in one hour. That one scout led the patrol to process the trout, find cooking equipment, find oil, and whatever else they needed to cook the trout and had it eaten in 45 minutes. He never acted as the leader, never asked if anyone like the idea, he just took off and got everyone working together to cook and eat that trout. Not one of those patrol members had ever cleaned or cooked a fish before. That is the simple act of persuading others to follow. Another way I stumbled on finding leaders of the group is high intensity patrol competition. Before the restrictions, our troop played laser tag. Each battle is something like 5 minutes in a small room with obsticles, so the team has to come up with a plan quick for the team to survive and wine. Two styles of leadership (persuasion) instantly appear, the member with experience and the member with a vision or plan. Exciting to watch. We try to achieve the same thing with patrol competitions in scouting activities, but the results are much slower because the time for performance is much slower. Personally the next fastest way to see leaders pop out of groups are High Adventure treks. Time is one motivator of leadership, stress is another. High adventure treks push the comfort zones of most participants and that is when the leaders of persuasion pop out. That is not always good, sometimes the team is too humble and follow the wrong direction. Getting back to your authority influence on persuasion, the main problem adults have with boy run is that boys automatically assume the authority of adult stature. Adults have been the persuader all of a boy's personal life, it is hard for them to change that idea in their head. It's a hard concept to change even when the adults are willing. Barry

Servant leadership is one style of leadership, it is not the definition of leadership. Of course we in scouting teach servant leadership as the preferred method because it fits within the boundaries of the Scout Oath and Law. Living the Scout Oath and Law is living as a servant because the action of the Law are outward actions toward others. That is why I describe scouting as boy run, not boy led. You don't have to lead to live the servant lifestyle of the Scout Law. As I said, leadership is simply the actions to persuade others to follow change. It is that simple. That can be done a number of different ways other than servant leadership. The military used a directive style of leadership because they require an instant response of obediance to perform efficiently. But we tend to make leadership a high level of importance because it is at the top of the stature of recognition. We all know that most big accomplishments can't be met without a whole team. Yet, the "Leader" is given credit for one of the skills in that team. Why? Because since the beginning of time, stature is how adults rank themselves among their peers. But I believe good followship requires greater skills than leadership. The bible say pride is the main cause of folly. Humility is the cure. Leadership within the bounds of the Scout Law is expression of humility. I can't change your mind about natural leaders, but I will say that you likely haven't met one. My sister and I had the same discussion once and my answer to her was not believing in natural leaders is like not believing in natural athletes and everyone should be able to run a 4 minute mile for 27 miles. Call them freaks of nature if you want, but they are out there. A natural leader scout can teach adults a lot because they push adults pride to their limits. I can honestly say I was a better SM with the natural leader in our troop. I failed him and I changed as a result. Barry

What I mean by character is the unchoreographed personality or natural presence with others. Leadership is simply the act of persuading others toward change. Natural leaders have the unusual skill to persuade followers toward change with little or no purposeful actions. Even their body language can be persuasive. Natural leaders aren't typically visionaries so they don't always standout outside their group. But natural leaders who are visionary can change the direction of history: Alexander the Great, Hitler, Gandhi. I learned the hard way that natural leaders do not work well in controlled environments because the restriction of freedom to act on their nature frustrates them. They flourish in true patrol method environments. Of course we all get frustrated with restricting our character or nature, but boy scouts is a supposed to encourage the actions of leadership. The problem shows up when adults are uncomfortable with scouts with ambitious visions. I'm not suggesting those adults are bad because all of us get uncomfortable with change outside our vision to some degree. It takes practice to deal with that part of us and how respond to it. It's that inner battle of pride vs humility that all us struggle with. Barry

Well that's not what I mean, but I agree with you. For me, Patrol Method next to any other method is like night and day. True Patrol Method even on the worst day is beautiful. Barry

The 3% are born that way. You know one when you meet them. As for the other 97%, it's a matter of learning the skills that pulls ones individual nature and character to be a good leader. At the very least, scouting helps a boy learn whats to be in life. At it's best, Scouting helps a scout build the skills toward that vision. Barry

Interesting, to me boy run is a well-oil machine. Watching it is poetry in motion. Barry

Scouts timed me. Best I ever did was 1 minute 32 seconds. But I started out about 7 minutes. I learned to watch the new scouts to see what worked and what didn't because the experienced scouts will politely appear to listen. Young scouts have little patience and don't mind showing it. Barry

Adding to SSScout, most effective Scoutmaster Minutes are short (2 minute max), dramatic, adventurous, or humorous. Barry

Scouts learn and grow from the experiences of their decisions. Make the program so that they make as many decisions as possible. Barry

I've participated in a lot of leaders courses and many times the discussion comes up whether a non-leader (non natural leader) can be a good leader. I disagree that the BSA doesn't understand. I think they don't care, or even need to care. Experts say that only three percent of the population are natural leaders. That being said, should a program encourage a leadership experience for all or most its members? The program is what it is because it gives most member and opportunity to find if they are leaders, or develop and appetite to be a a leader and pursue getting the skills. This is where I disagreed with Kudu and the Baden Powell scouts (BPS). The SM in BPS selects the patrol leader leaves him there as long as he wants. The idea is to get the natural leader and encourage his gift. First off, there are very few adults that I think can select natural leaders without bias, Kudu was a minority. Of the hundreds of scouts I have worked with, I can only think of two I would call natural leaders. So who does the SM select then? But also I think that some scouts with good leadership potential would never get a chance. I had a scout who was shy because he had a stutter problem. In no way did show any leadership qualities his first year in the troop. By the time he left the troop at 18, he was one of the leaders we ever had. I'm not sure I want the BSA to give more in the leadership area. I find the more they give, the more limits they set. Everything about scout growth is 5 percent education, 95 percent experience. That is especially true with leadership. Troops just need to get more creative in finding ways for scouts to get responsibility experiences so the scout can find himself and build confidence. The leadership requirements leads many adults away from that because they feel all leadership should lead to recognized stature instead of just building confidence. Confidence is very powerful and we try help scouts build it even with the smallest of responsibility task in the patrol. Not to much, not too little. Let the scout get a feel for it and set a direction for his experience in the troop. Works quite well. Barry

I did the same thing for my course. That course was eight hours back then, so I divided it over two days. Barry

I think our troop started out being popular for the adventure side of the program, but we averaged one older scout a month transferring over from other troops and the popular reason was the boy run or patrol method. Younger scouts don't really have a grasp of what boy run or patrol method means, but most considered us from word of mouth of previous Webelos dens. We never had to recruit. Barry

One of the reasons I believe the six month election cycle is popular is because of the introduction of the NSP. Before the NSP, there was not specific time of year for crossovers. In fact,crossover wasn't even a term. And if the den did send their scouts over at a specific time of year, it was usually around May. So troops were used to scouts joining all through the year and the patrols were more responsible for teaching scout skills because each patrol had scouts at different levels of skill. The NSP introduce a tradition of sending all Webelos over to the troops at about the same time just after new year to get them up to speed before summer camp. As a result, Troops found themselves wrapping their annual planning around the NSP cycle. Elections cycles shifted to just before of just after the NSP cycle. And, what was really annoying to me was that the skills training for new scouts started running on a standard annual cycle, which makes it easy to sluff off on the Troop instead of the Patrols. I don't remember the Instructor POR when I was a scout because the patrol taught us most of our skills. But the Instructor is a popular position now. Interesting to observe the indirect unexpected consequences of program changes. Oh I forgot to add that because the NSP started around Jan/Feb, that made elections after summer camp and before school started almost intuitive. Six month election cycle. Barry

Kind of the same here. Like your troop, our Senior PORs like SPL, ASPL, and Quartermaster are usually given to the strong leaders. So it is a given those positions work closely together and become good friends. The best boy run troop I have ever watched (SM was my mentor) ran SPL elections every year, but ASPL elections were every six months with the PLs. That encourage a larger pool of SPL candidates. And their system worked well, that troop had about 80 scouts and I have never seen a closer group. They all took very good care of each other. The older scouts were very mature big brother types and the younger scouts worshiped them. Barry

I agree. Just when our guys are really starting to click, we have an election. But because they have worked so hard, they think they need a break. More often than not, the scouts came back a couple weeks later and tell me they wished they had run again. Because of that and because I visited a couple of boy run troops with one year elections of the SPL, I proposed our PLC consider the idea of a one year term. They turned down the idea. I encouraged and did have a few SPLs and Patrol Leaders go a 2nd term and man-oh-man where they good. They brought a lot of changes to their program. I also proposed the idea of PLs being elected when the patrol needed or wanted a change. That didn't go over well either. I guess once a routine starts running on autopilot, it's hard to change course when the advantages aren't obvious. Barry

Ceremonies are great opportunities to practice planning, leading,organizing and presenting. We always have scouts looking to get recognized for extra responsibilties so they can get considered a POR, taking on task like ceremonies, camp fires, service projects, and other similar responsibilities are a great way of getting recognized and learning skills. And I think ceremonies are great for getting the scouts closer as well. I hear a lot of troops don't do Camp Fires anymore, but campfires add so much to a troop program. Barry

Your looking at this wrong. Don't shape the program to look like your ideal troop. Shape it for maximum boy growth. It is a lot easier to defend a program of growth than a description of appearance. I found the two most difficult skills to teach (boys and adults) are communication and delegation. Scouts grow the most when they confront with their decisions. So it stands that the more decisions they make, they more they will grow. Every unit is a little different in how they manage the boy run environment. Communication is especially challenging because it changes with technology and today that can happen simply by the introduction of a new phone. Barry

Well I guess the either/or is where we get lost in this discussion. The program I left when I retired was just a small skeleton of was started. We changed to fit the needs and issues that developed from previous techniques or styles. We changed our new scout program six times before we got one that worked for us. And because we were boy run was why it was a challenge. As of not too long ago, our policy was to move new scouts into the patrols when the number of new scouts wasn't greater than adding 3 to each patrol. We found through experience that more than 3 messes up the patrol dynamics enough that it is kind of starting over. The way we put them in patrols is let the patrol leaders each introduced themselves and gave a brief description of their patrol. After all the introductions, the Patrols mixed in with the new scouts to learn more about each other. Then the new scouts are instructed to pick th epatrol they want and the friends they want to be with them. They can pick as many friends as they want, but we ask they set a priority because they likely will not be with all the friends. What is interesting to me is in all the years we did that, the scouts always picked only one friend. I never saw it go beyond that, even though there were no limits. Also, new scouts were told they could start their own patrol and we were ready for that with Troop Guides, but nobody ever took that offer. I think when experienced scouts introduce themselves to the new scouts and invite them to their patrol, it just not something they want. Now, if the group of new scouts is greater than 2 to 3 new scouts per existing patrol, then we put them in NSPs. The patrol only last until after summer camp (which was just before the next SPL election), then we let the scouts choose the patrol they wanted to join. We encourage both the patrols to shop for new scouts and new scouts to shop for patrols. Ideally everyone knows where they are going before the break up. Each NSP has two troop guides that the SPL recruits. They are typically 15 and older and very experienced. We never much good luck with young TGs. We also use an ASPL who basically serves the TGs needs. And we have an ASM who basically works with the TG as their assistant. The main reason we brought the ASM in was for the new scouts and parents to see how the ASMs serve the scouts. It helps ease the boys and parents into trusting the youth leadership of a boy run program. It definitaly attributed to reducing the number of new scouts quitting. It works pretty good. The ASM also is the trainer for new parents. We ask that parents to visit at least three troop meetings and one campout so we can show them how a boy run program works. It is likely the only time the parents get to see a PLC meeting because adults don't normally participate without permission from the SPL. The ASM is the parents guide on campouts and points out the specifics of how the troop operates in a boy run program. The ASM for that job was typically the next coming SM so he could practice explaining and teaching boy run to the adults. The adults have a lot of fun on campouts. We don't have limits on adults camping with the troop. When the patrols are 100 years away, problems were rare. That is a very basic description of our new scout program that was shaped over years of trying ideas. For me, a troop program is measured by the older scouts on down, so the new scout program is a result of the quality of the older scouts program. Not the other way around. One other thing that hasn't been mentioned is the trickling of new scouts. It is actually rare for us to get all our new scouts at once because different packs have different agendas. We recruit and train about 6 senior scouts to be ready for the worst. But trickling dens can make the situation interesting. This works for us. Our goal for our program is minimum adult intrusion and as I said, NSPs makes that almost impossible. The method we use now requires no adult intrusion and gets us the best growth for new scouts of all the methods we tried. Barry

Barry

My wife was our troop Treasurer for 10 years. It was a challenge for her to takeover from the previous treasurer who kept no records. Keep really good records with the next treasurer in mind. In our troop, all adult responsibilities can have scout assistants if a scout has an interest. So keep that in mind as well and when you get your feet under you, make and announcement that any scout who would like to learn book keeping can be your assistant. It's rare, but you may find a scout who is thinking accountant in his future. As for the assumptions of the program that you are observing, give yourself at least six months. The troop may appear to be an advancement troop simply because that is how they start with new scouts to get them up to speed with skills for their first couple of campouts. And just because an adult made an announcement doesn't mean they didn't get permission from the SPL first. Adults make announcements all the time in our troop, but they first have to call the SPL to get permission and time. Our treasure made many announcements to remind the scouts about camp fees and due dates. That is not the SPLs responsibility. Our SPL rarely makes any announcements because he is encouraged to practice the skill of delegating. Give yourself some time. We don't ask anything from our new parents for six months just for this reason. Barry

As I've said in earlier post, the main reason adults get in the way of the scouts and their program is their fear of what could happen. Scouts sticking together at the beginning of their Boy Scout experience is such a small small thing in the huge picture of the scouts whole experience. Just how long does it take for boys to make friends? If this is the only reason for defending NSPs, then blw2, you aren't being open minded of what other experienced scouters are saying. And I'm not saying you need to use mixed age patrols, I think some adults just are NSP types. But please don't imply troops using mixed age patrols have less programs, the BSA used mixed age patrols very successfully for 80 years before the NSP was brought into the program. There is no evidence to show that the NSP has improved first year losses, which is why it was implemented. Can you explain that? I can and have many many times. All I'm saying is that someone with no experience either way shouldn't be selling their soul telling others who have the experience that their program isn't as good a program. Barry

You're going to look back on this one day and laugh. Barry

Because I think some folks were trying to have a discussion of how to teach or convince others to switch to Patrol Method and it seemed like you didn't like the discussion. I'm sure it's just me, but I really wasn't sure what you were trying to say. Well-oiled machine, GREAT! I like the vision. I'm good to go. Barry

Those two bolded points show me that Sentinel has the experience and knows what he is talking about because they are both consistent with all the programs I observed or guided to boy run and patrol method. Getting all the adults on board in a troop that was not so much patrol method is a huge challenge because while the theory sounds great, old habits are hard to break and there is always the little question of it the gain is worth the pain. Once the troop is a patrol method program, then it's not so hard to bring new adults on board and train them. The older scouts are always the hard part. They are so challenging that I tell adults up front they need to weed out the resisting older scouts and let them do their own thing. They will hang around long enough to get what they want from the program and move on. At first this bothers the adults because they want everyone on board, but they eventually figure out that longer they try to get these guys to change, the longer it will take to change the whole troop. I have never seen a program switch over where the 13 and older scouts bought in 100 percent. So I think it is fair to talk about the typical road blocks of going to boy run to prepare the adults for the challenges. Barry