Eagledad

Hi All. I rarely, rarely ever disagree with Fred, but I believe he is not looking at the leadership image correctly. And I really don't think we are disagreeing, but I need to express my opinion on the Scouting leadership image. I will start off by saying that if one were to poll the average person outside of the BSA of the 3 most important traits a scout gains from the scouting experience, the majority of the that polling would say leadership is one of the three. Leadership IS an image of the scouting program. Leadership is the image of a Scout. The image is so powerful that the designers of the Normandy invasion for D-day were specifically looking for soldiers with a Boy Scouting experience to invade the beaches because those soldiers knew first aid and they had natural tendencies of leadership. The designers knew the casualties were going to be high, so they wanted soldiers that would naturally step up and continue when all those around them had fallen. I have personally witnessed those very actions among our scouts. They relied of the image of Scouting for their planning. The struggle here is the teaching of leadership. First of all, I think most of us agree that when the Patrol Method method experience is applied correctly, leadership development will take place naturally. In fact, just about all the decision making character skills scouts develop during their scouting experiences are learned mostly by observing the actions of others in the patrol method activities. Most scouts will learn the habits of good leadership if they simply just hang around their patrol for a few years. I can go into that deeper if you like, but my experience as an adult in a boy run program confirms that premise. I have watch even the most shy and introverted scouts make leadership decisions when they found themselves in situations that required them to step up. How did they know what to do, they just did what they had observed and experienced during their scouting experience. The problem isn't developing leadership without a direct leadership POR experience, the problem is adults trusting that the Patrol Method method does develop leadership decision making habits simply by participating in a Patrol.. There was a large Council about 25 years ago that was considering removing all youth leadership training from the council because many of the adults felt leadership courses didn't really contribute to their scouting program. The big issue wasn't about taking leadership out, but the adult takeover of patrol method by adults who felt they were taking over the role of leadership. I believe the council stepped back as a result of the problems they were seeing with adult run troops. If adults aren't trying to reach agreed goals, then they develop bad habits that dilute the rest of the program, especially patrol method. Leadership must be considered a priority program strength to insure integrity in the Patrol Method method and the development of character because many leaders would otherwise let their instincts of telling youth how they should run their patrols take over the troop. While we talk (at least I do) a lot about character development from the Scouting program, the natural image of scout development is leadership. See, most people think of scouts being prepared as stepping up when the situation requires. Being prepared is the mental ability to step up in stressful situations. Leadership is having the confidence to make a decision when the moment requires a decision for the good of those around. Leadership is making moral and ethical decisions in a moments notice. Scouts don't need leadership courses for those leadership decisions skills, they need to be exposed to many leadership decisions of a long period of time. If the troubling issue is adults ability of teaching leadership, OK, I'm with you. But, if the issue is that the leadership image is just equal among all the strengths a scout will gain during their scouting experiences, then I don't agree. Leadership, as an image of scouting strengths, is a higher strength along with character and should be marketed as such because it is each scouts leadership habits (even the scouts without direct leadership experience) that are learned in the program that set them apart from the habits learned in other youth organizations. Adults need to learn how to lean on patrol method for leadership development, not on leadership courses to achieve the method. Leadership courses have their place for reinforcing proper management and leadership habits, but not as the primary approach leadership development. I know this was a long way of saying that Leadership is very important for the image of scouting. It's not as simple as just saying leadership will come to those who play the game, it must be emphasized that leadership is one of the most important traits of a scout and the scout must play the game to develop the skills. Sorry for the long post. Barry

The problem with ideas like this along with Defund The Police is that proposals without details come off as emotional venting. What are the staffing positions? What are their responsibilities? How much do they make? Where is the real fat? Barry

Not at all personal. I don't harp on the visionary stuff because I think it will turn on a light, I say it often to make sure it remains as an idealistic principle. I also don't spend enough words separating the main goal or vision of the unit separately from the main goal of the BSA, the Vision. I believe success is based from a team agreeing on the same goals. Our troop initially set the goals that the scouts will be the leaders, it will be boy led and FUN. You're right Matt, making moral decisions makers doesn't really explain how the program makes good leaders. So, we made a checklist that is a little easier to check ourselves, the scouts make the leadership decisions, the scouts run the troop even if it is in the ground, and that they have fun. Of course those turned out to be challenging because in the end, adults struggle the most to do their roles in a boy run troop. But, that is the sun tan that was mentioned. I remember when this forum had over a 1000 active members on the forum with dozens of different discussions all across the forum spectrum. And, 95% of those discussions were about how to provide a better program for the scouts. Today 95% of the discussions aren't about the functions of scouting, they are about adults wanting to change scouting for their personal adult reasons. There are a lot of adults here who don't like the scouting program for one reason of another. In fact, I see basically two groups on this forum in the discussions last few months, adults who believe the program changes youth into adults of character (no change), and those who believe the program is basically sitting service (wreck it). I'm not sure how we make a step forward, but I think you are right in a sense that scouting needs to scale back a little. But, I don't think the program needs to scale back so much as maybe the activities need to lean up a bit. Less high adventure in Philmont and more adventure locally. A program where the patrols can get together more often as a patrol on it's own and not as part of the troop program. It would be a challenge at first, but is a day hike around town all that difficult? I don't know, you are right. But, how? I am convinced the Scouting will survive because some of us have seen it do it's magic and have the passion to make adults can change the world. The rewards are great. We just might figure out a way of taking a small group of youth and turn them into lean scouting machines. Barry

Yes, it is a lot to unpack. The thing to understand is that there is an opportunity here for your scouts to practice making adults decisions. I understand there will be challenges, but it's the heart of intent for the adults that is the challenge. The adults can come up with a lot of reasons to not let scouts make independent decisions, but where there is a will, there is a way. The adults need to have the will. The other suggestion to take to heart is have fun. Adults struggle with fun at summer camp because they are used to being methodical and responsible. Adults look at fun as a reward to hard work during our adult lives. But, the scouting program uses fun to draw the scouts into the work of making hard decisions. The saying goes, "scouting is a game with a purpose." I think you will understand more when you get in the middle of it all. One last thing; come mid week, everyone (EVERYONE) will be cranking as a result of physically long days with limited sleep, so be ready for it. Coach the adults to not get cranking at each other and especially the scouts. In fact, set an example of not being cranky. By Friday, everyone will be back into their normal selves. Barry

A lot depends on the maturity of your scouts, but summer camp is the best patrol method experience a troop can get if you take advantage of it. Our troop request two camp sites near each other; one for scouts and one for adults. We ask adults to not walk around camp with scouts so that they have the experience of finding their way around without adults and practice the discipline of getting to their destinations on time. AND, experience the consequences of failing in both cases. The scouts are required and expected to always have a buddy and tell their Patrol Leader or SPL where they are at. A discussion with theSPL and likely the SM if they break those 2 rules. Summer camp is a safe place, and one of the few places where youth of this age can experience independence and the self confidence from making decisions without worrying about adults watching over them. Parents tell us all the time that their sons (and now daughters) come back a different person. More mature. This is also an opportunity for the adults to learn how to step back and let the scouts make their own decisions. Adults typically focus on scouts doing as much advancement as they can, but don’t fall into that mistake. You will not get another opportunity where your scouts can be independent and makes bad decisions they can learn from. Advance is a good tool for them to practice the expectations of getting to their class on time and working the requirements. If they don’t, it’s their problem, not the adults. The adults are more concerned that they understand their bad decisions. And they may not in that moment. They will later as their buddies advance faster. And be prepared for parents with high expectations for their kids. They are less concerned about developing character from independent decisions than getting as much Eagle advancement as they can. But, their kids have plenty of time for that stuff. Choosing to make make right choices is the priority now. And finally, make them have fun. Encourage them to pick fun activities. Take some balls, chess boards and other stuff they can grab and play with their buddy when they have 15 minutes to kill before the next activity. Also, we always ask the camp staff to set up a troop activity exclusively for our troop. Can be anything, swimming, shooting sport, COPE course, we’ve done many. Anything to get your troop to have fun together. We also try to do an after camp activity on the way home like rafting, Six Flags, local Waterpark. What ever is close to your area that is a break from the exhaustion of camp. Trust me, the stories are much better from scouts exhausted from an amusement park day. Well, that’s off the top of my head. Have fun, have fun and have fun. Many troop leaders complain their older scouts were bored with the same ol, same ol of summer camp. But our Older scouts typically have attended at least 5 summer camps because they are fun. Barry

Makes sense, we typical look for a GS in our neighborhood and purchase A LOT of cookies from her. They were nowhere to be seen this year. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I need to remind my wife about the 12 month shelf life because we are still nibbling on last years batch. Or are they year before? Barry

Like most of the youth programs, OA is the vision of the adults in the moment. I have seen OA programs cross the spectrum of what the handbook says they are. Sadly, many adults see their part in the program as the key to the image and they take out the honor of the OA. As scoutmaster, I supported the elections, but stayed away from the program because I didn't care for the adult side of the program. That being said, the scouts in my troop were in leadership roles for about 10 years. Since our troop wasn't involved with OA other than holding elections, I attribute the success of our scouts with our boy run program because most of those scouts were the main youth troop leaders as well. Because of our scouts doing so well in the OA leadership, I was asked to be the adult sponsor. I declined because I knew I would have to spend a lot of my time turning it into the program I knew back in the 70's, and I didn't have that kind of time. I want Scouts to see themselves as heros by serving others. But, that requires a process of activities that build scouts to like themselves when they are servants for others. Adults don't seem to know how to do that much anymore. Barry

Yes, of course. Barry

My problem with OA today is that the program drivers (adult sponsors) don't plan a program where the activities practice growth toward the honor of serving others and camping. As a scout in the 70's, young scouts learned quickly that Arrowmen where experts in the outdoors and they could ask any question for help. And, since serving was their other character traits, they were usually easy to approach and lacked the arrogance many of the older scouts had. Frankly, the election process back then filtered out immature scouts and scouts who only wanted the Arrowmen status. Those are the main motivations I saw in scouts today. I blame adults who don't understand the honorable traits of an Arrowmen, nor do they know how to develop program to practice those traits. Arrowmen were the special forces of scouting in the early years. Now they have a cool pocket patch. Barry

Sounds like the unit is starting with a good CC. That is a step forward many units don't have. I've been in your shoes; a new unit with new adults. There are two important contributors to a new unit starting in the right direction; vision and humility. I was assigned to working with struggling units and the one contributor that just about all these units had in common is lack of vision. The adults didn't know where they were going, so they didn't know what part to take in the team. Instead, they all tried to just fill in where the program appeared to need help, It was chaos. There is usually one dominant leader among the group. Most folks assume that person is the SM and try that position to lead the program. But many times it is the CC. Some times the dominant leader is an ASM or committee member. Once in a while it is the COR. Regardless of who it is, that person usually drives the program program, either toward success or failure. When I coached the struggling units, I pulled the adults together and showed them the BSA Mission and Vision. In short, building moral and ethical decision makers. In most cases, the Mission and Vision was new to them. They thought camping was the goal and character development just kind of came a long somewhere. Then I asked them to discuss what the BSA mission and vision means to them and how this group adults feel about that as the goal. Form there, I showed them how the program is direction toward building moral and ethical decision makers through the process of Aims and Methods. The adults are responsible for the Aims part of the program and the Scouts are responsible for the Methods. The thing is, adults don't have to make it up as they go along, the BSA has given them the goals and direction. They only need to take a task and follow the BSA guidelines for the expectations of their tasks. The humility contributor is evaluating the progress of the program based on the Mission and Vision and making changes that steer the program back on course when it appears to veer off track. I've often said that I made far more wrong decisions than I did right, but we corrected the wrong decisions. Making changes required the humility to admit that parts of the program aren't working. Humility is require so the team feels like an important contributor to the team and buys in to the vision. Humility is required so that the team has patience to listen to the contributors. Eventually the dominant leader is going to standout and take the unit by the reins. That is important because the dominant leader directs the team. But, if the adult team is strong, the leader will be one who encourages and maintains a balance team where each adult has clear expectations. The leader should have a clear understanding of the goal and vision because there will conflict as the program grows and the stresses of growth create different approaches to solutions. Old SM vs New SM. I think every SM will agree that the hardest part of driving a successful unit is managing the adults and their expectations. Once the unit agrees on the vision and the program process going toward the vision, the dominant leader must continually evaluate the program with the team and remind the team where they are going. Most adults just want clear expectations so they know what to do. Some adults want to give their advice to the vision, and that is where the dominant leader listens and then explains why they are doing what they are doing. Let me just say that understanding how the program works took us years. So, as I said, sometimes the advice from others was good. Many times it was not. Sounds to me that your adult team is on the right track. Managing a new program is strenuous and teaches us a lot about ourselves. It's not for everyone and hopefully those adults bow quietly out without causing pain. On the other hand, running a successful troop program will be one of the most rewarding experiences of you life. Well worth it. Good luck getting through this little bump and move on toward fun adventures. I used to sign off with "I love this scouting stuff". I faded away from that when I retired from scouting, but it is still true. I hope it will be for you as well. Barry Barry

Yep. Even if there was some value from the old SMs comments, it lost any integrity by the way it was delivered. Changing scoutmasters is tricky because the new scoutmaster has to find their footing without the heavy shadow of previous SM hanging in the air. Yet, the old SM can be a great resource. But, it’s tricky. At the request of my replacement, I took six months off from the program. And when I did give advice, it was in person or through the CC. Actually, the CC was the person who sought out most of my advice with some of the challenges the new SM found himself in. I think one year is enough time for a new SM to get their program under their feet. The old SM needs to make the next move if he still wants to participate in the new scoutmasters program. Barry

Done correctly, commissioner is both fun and rewarding. But, that kind of program requires good leadership. District Commissioner was my dream job after I retired from Scoutmaster, but council and district burned me out the next few years and I retired completely from scouting. They came to my door and offered me the job 3 years later, but I developed to many new habits with the family to jump back into the program. My loss. Barry

That is rare, but the way it should be. How do you rate your commissioner corp.? Barry

Good point. The reason for the mistrust is because most of the actions unit leaders see from commissioners has the perception of authority. Right or wrong, commissioners are perceived as disciplinaries for the districts. Most participants of adult leader training classes express that a major benefit of the classes is making new friends. How many of those participants or teachers are commissioners? Commissioners don't mingle enough within the activities to build a friendship and trust. If we choose to recruit experienced scouters for the role of commissioners, then they need to show their skills to units to build a trust as a resource. Theoretically, commissioners are also supposed to be trainers. But, we don't see that much these days, mostly because the district committee chairs aren't trained well and don't work together. Ironically that is the part of the duties of the District Commissioner. We could go blame scouters responsible for neglecting their duties, but we have to step back and remember they are just volunteers. If we want the right person for the right job, we need to get better at recruiting. Something most district are poor at doing. Barry

Your opinion is certainly just an opinion. As an engineer who has to think logically every day in big pictures to work problems, your opinion doesn't makes sense because you don't have any information, proof, or data to show that your theory is killing scouting. None. There are a lot of dynamics going on in the world, culture, and BSA, at the moment, so how could anyone determine what is killing scouting? Or if scouting is even dying.; Sure, the BSA is taking hits right now, but can we really say that is the result of actions within the BSA. The world is in a mess and a lot of organizations are trying to get back to some kind of normal. And, I can certainly give a good argument for much of the membership loses before the pandemic and law suit. But are my arguments valid at the moment of the pandemic and the litigation process? The pandemic has forced new and different approaches to scouting activities. But, that in of itself describes a struggle to survive If you want to keep pushing you theory that Youth Protection must change to fix the out-side-worlds perception of the BSA, then my logical approach is describe the problem in a detail that we can make logical decisions. We have to know what to fix before we can discuss fixes. From my professional experience, we need details of how the victims found themselves in situations where they weren't protected. We look for trends and then discuss how Youth Protection needs changing. Barry

I think you would find the discussion surprising. When we were involved chaperoning, attending and transporting youth in church, school, sports and so on, we found their youth protection polices very limiting compared to the BSA youth protection, if they had any guidelines at all. Often the on the spot ad-hoc policies came from scouters who were used to the BSA youth protection. My wife was always the most nervous youth getting hurt when she chaperoned the annual school group to New York City. But the teacher who led that activity many times took the concern in stride because she never had a problem in the dozen of so years she took the groups. I can't think of a single youth organization that has the level of guidelines the BSA gives to their units. Schools are terrible with field trips and rely a lot on adults (parents) to keep track of the students. Church camps surprise me on their lack of policies. We struggled with teenagers hiding in the woods to steal a kiss, but I understand that drugs is a huge problem today. I'm sure they are getting better. Our church wanted to improve transportation safety and the committee went strait to the BSA troop adults for suggestions. Even the attempts on this form to discuss youth protection improvements don't go very far because they are pretty good. Maybe because policies against predators are difficult. Of what I've been told, predictors are opportunist looking for a weak spot. The weak spot may be nothing more than ignorance of the average parent. I'm not sure why LDS is being highlighted, did they follow different policies than the BSA youth protection on their scouting activities. I know the troops in church COs around here follow the BSA guidelines. In fact, I know that the LDS around here did as well. I understand that some sports associations are requiring background checks on the coaches, maybe churches are doing it as well. Don't you wonder how many of these incidents occurred by adults who had a background check. If we are trying to fix a crack in the youth protection system, we need to understand the crack better. Where are these incidents occurring? Barry

My experience is adults who limit their program from typical scouting activities did not have a scouting experience as a youth. They see these activities, especially outside unit activities, as competition, not as additional program opportunities. They likely would not want their orders scouts to join a Venturing Crew either. And I agree, likely this is a pretty adult run program. Barry

Im not thinking competition, or judging, or potluck. I’m thinking adults get together to cook the meal. We did this at a trooperee where the adults roasted a whole pig. It’s an all day job. You could have several shifts where each member of the shift is from a different troop. There are adults that love that stuff. Barry

We have had the troop adults cook the Saturday night meal for everyone. But, you could also do training for swimming, rappelling, boating and so forth. Fun stuff that would pull all the adults into the same group. Barry

Yes, stated very elegantly. We want the scouts to see who they are through their actions and decisions in scouting activates. Then compare their character to the character they want to have and make a purposeful choices to develop habits of that character. Parents do it all the time. Just about every parent can give examples of how the experiences of raising their first kid motivated them to raise their other kids differently. That is scouting. The struggle is getting adults to see that noble mission. Thanks again qwazse. Barry

Well this is just off the top of my head, but unity comes best from stressful situations that require the team to function together. OA Ordeals use to be pretty good at that. Barry

I didn't say no adult association. Every unit is different with the different accumulated gifts of the participants. As you said, the methods are not discrete functions. But, I believe all things being equal. the experience of the Patrol Method has more influence for growth than adult association. Especially with mature scouts. My style was the passive approach of mentoring. I found that for us, scouts grew faster when they had to search for relief from the stress of making decisions. The mentors were in the shadows waiting. Barry

I agree the culture of parents today is more challenging. I'm not sure that it is a nomadic thing, but it certainly is there. Still, even the worst helicopter parents joined Cub Scouts because the program's activities are attractive. The problem isn't the activities, it's the overbearing weight of program management. Barry

I'm talking about the bigger picture of the mission of developing character. Growth is based on the experience of making decisions, not watching role models. Role models are reinforcement of what is learned from the Patrol Method experience. Barry