Eagledad

From TAHAWK: "The OA lodge in my oldest council was about dead. One recent year, it had no - 0 - activities. Then the lodge got a new Lodge Adviser and a very impressive Lodge Chief. Like flipping a switch, the Lodge came to life. Leadership is once more proved to be the "magic" ingredient." Was that leadership or management in your opinion. Barry

Agree, in fact that is exactly how we do it. I was just giving warnings and caveats with our experiences. The SM, CC and SPL should be prepared. Do it with a purpose of improving the the program so as not to add one more task for the young man. The CC can also give a brief commentary (very brief) at the begining of the meeting to kind of suggest the status of the troop from the committee side for the SPL's benefit. Our committee enjoys the SPLs presence, so they always behave well even complementing the patrols work. Barry

They don't. They could, but consider and measure the value of the SPLs time and what the patrols gain from his presence. Consider what the adults gain from it. And remember sometimes things are discussed that are not for the Scouts' ears, like behavior discussions. You could have the SPL come in and give a brief report of the status of the troop. That is what the SM supposed to do anyway. That only takes a few minutes. Our troop has done this several different ways, and the largest issue of the SPL participating in a committee meeting is his time. These are busy. Barry

I guess I don't understand the question. You are approached to head a camporee? You want something fun, but no uniforms? And I'm going to have to disagree with giving this to your scouts. Our Troop has planned and run a small camporee and it is a huge undertaking. It was a great experience for our troop and our troop mature A LOT. But they won't get to participate because they are running it and the planning will take away from your troop program for six months. Leave your scouts out of it and have OA run it. That is what they do. Also, NO UNIFORMS? If there was ever an event where scouts are supposed to demonstrate being uniform in every meaning of the word, it is camporee. You have an opportunity here to make camporee something respectable again and still be a lot of fun. Different themes are: Night camporee where all events are done at night. Survivor camporee where the events starts when the scouts show up and have to set up their camp. The events the next day rely heavily on survival skills. Back packing comporee with the event starting when the scouts show up and have to pack into their camp site. Next day break camp and hike to the next camp stopping at skills events along the way. The skills need to be serious so that patrols need to practice and know their skills. Campfire should be fantastic with NO adult awarding like WB Beading. Campfire is total fun (maybe even and band) with announcement of winners. An added event to get points for top troop is adults of each troop prepare a meal for the pot luck Saturday evening for all the troops. Keeps the adults busy while the scouts are competeting. Barry

We do different ideas at different times. The scouts try to make it interesting. Sometimes we try a family night kind of flavor. One night they did bingo and had a great time. Yes, a bit of a long night, but the scouts wanted to try it. Different can be good, give it try and see how it turns out. Barry

I also question the uniform, it is a safety issue with us. When the scouts are in a public area, the uniform identifies the adults responsible for the scouts. They don't have to wear a full uniform, but they need enough to be obvious they are with the scout group. Barry

What is servant leadership? Servant leadership is just a phrase like boy run, patrol method and leadership. Humans, especially youth like clear descriptions of the actions needed to satisfy the phrase. Scouting has done that part well. Servant leadership are outward actions of the Scout Law; very simple. The Oath and Law are actions that are be summed up as servant hood or serving others. Leading others guided with only the actions of the scout law develops Servant Leadership. As we talk about giving scouts independence to make decisions without adult intrusion, we only have to remind them to refer to their Handbook for guidience to all their decisions and outward actions. Then they only have to review the handbook to hold themselves accountable instead of seeking adult approval of acting satisfactory to a phrase. Barry

I pretty much agree with your whole post Matt. We spend a lot of time on leadership and almost none on vision. A team without vision is like a ship without a rudder. I'm one of a few who liked 21st Centry Woodbadge because it taught setting a vision followed building a team to reach the vision. I think vision is where adults have to start and most have none. I'm not sure exactly what you mean waiting for permission from bellow. That wasn't my style, so I don't have much experience there. Barry

No, if that is what you think of natural leadership, then you haven't met one. Don't confuse expertly using learned skills with being born with the skill. Many times natural leaders don't even know they do it. I'm not sure why some folks can't accept the idea that a person can be born with natural skills of persuasion. As I told my sister, we accept that idea and an Olympic athlete was born with an unusual skill or that a person can have a genius level of intelligence. Is a natural leader really a reach. And what does it matter, it doesn't change the concepts of leadership. And hey, it's not a theory, I learned it in professional leadership training courses from real experts. Barry

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