MattR

Can't a scout take care of another scout while also taking care of a job? Isn't that really the challenge we all have? We have to get paid, buy groceries, fix the toilet ... and at the same time care for our family, colleagues, and community. We have to take care of the tasks, we choose whether to take care of the people. Character seems to be reflected best in those that do both. So the QM can take care of the gear while also showing a new scout how to fold a tent. He could have just yelled at the new scout but instead he took the time to do it right. Done right, the QM will have a big impact on the new scout. He took care of the scout. I see it all the time. I ask every eagle scout who he remembered when he first joined and I hear lots of stories about kind, helpful older scouts.

Sentinel, and I guess everyone else that has patrol pors, how do you encourage the patrols to use these pors? I keep suggesting them and the scouts don't see any benefit, or maybe they see the benefit but don't want to put in the effort. Some of them will create positions for a campout but that's it. They still manage their own gear, buy food, and all that, but they just can't grasp the benefit of divying up the work ahead of time.

It sounds like your underlying question is should this really count as an eagle project. Well, obviously if the scouts didn't show he shouldn't get credit. But you also mention that the "ladies organized everything." The question for any eagle project is how does the scout show leadership. Sounds like this case deserves more questions. If a scout asked me or my district to sign off on a project where all the scout has to do is show up and do some work, or even just provide the labor, it would never get approved. But I don't know all the details for this one. I'm guessing.

Why do scout leaders always make assumptions? Just to clear things up, it is not always the leader's kid. blw2, this is your oldest son? who is about12 or 13? If so, you're in for a ride. It might not be your son so much as it's you. Your son is doing what all boys do at that age, they start to split away from mom and dad. This may sound crude, evil, mean, or just plain wrong, but hear me out. I've seen something happen over and over again and scouter fathers can't believe they're doing this. Maybe this is you, only you can answer this. These dads love scouts and want their son to share that love. Without even recognizing it they start pushing. It may be for their son to get Eagle, or be SPL, or be the best scout in the troop. It can be pushing hard or it can be pushing a little. The problem is the son needs to learn how to live on his own more than he needs any of this. Dad's pushing is not letting him grow up. Son pushes back. He probably doesn't even think about. He just does it. Dad wants an Eagle scout, so son starts screwing around. Dad wants Philmont, so son sabotages his gear. Dad wants a model son, so son starts flipping off people. Dad expects his son to get Eagle so son says screw it. I've seen a lot. If dad doesn't recognize this it turns into a power struggle and has nothing to do with reason, especially not what dad thinks is reasonable. It ends either with the boy leaving scouts or dad giving in. I've seen both. I've also seen the boy decide, after dad has backed off, that he does indeed want whatever dad was pushing. I was fortunate with my son. All I wanted was to have some fun with him. If I ever got more than 15 minutes of his time on a campout I felt blessed. We had a ton of fun. We gave each other a lot of grief, we wrestled, and made a lot of good memories. I explicitly told him do not get eagle for me. I didn't care. One good memory was watching him teach the younger scouts at summer camp, where he worked. He had a talent for it. Turns out he didn't know his skills so well when he started and the first day he worked there some other SM let him know. He took that seriously and went and practiced his skills. The point is, I was never the hard ass. I did ask other adults to watch him and they had my permission to correct any bad behavior. But me, I was there to enjoy my time with my son. I never pushed him. When he asked for help I helped him. Maybe I was just lucky.

Those numbers do not reflect my council. We are one of the largest troops in our council, often we are the largest, and a good year for us is five eagles. We've never had nine. Typical for our district is one or two per troop. Nine eagles a year would be half of our typical troops. So, maybe being so close to national changes things. Or maybe you're near a big city.

A story to illustrate how useful our modern tools of communication are: I called a PL a week ago and left him a message to please call me in the next two days. I just wanted to know what his patrol was doing at the next meeting. Three days later I called him again. He answered. I asked if he was going to call me. He said he did, twice. No record of this on my phone. Think think think. I then asked him if I answered the phone. No. I then asked if he left a message. Pregnant pause. No. Honestly, I'd prefer, when trying to communicate with scouts, that there was no email or sms so the scouts would be forced to learn how to make a phone call. It's kind of like writing. Scouts don't do that anymore and so their handwriting is horrible. Same for communicating an idea. These modern tools are not making it easier. As for troop size and or splitting. When we were at 70 scouts I wanted to split the troop but we had the same problem as Sentinal described. We're above 40 now and I like it a lot more. At the same time, I will never tell a scout no. I had a scout join once and I was ever so close to saying no, but didn't. Without getting into details this scout needed scouts in a huge way and he was a perfect fit in our troop. It would have really been a loss if I had said no and this boy hadn't looked elsewhere.

@@Krampus, I currently have 5 patrols and one of the problems we used to have was "rotating through stations." 10 minutes per station is an artifact of the number of patrols, not the activity. If the activity should last for a half hour (what can you cook in the 5 minutes you'll actually have if there's a 10 min period?) then consider 3 meetings of doing 2 stations at a time rather than all 6 in one meeting. My scouts have revolted at 10 minute activities. That said, climbing at a rock wall, archery, going to a pool, ice skating, and roller skating. These are all full meeting activities. Go online and find low cope course/team building activities. Do a geo cache. Make a geo cache for the town/schools. Make a pizza in a dutch oven. Make patrol woggles. You need a 4' long boot lace. Instructions are online. Paint the patrol box. Make a new patrol flag. physical activity challenge: do all the tenderfoot fitness challenges and add up the total number of pushups, situps, etc the entire patrol does. pioneering challenge: 6 poles, bunch of ropes, make a tripod and lash your patrol flag to it. score based on time and quality of knots. done with school favorites: foam battle (pool noodles, pvc, and duct tape to make the weapons, and a bucket turned upside down to stand on, beat your neighbor until one of you falls off) and sponge water fights. Squirt guns also work, just to annoy those at national. Go fishing. learn to tie all the fishing knots. Get someone to bring a fly rod and let the scouts practice with that. Again, this won't work with 6 patrols but it will work at a patrol level. If you happen to live near white water, ask around to see if someone can bring a couple of white water kyaks to a pool for the scouts to try out. Bring someone in to talk about spelunking. Would only work if it was tied together with a spelunking trip. Go through the MB books. Every MB has at least one activity that is not discuss, describe, or explain, and is actually fun or at least unique. One of the biggest challenges to look out for is how to keep everyone engaged. The cooking ones are nice but does everyone in the patrol cook? If it's only a few that are needed to do the activity, then the other scouts start getting squirmy. Even something like doing the geocache really only needs a couple of scouts. So maybe give each patrol two courses to do and have them split their patrol.

All the packs I go to use their bridge just for the "graduates"

@@Eagledad, I'm curious about your activity crews as a way for scouts to say they want to do something that might not fit in with their patrol. Scouts in the same patrol might have similar temperament, so they have fun together doing typical scout stuff, but not always the same interests when it comes to pushing the edge. They all like to camp but if some scout says he wants to do 20 miles in a day, his patrol is likely not going to go along with it. But there might be some other scouts in other patrols that would. Are these crews just for a single main event (and maybe training to go with it)? I've told older scouts for a long time that if they want to do something unique on their own they should just ask and I'll help them out. But I haven't gotten much interest. Now that the patrols are doing their own meetings I'm hoping they'll gain the confidence to take the next step. I'm just wondering what it took to get this going.

This could get ugly. We should stick with scouts.

The jeep commercial was probably the only one I paid attention to, and I did see the scout. I thought that was cool. NJ, it must suck not having a team in the superbowl. Oh wait, you never can have a team in the superbowl (the New Jersey Gladiators?) All gloating aside, I was going crazy just assuming the fairytale would end before the game did. Remember, two years ago the Broncos' first play at the superbowl was a safety. Given all that misery and one win every 17 years, please pardon my happiness.

@@CherokeeScouter, this is not a screwup at the largest level. Are there any medical bills? Mistakes were made and now is an opportunity to show the scout how to solve them. Talk to him. If the scout is really ready to be a life scout then the news that adults make mistakes will not wreck his life, although it might delay his Life . If he is going to cry about it then maybe he shouldn't be a life scout. Decide what it means to be a Life scout and don't sign off until he's ready. To me, a life scout should be helping the troop quite a bit. If he's already doing that, and he really does know the skills, then repeating signing off on the skills won't take much time and another 10 months of POR is nothing more than what I'd expect any life scout. So yes, what you propose sounds good.

Me thinks the devil's in the details. First, just explaining anything to anyone will not be enough. I have laid it out for the committee several times, they all say yep, and then something happens and they don't even realize they're stepping in. It's getting better. Slowly. I'm also learning how better to explain it. Also, just handing over the reigns to the scouts will create lots of problems, which is what you want, but there also needs to be a way for them to learn from them. This is where the adults can help a lot. They've never solved problems on their own. Of the 4 items on your list there's one word, support, that covers this. Boy led doesn't mean less work for the adults, it's just different. Training? Review? This is where Krampus' comment that there's nothing wrong with observing a patrol. What you hear from the PL afterward is likely not the whole story. Granted, sometimes I just have to walk away after I've seen enough that I really want to step in. I'd add 5) figure out what the support looks like and make sure everyone in the troop understands it, adults and scouts.

Who makes what decisions? How long is a committee meeting compared to a PLC meeting? Also, it's not a binary thing where it is or isn't boy led. We just got a foot of snow and I got email from our co saying they'd tell us this morning whether the building would be closed. I forwarded it to the spl and made it very clear the adults would do nothing to get this info out. The spl is doing great. Some parents, however, aren't real happy. In a nutshell, they don't trust the scouts. I'm sending out a lot more email telling the parents to back off than what it would have taken to just solve this on my own. Are we scout led? We're trying.

You don't need spray. At philmont just do as they say about bears. It's mostly an issue of keeping the smells of food away from you. They are anal about it so just do as they say and you'll be fine. Bears don't care about people, they do like our food. Well, grizzlies have short tempers but you won't see any in philmont.

New definition that circumvents the top down bottom up discussion: Leadership is management based on good character. A leader can simultaneously look out for the needs of his people and tell them what to do. I tell the scout leaders in my troop that every decision they make has to be checked against the Oath and Law. If he puts the good of his patrol before himself then there's nothing wrong with him telling a scout what to do. This is what good presidents, generals, parents, mid level managers at big companies, and any other good leader does. I agree there's a difference between handling tasks and handling people but real leaders have to do both.

So,sticking with leaders work on people while managers work on tasks, let's look back at history. Lincoln had a vision of abolishing slavery. He then had to manage the task of making that happen. Yet, he was looking out for his people. Not all of his people agreed with him. What people want is not always what they need. Before you say it, I agree that sometimes people are wrong deciding what others need, but anyone that has been involved in educating a child or student knows that what a student says he wants is not always in his best interest. Similar situations for our founding fathers and FDR and lots more. These people were not considered great managers. They had to deal with the problems at hand. If you'd like to call that management that's fine even though I disagree. They also dealt with people. They had to get the people to work on the problem at hand. They had to understand the people, their strengths and weaknesses, listen and learn from them, trust them to do their part, help them when they needed support, motivate them when they were down, and yes, even fire them when they were in over their heads. In short, take care of them so the problem at hand could be solved. Most people would call that leadership. Groups of people usually have problems to solve and they have to work together to accomplish that. If leadership can never include solving group problems, or tasks, then there isn't much room for leadership.

We do COHs and flag retirements.We do flag ceremonies for anyone that asks. The scouts take a lot of pride in them. A couple of scouts are going to get free hockey tickets for doing one in a month. I was frustrated because my scouts weren't doing them, and then one day they started and now they really enjoy them.

Talking about what a leader is or does still seems a bit murky. I've seen scouts with lots of charisma (other scouts just want to be with them) but their only vision is to get scouts to follow them in a social setting. I've kept in touch with a few and they still haven't grown up. I tried hard to get them to use their talents for doing something besides screwing around but it didn't work. What I have also seen are people with a passion for something. Some scouts want to organize fun campouts or campfires. That leads to confidence, and people tend to follow. I have a scout in my troop that has some minor speech impediment. He's shy about it but he tries hard enough that everyone respects him and follows him. It has nothing to do with charisma but everything to do with desire and humility. I still disagree with the idea that a leader should only do as told from below. One example is the SM that's trying to change his troop to be more boy led. Some parents and scouts won't like change no matter what. Does that mean the SM should never change anything? Waiting for everyone to come to complete agreement is called design by committee. Maybe that's why the BSA can't get behind boy lead, there are too many bubbles in Texas that can't agree on it. I agree that going it alone is risky and getting enough people to agree is important, but it's rarely the case that everyone agrees on everything. With a vision and a passion for getting something done, real leaders make things happen and disagreements are part of it.

Boy scouts is all about scouts learning to make decisions so never solve a problem a scout can and never make a decision a scout can. Also, set clear boundaries as to who makes what decisions and make sure everyone knows them and everyone defends those boundaries (scouts adults and parents). Separation. Trust goes both ways between scouts and adults. It takes time and is fragile.

Stosh, I like a lot of what you've written but your idea that leadership is bottom up and management is top down doesn't match what I see. I agree that bad management is top down. But leadership goes both ways. Sometimes a leader needs to tell a scout something he doesn't want to hear, such as "no, you can't go play, it's time to wash the dishes." There's give and take. The leader's responsibility is the group as a whole. Not only that but sometimes a vision has to grow from one person, usually the leader, to the whole group. Take the whole subject of boy led from the SM's view as leader and a bunch of new parents. The new parents want a schedule of events so their sons can get FCFY but the SM wants scouts to make their own decisions. The SM says no, this is the way we're going to do it. It's not bottom up. It's more like tough love. Who is the keeper of the flame? Who cares about the scouts in the patrol? That's the leader. We ask the PL to care but there's no way we can force him to do it. It's the exact same thing with character. We can tell them what it is, we can show them how we do it, we can tell them to do it, but we can't make them do it. I've tried to make opportunities for scouts to try leadership at a lower level than PL, just so they can try it out, but it hasn't worked well.

40 scouts. Suburban. Money is becoming more of an issue, but that's mostly because HA trips are going up in price. Lots of adults sign up but there's a natural culture to back off, as they're all busy. I have few adults that work with scouts. After what I've read here I should count my blessings. Two years ago I made a big push for boy led and am now seeing the results. As I said in another thread, our NSP is roughly March to June and we have two troop guides per patrol. They are at least 15. The process of selecting them is usually one of Jedi mind tricks. I usually walk up to a couple of scouts and ask if they've ever thought of being a TG. But anyone can ask. The idea of having TGs guide a PL within the NSP is honestly new to me, and I think it's a great idea. Since our NSP is so short in duration the focus is on developing teamwork. I'm usually happy if the scouts are tenderfoot by the time summer camp is over. This FCFY thing is driving me nuts. I believe in ALOFFYPAMAATSW (a lot of fun first year plus as much advancement as the scout wants). Some love advancement. The scouts that need scouting the most typically do not. Our scouts decide the length of their PORs. Since I'm always preaching developing their replacement I haven't seen anyone go much longer than the 6 month period anyway. One benefit is we don't see a new group of PLs all at once. I'm always willing to change things. After what I've read here I'd like to better set goals for what the TGs are trying to accomplish. Teamwork and finding a patrol they want. There has always been the assumption that at the end of the NSP scouts are broken out into the other patrols. I would like to revisit that idea. There are more options and getting the new scouts' input is something we should do more of. It's an opportunity for the scouts to solve a problem.

Too many labels. The term NSP seems to mean many different things. It would cool this whole discussion down if people would define what they mean by NSP. How long, who the leaders are, that kind of thing. My complaint with the one particular NSP was primarily with the idea that a scout couldn't leave until he was first class. That's dumb. We have something we call a NSP patrol that has two older scouts as PLs, only runs for about 4 months, and gives the new scouts a chance to figure out who their friends are and learn a bit about the huge change between cub scouts and boy scouts. The adults don't need to be involved because the scout leaders in that patrol are old enough to deal with cats. It works well for us. The scouts are ready to leave when it's done. Something I rarely see mentioned is that scouts must have friends in the troop or they will leave (I did). In particular, after they're 13 it starts getting very hard for them to make friends in a troop setting compared to what they get in school. So the first two years are critical. Just as important, 1 to 3 really good friends is all they tend to have or need. More than that and I start seeing too much high school drama if the friends are all in one patrol. What that means for us is our patrols are tending towards different aged clumps of friends. It's certainly not a single age and it's not evenly split. Right now my patrols are better than they've ever been so I'm happy with it.

Word of advice from someone that's been there: understand the difference between what the committee does and the SM/ASMs. Sounds like you're getting sucked into doing the committee's job. Fundraising is not your domain, nor is rechartering, advancement records, collecting money for summer camp, .... I used to do all that and finally said no more.

Yep. 3 scouts - stay as a patrol. 2 scouts - their choice, but they are visiting the other patrol and the patrol must have room. 1 scout - find a patrol, they must have room, you're visiting.