What method is best to achieve a totally trained unit?

[CNYScouter]

Our district has a new Traning Chairman. They have sent a survey to all unit leaders and one of the questions they asked is:

 

What method is best to achieve a totally trained unit?

 

So, what methods have worked for you to acheive this?

 

[Lisabob]

Make training affordable, accessible, fun, and clearly worth while to those who attend. Advertize incessantly, keeping in mind that those who may need training the most - NEW LEADERS -may not yet be hooked into the usual sources of district info. You'll need to reach out to find them. Promote that pack trainer position (at the cub pack level) and whatever similar position might exist (is there anything similar?) at the troop/crew/team level. These are the people who should be pushing their own unit members to get their behinds to training, and who can help new leaders find out about training on a timely basis.

 

Things to avoid (just my opinion):

Either stop berating people who don't go to Roundtable, or change your RT, if your RT is basically just an old-boy coffee hour with the pledge of allegiance and the scout law & oath as bookends. Any new leaders who do venture out to RT will probably never come back if that's what it is about - they've got too much else to do with their precious time - and they'll let everyone else in their unit know what a waste of time it was, too.

 

It steams me to spend a whole day at a training session that is riddled with mis-information, or clearly thrown together at the last minute with little thought. Make sure your trainers know the material and have a plan for how to present it.

 

Don't treat training opportunities as a district money-maker. My district routinely charges $25-$35 for basic training - that's way too much in my opinion. Small units or those with lots of new volunteers don't have the budget to pay for this.

 

Don't accept the "once trained, forever trained" attitude from certain longtime scouters who took training a hundred years ago. At those old-boy coffee hours (cough* I mean RTs) remind the old guard that they might learn something new...er, refresh their memories...if they would go back to training every once in a while. And then make sure that's true by providing new information.

 

Don't stop promoting the next training session, ever.

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

 

 

[evmori]

Keep your untrained leaders on a short leash until they are trained.

 

Combine as much training in one course as you can.

 

Make training fun.

 

Ed Mori

Troop 1

1 Peter 4:10

A blessed Christmas to all

[John-in-KC]

Violent agreement with LisaBob.

 

Some notes for trainers, from a guy trained in training by Uncle's Army:

 

TRAINING DISTRACTORS are a TURNOFF. The JOB of the TRAINER IS TO GET AND KEEP THE GROUP ON TASK!!!!

 

KNOW THE MATERIAL YOU'RE GIVING AS A TRAINER. DO NOT READ THE SLIDES. GIVE INFO AND INSIGHTS BEYOND THE BULLETS ON THE SLIDES. It is unprofessional to read slides; reading slides insults the intelligence of the training audience. Further, reading the slides to the audience them shouts to them "I did not prepare" and WASTES THEIR TIME.

 

(Can you tell I'm really into trainers who know their material???)

 

BE ABLE TO SAY WHY IT'S IMPORTANT FOR YOUR ATTENDEES TO TAKE THE TRAINING. In the training business, it's called the "attention step."

 

TRAIN HANDS-ON. I have to look at the key points of safe swim defense, but 2 1/2 years later, remembering the key points of breaking a hold when a non-swimmer attacks a lifeguard are still clear in my mind ... because I practiced them.

 

Always remember, as a Scouter, each of us needs to know the skill not only at the *I use this* level, but also at the *I can help others learn this* level. We don't have to do this for all our skills, but if you're going to be part of the game, come ready to play.

 

John

A Good Old Owl, too

C-40-05

[Eamonn]

I don't shop at K-Mart.

The last time I was there they had a lot of people and only two cash resisters open. Since then they have rebuild the store. It's now a Super K-Mart. But I don't know if it's any better or not because I haven't been back.

Sadly as volunteers we don't always get it right.

I remember one guy I asked to do a presentation, a guy who I knew that knew his stuff and had attended the pre-training meeting. Got up wearing his full Scout uniform including a campaign hat and then spent 20 minutes talking about his darn hat. Needless to say I never asked him again. Even more sad is that many of the people who were at that training are going to think about training the same way as I do about K-Mart.

I agree that we should put on the best Training's that we possible can.

But I also think that units have to allow the people who have attended the training's to put the stuff that they have been shown to use.

We can drill the methods of Scouting into a participant, he or she can see that it's all good stuff but if when they get back to the home unit they hear the "We don't do it that way" line they think it has all been a waste of time.

When I was Council Training Chairman, I tried really hard to get the presenters to present the stuff that is in the syllabus.

It seems that most of the mis-information comes from covering things that are not in the course material.

This is a difficult situation. Trainers want the participants to come away happy and feeling that their questions have been answered, but very often the presenter allows what he or she does to become the answer, even if it's not right.

Our Council doesn't have any Varsity Scouts. I know next to nothing about the Varsity program. When I was the Course Director for a Wood Badge course we got some questions about the Varsity Program. I had National send me enough handouts for every participant that covered the program. In the participant evaluation a number of people noted that we didn't give them enough information about Varsity programs!!

Sure I could have bluffed and of course I'm still a little befuddled about why they need to know as we don't have any in any of the councils near us.

When I attend the big expensive courses that my company pays to send me to. They don't try and change their presentation to make it more "Local".

So while the Parking Lot does help to ensure that we cover the things that people want to know, there has to be times when the right answer is "I don't know" Of course a good Trainer will try to find out, but there are times when even this does work!!

While I hold training to be very important it is worth remembering that if you send an idiot to training what comes back is a trained idiot.

Eamonn.

[SueM]

Last year, I was on staff for our District BSLT...was scared to DEATH about doing it as I had just gone through it the year before and was really at the very beginning of my own "learning curve" and scared to death that I would not do a good job. I have a very hard time being "front & center"..but overcoming this was one of my personal reasons for going to Wood Badge!! We had a small group of both staff and attendees...from experienced scouters to newbees. It was very open and informal. We presented our materials and provided a lot of time for questions, general discussion and comments. The attendees were actually wonderful -contributors- to the program instead of just sitting there listening, because we involved them in the process by allowing them to share their experiences and I have to tell you that it was a wonderful learning experience for ME!! The whole group was very attentive through the whole course and appreciative that when the staff was not sure of something..we admitted it and discussed it. We got nothing but postitive feedback from the attendees afterwards, so we must have done something right! I'm looking forward to being on staff again in March!!!

 

Sue M.

[FScouter]

"While I hold training to be very important it is worth remembering that if you send an idiot to training what comes back is a trained idiot."

 

Have to agree with this comment. More important than the quality of the training is the quality of the adults selected to serve as unit leaders.

[John-in-KC]

One of the best lessons I ever learned as a trainer:

 

"After a lesson, always reflect on the training you just gave. You should be able to come up with at least one of these:

- A new insight on your subject,

- A new insight on your audience,

- A different way to communicate your point."

 

Mr Charlie Benke, in the office of training developments, US Army Field Artillery School, is the author of that pearl. THANK YOU Charlie, wherever you are.

 

[acco40]

I've "consumed" training and I've "produced" training. I've also witnessed training staffs who get very cliquish with each other which is a total turn-off to participants. I like the idea of having at least a 50% turn-over in training staff each session. That keeps the material fresh and helps the training staff weed out the bottom feeders.

[Lisabob]

Have to agree with acco - it is a bad sign when the presenters feel they're somehow "above" the audience.

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!

[SueM]

I think that we've kind of combined the 2 questions into this thread as we're all talking about how to maybe make it more effective rather than the original but to get back to that..I'm finding that it's most effective if when you get new adults into the troop, you tell them from the start that training is an -expectation- rather than an option if they're going to be camping or working with the boys. We start out with Fast Start and YPT asap after they come in as possible and then they generally have to wait for the BSLT to be offered, but most are willing to do it...especially if the troop committee will agree to cover the cost..which ours does. We have been having pretty good luck with this method.

 

sue m.

[MarkS]

Sue's right. Somehow we got on the subject about how to make training more effective rather than how to get leaders trained. Let's assume the training is effective and then work on what the best method is to achieve a totally trained unit...

 

The best method for achieving a totally trained unit is to recruit the right leaders in the first place. People who are likely to want to get trained. Do this along with making training an expectation rather than the exception.

 

Now if we want to add a Council/District standpoint, more emphasis needs to be put on how to recruit in the basic training classes we would like all our leaders to take.

[ozemu]

I don't think that it is possible to have a totaly trained unit.

 

We all join for different reasons and then our situations tend to change. We have lives and volunteering must go along with that.

 

Further I was in the Army for ten years and was never fully trained. There is always more.

 

So get the volunteers into the Scouting job that suits them and allow for that plan to change.

 

Keep them excited about what they are doing. And provide training that is relevant to that.

 

Keep the basics strong.

 

Hope this helps with the survey. I suspect that the aim was to get unit leaders focussed on the issue rather than finding 'the' method.

 

Pls let us know if there is an answer.

[Crew21_Adv]

CNY,

 

Greetings!

 

I agree with most all of our fellow Scouters here. Achieving 100 percent is an excellent goal. But you will only get those to training that desire (or forced) to attend. (My thoughts are about three out of every four parents and new Scouters, or targeting somewhere around 75 percent per district and unit)

 

From a small percentage, I have listened to fellow Scouters tell me about their college degrees, weekend leadership seminars, military training and hunting trips. This minority of Scouting adults and parents believe that their own experiences will shadow anything that BSA training has to offer. (There are few other legitimate excuses, such as work schedules, travel, medical needs, and etc., which will prevent Scouters from ever attending training.)

 

For your Training Chairman, I would focus on those that you can reach and encourage to attend.

 

Two methods that we have used to increase training, which seems to work.

 

1) Our training team has taken the training to the unit. We have taken Troop Committee Challenge to long committee meetings, and also have taken NLE and CSLST/BSLST to certain geographically remote units.

 

2) During our training advertisement. There were often complaints about late registration fees. We have changed the wording on our training flyers from "Registration Fee and Late Registration Fee" to "Early Bird Discount and Regular Fee". I haven't heard a complaint since and Scouters have signed up earlier to obtain the "Discount" prices.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Scouting Forever and Venture On!

Crew21_Adv

[Lisabob]

Crew21_Adv, I love your idea regarding "late fees!" Will mention this to our district training folks.

 

If you want to get people trained I think you have to start out by showing them, in concrete terms, how training will make them more effective volunteers and then the training had better do exactly that once you get them to attend. Just as having a couple of people who are fresh from a great training session with all kinds of enthusiasm and new ideas can re-invigorate a unit and promote training, the opposite is also true and probably on a larger scale. So I think this is where the two threads (100% trained and effectiveness of training) merge.

 

By the way - I've noticed that getting unit leaders to training is sort of a circular process. Units with good programs and high volunteer morale tend to promote training for new volunteers, which most likely (I hope!) feeds back into their strong programming and morale. Units with a lot of problems often have volunteers who are so dispirited and worn down that getting them to even try training is difficult, though it would probably help them enormously. Of course their lack of training often adds to their problems... So do we end up preaching to the choir at training then?

 

One side note, I haven't heard anybody mention UCs in this thread. Does your UC promote training for your unit? I don't have the foggiest notion of who our unit's UC is so clearly s/he isn't doing this for us, but isn't this part of their position?

 

Lisa'bob

A good old bobwhite too!