Adult led and youth led

[MattR]

17 hours ago, Kudu said:

of kids encouraged by your parents to seek adventure on your own?

The pros of this is anything that you want to do you'll get the backing of the parents. This is huge in today's world. I'd take a "troop" of these kids in a heartbeat.

17 hours ago, Kudu said:

a "Troop," if you are a Lone Patrol of kids

This is not very well defined. Due to your Free Range Kids activity, I'll assume this has nothing to do with the BSA (although I wish this mindset would infect the BSA) and is really about offering some scouty things to the FRK community.

The pros are the kids want to, and have to, take ownership. Since they've been encouraged to do this from a young age they will be more accepting of it. This is really big. A con is those children that come in to this late. The kid that has been taught to cross busy streets when they were 7 knows how to take care of him/herself, but might not know how to deal with the new kid that's not paying attention to the walk lights. Ranks in the BSA used to handle this. A First Class scout could take care of himself in the outdoors. Not so much now. So you'll have to figure this out.

If this indeed is more based on FRK then one pro is that advancement really is just a method. If a kid wants to advance then they figure out how to do that. It's not front and center.

Adult association is both a pro and a con in scouts. Teaching the youth the skills they need to safely engage in the adventures they want is a big pro. Reinforcing scout ideals is also important. Helping the scouts come up with ideas for adventure is also beneficial. Beyond that it's likely a con.

Institutional knowledge (outdoor skills, regular outings) is created with the typical troop's existing calendars.  Without that there can be a loss of knowledge to the youth. There might be a lot less service, but there could be more if the youth enjoyed it. Things like camporees and merit badge fairs would likely fade away. (mostly a pro) Summer camp would be about fun. (huge pro). The outdoors might get a lot less interest but maybe the youth would find something else, such as music or a sport. That could drive some youth out. So, you can't do what the GSUSA did and drop the outdoors. Camping is still fun.

Sounds interesting. Keep us informed.

 

[qwazse]

1 hour ago, MattR said:

... There might be a lot less service, but there could be more if the youth enjoyed it. ...

A friend's daughter created her LP as a "do something club" that was entirely service oriented. It lasted until her peers started worrying about college, and she got a job as a barista to save up for books, etc ... On one slow day at the shop after she had served my iced-coffee, we caught up on her plans for the future, and her reflections on high school. She said, "I really wish we had done more exciting stuff, like backpacking."

Before my drink started to boil in my hand, she said that she knew that I was always "there" for her.

I guess what LPs can gain from a troop is inspiration to commit to a panoply of adventure.

Edited May 20, 2019 by qwazse

[Kudu]

My initial inclination is to encourage Free Range Kids to organize around the original fortnight edition of Scouting for Boys.  

As in the days before Troops were common, a Lone Patrol would seek out, as needed, adults in the community with expertise in the outdoor skills they wish to master.  Perhaps  a church, school club, hiking group, outdoor store clinic, local chapter of Let Grow, former BSA volunteers, etc.   (I'd be interested in additional suggestions).

Adult Led / Youth Led then becomes:

Youth Led adults whose services can be terminated as needed.

Some day I'd like to see a spin-off thread on the research behind @Eagledad's observation that only about 3% of the population are "Natural Leaders."  

In my experience Barry's figure is exactly right.  

In a Troop of 32 Scouts, typically I trust only one or two to take a Patrol out into the field with no adult supervision.

And, like @qwazse, I do sometimes meet these 3 in 100 "Alec in Wilderland" kids, with a Patrol-size following.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXHCiIQtqoQ&t=11s

Yours at 300 feet,

Kudu

Kudu.Net

 

Edited May 22, 2019 by Kudu

[willray]

5 minutes ago, Kudu said:

...In a Troop of 32 Scouts, typically I trust only one or two to take a Patrol out into the field with no adult supervision.

And, like qwazse, I do sometimes meet these 3 in 100 "Alec in Wilderland" kids, with a Patrol-size following.

...

I am curious, whether in your experience you feel that this leadership skill seems to "run in families".  While I can't put a percentage on it, it occurs to me that I know a few kids whose fathers appear to be natural leaders, and even if the kids try rather hard not to be leaders, they still end up with a patrol/patrol-like group following them around.  (kids here, because these aren't all scouts).  On the other hand, I know a few kids whose parents are dreadful leaders, and it sure seems like no amount of coaching is ever going to raise them to anything better than mediocre at leadership.

My day job, or at least a part of it, involves trying to tease the genetic "nature vs nurture" out of similar questions, and this one had never occurred to me to think about trying to analyze.

[Kudu]

8 minutes ago, willray said:

I am curious, whether in your experience you feel that this leadership skill seems to "run in families".  While I can't put a percentage on it, it occurs to me that I know a few kids whose fathers appear to be natural leaders, and even if the kids try rather hard not to be leaders, they still end up with a patrol/patrol-like group following them around.  (kids here, because these aren't all scouts).  On the other hand, I know a few kids whose parents are dreadful leaders, and it sure seems like no amount of coaching is ever going to raise them to anything better than mediocre at leadership.

My day job, or at least a part of it, involves trying to tease the genetic "nature vs nurture" out of similar questions, and this one had never occurred to me to think about trying to analyze.

Seems worthy of a new thread, "Natural Leaders."  

[ParkMan]

2 hours ago, willray said:

I am curious, whether in your experience you feel that this leadership skill seems to "run in families".  While I can't put a percentage on it, it occurs to me that I know a few kids whose fathers appear to be natural leaders, and even if the kids try rather hard not to be leaders, they still end up with a patrol/patrol-like group following them around.  (kids here, because these aren't all scouts).  On the other hand, I know a few kids whose parents are dreadful leaders, and it sure seems like no amount of coaching is ever going to raise them to anything better than mediocre at leadership.

My day job, or at least a part of it, involves trying to tease the genetic "nature vs nurture" out of similar questions, and this one had never occurred to me to think about trying to analyze.

I'm sure that both nature & nurture play a role.  However, I tihnk that in even more cases it simply comes seeing countless examples of leadership by their parents.  That's why often the children of good leaders themselves become good leaders.  Kids see their parents doing it an just do the same.

 

[willray]

23 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

I'm sure that both nature & nurture play a role.  However, I tihnk that in even more cases it simply comes seeing countless examples of leadership by their parents.  That's why often the children of good leaders themselves become good leaders.  Kids see their parents doing it an just do the same.

It's the ones that seem to be trying really hard not to lead, but that seem incapable of not attracting a following, that I find fascinating.  It would absolutely be a real beast of an analysis to tease out the "learned from osmosis" stuff from innate ability, but that would be half the fun.

[qwazse]

11 hours ago, Kudu said:

Seems worthy of a new thread, "Natural Leaders."  

 

[Eagledad]

12 hours ago, ParkMan said:

I'm sure that both nature & nurture play a role.  However, I tihnk that in even more cases it simply comes seeing countless examples of leadership by their parents.  That's why often the children of good leaders themselves become good leaders.  Kids see their parents doing it an just do the same.

 

Looking back, I can't recall very many scouts reflecting the leadership of their parents. Visa versa, some of our scouts also weren't a reflection of their really good leader parents. But,  in most cases, the sons were remarkable reflections of their parents' character.

Without getting into natural leadership (a whole different breed of leader), leadership skills have to be acquired one way or another.

But what exactly is leadership? We push servant leadership in the scouting program, but what is servant leadership?

I look back at two groups of recognized leaders in our troop that we guided to be servant leaders. I learned of the first group by a young proud freshmen scout one night at a troop meeting. We have three large high schools that feed our troop. One of those schools hands ballets to all 2000 of the students and ask them to pick the top 8 leaders of the school. Seven of the chosen leaders were scouts in our troop. The eight was a girl. I'm she would have been in our troop today.😎

So, how do high schoolers define leaders. Well, each of these scouts were active campers and experts with outdoors skills. Each had a reputation of trust and kindness toward all the scouts. Each were fairly quiet scouts, but more in the of a calm confidence, they weren't shy. They weren't braggarts, I never heard a single one of them mention their honor. Only the proud freshmen alerted me. They weren't silly, but more steady in their character. In my youth, these guys were top candidates for OA Arrowmen. Servants.

At the same time, neither were they our top leaders. They all were good trusted leaders while on the PLC, but they weren't making a career of taking Positions of responsibility. They were scouts for adventure and the camaraderie of the patrol.

I was quite proud, but not surprised. They were solid scouts.

I learned of our other group of leaders one night when the district OA representative came to visit. We chatted for a while, but eventually I asked why his visit. He confessed that he wanted to see the program of the districts best youth leaders. His words. He said that scouts from our troop were well trained in running a large program. They we confident and skilled at setting goals and developing agendas to meet those goals. Our scouts were so accomplished with these skills, the scouts from the other troops elected them because they were intimidated. And it wasn't the same scouts, different scouts were elected each of the previous three years. 

I was to busy for OA, and frankly it wasn't the program of my youth, so I wasn't involved at all. so, I had no idea our scouts were so respected. Three of the 7 scouts scouts elected as leaders by their high school were also arrowmen, but none of them were the scouts the district rep was talking about. The scouts that where being elected leaders OA were had a differnt style than the scouts elected by their school. These had also been SPLs, ASPLS and Troop Quartermasters of our troop. These three positions are in our troop are very challenging and usually only taken on by the scouts who want and enjoy Positions of Responsibility. These guys also typically had the highest grades in school. As I said, we push servant leadership. Are they typical of servant leadership?

I could go on and on, and on and on, bragging about our youth leaders, but these are two groups of leaders recognized outside of our troop. We weren't doing the bragging. Complete strangers were going out of their way to call them "Leader". They were recognized for their qualities. And yet, they were two completely different types of qualities. Are these qualities leadership qualities? More important to me, are their qualities the qualities of servants?

My definition of servant leader is simply putting everyone else first, before ourselves. You know, the Scout Oath. That is all that we asked of all our scouts, leader or not. A servant leaders is just a by-product of a servant lifestyle. Quite frankly, I believe being a good servant is harder for followers than leaders. Leaders have one task of taking the Patrol to their goals. Followers have to question and trust the leader the whole way. Much much harder. 

So I find myself in leadership discussions always spread around the subject because I have witness so many good leaders of different styles. And this isn't just my opinion, this is the opinion of strangers out in the community. Their leadership styles are as diverse as the stars. 

I was the council Youth Leadership director, the head guy for Junior Leadership Training for all the council. I was the expert. And yet, all I can say that the one commonality for developing good leaders is let them make decisions based from character actions of being a servant. Or, follow the scout law. Teach you scouts to serve, and no matter their skills, I learned that they will be respected as "Leaders". 

This really is an amazing program. I love this scouting stuff.

Barry

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Eagledad

[TAHAWK]

"Adult led and youth led"

 

NOT SCOUTING AND SCOUTING.