Closure

[Eagledad]

5 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

Having youth Scouting experience does not make someone any more likely to be a better leader. 

No, but having the clear vision of a youth Scouting experience does have a very distinct advantage in building a patrol method program.

 

8 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

Being a good leader in Scouting is more about a willingness to learn and embrace what the program is trying to accomplish.  Being a great leader in Scouting is happens in people who are willing to be self-reflective and humble and strive to learn more.

 Yep, that traits certainly help in building a quality program, but experience and history show that starting with the vision of experience has an distinct advantage for getting patrol method up to speed. 

Does that really surprise you?

11 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

So the fact that 99.99 percent of women don't have youth both scout experience is a red herring.

We will just have to agree to disagree. But let me ask you, when building your dream house, are you hiring a contractor who is building his first, or an experienced contractor. Your response not logical for finding real solutions.

I also believe that 99.99 percent of men without a youth scouting experience are at a distinct disadvantage. But, the new membership policy will likely bring in a lot more inexperienced moms than dads.

I believe you are being more offensive than me in your response because you are letting a bad choice of words ignore important facts.

15 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

Just as we should encourage female Scouters to not look for cliques where they don't exist, so too should we challenge the way we discuss these things. We are a Scout led troop and have had female ASMs in our troop for 20+ years.  In our troop it would be absurd to ever make a statements like "teachable female ASM" of "suppress their fears enough to let their daughters set up camp 100 yards away."  . 

I'm not sure I would say that fact that way, but I certainly believe that. I know you are an engineer, but in my work, I rely and facts and figures to determine direction and design, not theories and emotions. If we can see that the new influx of adults joining don't have clue, we should prepare ourselves with that fact to better deal with the future of the program. 21st Century Wood Badge was a reaction to the negative effects of the new adult membership policy. We (well I) know better now.

31 minutes ago, ParkMan said:

I read comments like this and they jump out at me for how unnecessary that they are.  As we discussed this one, look how it turned to a discussion about youth BSA experience.  My interpretation is that some leaders have problems training leaders without BSA experience as a youth.  They conclude that since 99.9% of women could not have had youth BSA experience, it will be very difficult to teach a female ASM.  But - at it's core, it has nothing to do with being a female - so why trying to equate the two?  Instead, we ought to be dealing with how to develop leaders who do not have youth BSA experience.

Your comments would be more respected if you acted less offended and were more correcting. I have no problem with the fact that a large influx of moms are coming and that will create a greater challenge for the BSA, or whatever they call it. While wording could have been better, the facts don't change, a challenge is coming. Those who start looking for ideas now will be that much farther ahead in the future. If the good-ol-boys club (which presently is a  large portion female) and the inexperienced moms influx are to move forward, they must both agree with the realities and work together for solutions.

Barry

[ParkMan]

Thank you for the very thought out reply @Eagledad.  A few replies.

19 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

No, but having the clear vision of a youth Scouting experience does have a very distinct advantage in building a patrol method program.

 Yep, that traits certainly help in building a quality program, but experience and history show that starting with the vision of experience has an distinct advantage for getting patrol method up to speed. 

Does that really surprise you?

We will just have to agree to disagree. But let me ask you, when building your dream house, are you hiring a contractor who is building his first, or an experienced contractor. Your response not logical for finding real solutions.

Of course it is without question that prior Scouting experience is helpful.

I come from a large pack & troop experience with a deep history.  Our troop leadership team include 20+ active people - those include all kinds of Scouting experience and accomplishments.  When a new Scouter shows up fresh to the troop, he or she has a lot of experience to draw upon.

As a large troop, it is all but unhread of for us to simply take a new leader and say "you're on your own".  We have all kinds of formal knowledge transfer & informal mentoring that goes on.  If a person doesn't have the background to understand "why", we sit with them and help them to understand.  Of course those with experience get there faster, but those without get there as well.  We treat our new leaders less like "general contractors" and more like skilled apprentices.  

My proscriptive recommendation here is that units need to do this.  If you are a troop that takes a new ASM and doesn't mentor them, then you need to start doing that.  If you are a troop that doesn't have an established culture for a new leader to embrace - again, you need to build that.

28 minutes ago, Eagledad said:

I know you are an engineer, but in my work, I rely and facts and figures to determine direction and design, not theories and emotions. If we can see that the new influx of adults joining don't have clue, we should prepare ourselves with that fact to better deal with the future of the program. 21st Century Wood Badge was a reaction to the negative effects of the new adult membership policy. We (well I) know better now.

Your comments would be more respected if you acted less offended and were more correcting. I have no problem with the fact that a large influx of moms are coming and that will create a greater challenge for the BSA, or whatever they call it. While wording could have been better, the facts don't change, a challenge is coming. Those who start looking for ideas now will be that much farther ahead in the future. If the good-ol-boys club (which presently is a  large portion female) and the inexperienced moms influx are to move forward, they must both agree with the realities and work together for solutions.

In my work, we rely on facts & figures too.  We also analyze trends and look for how to deal with them.  If a problem is coming, we note it and start working on a solution.

I'm not offended at all.  I do simply think that as unit leaders we need to embrace an approach to developing new leaders that deals with the fact that leaders may have little Scouting background.   We need to know how to push back when leaders show up who challenge how we think things "ought" to work.

And as for the comment about respect.  I'm sorry if you don't respect my comments.  Perhaps I go about it the wrong way - but I just think that as Scouters we have to look for ways to solve these problems in front of us.  In fact, much of what you wrote today I do agree with - so I don't think we're nearly as far off it may seem.

[Treflienne]

I'd like to insert a new thought into this discussion.  You know the saying.  "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

I'd also like to point out that when the first Boy Scout troops for boys started,  a hundred or so years ago,  none of the scouters had grown up in the program as youth.

What if the choice is between a troop with inexperienced adults who at least think they want to learn,  and no troop at all?   (This may be the case for some of the new girls' troops.)  We have youth wanting to be in Scouting and use the BSA program.   Do we offer them a troop full of inexperienced scouts (them) and inexperienced adults?   Or do we offer them nothing at all?

By the way,  this is one reason why I think that the linked troop idea is a good idea --- so that the experienced scouters in the boys' troop can mentor and help the scouters in the girls' troop.

[Ranman328]

5 hours ago, Treflienne said:

I'd like to insert a new thought into this discussion.  You know the saying.  "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good".

I'd also like to point out that when the first Boy Scout troops for boys started,  a hundred or so years ago,  none of the scouters had grown up in the program as youth.

What if the choice is between a troop with inexperienced adults who at least think they want to learn,  and no troop at all?   (This may be the case for some of the new girls' troops.)  We have youth wanting to be in Scouting and use the BSA program.   Do we offer them a troop full of inexperienced scouts (them) and inexperienced adults?   Or do we offer them nothing at all?

By the way,  this is one reason why I think that the linked troop idea is a good idea --- so that the experienced scouters in the boys' troop can mentor and help the scouters in the girls' troop.

I disagree.  If BSA wants to push the Girl Programs, they should be ready, willing and able to assist in supporting these "Inexperienced Adults".  Pushing more responsibilities onto the already stretched "Volunteer" Scouters is irresponsible.  They knew this was coming out over a year ago.  They should have planned better and got these adults signed up trained and put into already established Troops to shadow how things are done.  This thread is about an already established Troop with inexperienced Adults that have come in and think they know better than the years long scouters. Honestly, you can't compare the 1907 Scouting Program with the 2017 Scouting program. That is disrespectful to the thousands of Scouters, Adults and Youth that built the program.  I have been pestered relentlessly about a Girl Program at my Charter Organization.  My answer:  I can't get enough adults to come out to my events now, I certainly don't have time to start a new girl Troop.  Again, poor planning on the Councils and Districts.  Maybe if they spent less time on beating up Troops about donating more to "Friends of Scouting" and more time on the new Girl Program, we wouldn't b in as bad of shape.

[WisconsinMomma]

Barry, I can't even have a conversation with you when you're going down the path of saying that I'm over-sensitive, you're logical, and I'm too inexperienced to understand completely how men and women are different.   I don't think you realize how patronizing those comments are.

Edited January 29, 2019 by WisconsinMomma

[Eagle1993]

2 hours ago, WisconsinMomma said:

 I don't think you realize how patronizing those comments are

It’s your lack of training and experience that makes you feel patronized....😬

[Eagle94-A1]

I've been is Scouting way too long. So long that some of my Eagles are now Den Leaders, and one or two are even ASMs in their son's troops. So I have a lot of experience. But I still learn new things everyday. And I relearn things all the time too. One of the things I relearned from this is TRUST YOUR GUT FEELING! (emphasis)

I was district training chairman once upon a time, and I would like to say I did a good job. I helped  a lot of new Scouters with those classes. One of the troop I was particularly proud of was the troop I intended to join 7 or 8 years ago because I trained their SM and ASMs and they got it. The troop wasn't perfect, no brand new troop is, but working with their Scouters was great. They were attentive, asked good questions, and listened to the biggest challenge for adults of the Patrol Method: it is organized chaos an will take 2 to 3 times longer for the Scouts to do things initially. Sometimes the new guys had ideas and thoughts about things that I had no idea if it would work or not. And sometimes they tried things I had deep reservations about.  So I suggested, give it a shot. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't Best example is the NSP they did. It was the only time I've seen it work as it is suppose to. The  reason why I think it did was because the ASM was also the WDL with the affiliated pack, and they began the Webelos-To-Scout Transition as soon as they became Webelos.

But just as folks learn from their successes, folks also learn from their failures. That same troop got a new SM, and I knew he would need help because he was untrained. I put a lot of effort into training him and the new batch of ASMs they got, just crossed over from Cub Scouts. Long story short, The training went in one ear and out the other. I ended up being their UC, and tried to mentor and counsel them because they started hemorrhaging Scouts. Some told me I didn't know what I was talking about, others said  Scouting needs to change with the times and their new methods worked better. I asked for another UC to work with them since I could not help them. They created a "high speed, low drag" advancement troop with little camping outside of MB weekends. It got worse and worse until they were on the verge of extinction. Eventually they learned why none of the Cubs were crossing over into their troop, and they changed how they did things. They learned from their experience and are now slowly improving the troop.

So just as you need to let Scouts learn from failure to improve themselves and their patrols and troop, we old fogeys need to let the new crop of Scouters learn from their mistakes. Yes we need to train them, counsel them, and mentor them. But we also need to "Train 'em. Trust 'em. LET THEM LEAD!" (sic)

i did that with my old troop. I let the Scouters make their mistakes and they are now learning from them. If the troop survives, and I am praying it does, I think those Scouters will be better off, and the troop will grow stronger over time. 

And I learned to trust my gut instinct, especially when it comes to my sons. As soon as I recognized the troop's problem, knew that it would not be handled in a timely manner, knew it would fester and get worse, and most importantly SAW IT NEGATIVELY AFFECTING MY SONS (emphasis), I should have left.

Again I do not want the troop to die. I want the troop to get on the right path. I want it to succeed. But I am ready with throwlines and  ring buoys  to save my Scouts if they need saving.

 

[Eagledad]

4 hours ago, WisconsinMomma said:

Barry, I can't even have a conversation with you when you're going down the path of saying that I'm over-sensitive, you're logical, and I'm too inexperienced to understand completely how men and women are different.   I don't think you realize how patronizing those comments are.

My deepest apologies. I'm at an age that when I look back, I've seen how my thoughts, attitudes and perceptions changed on the path my experiences. I was only trying to say that as you gain experiences, you will likely see these discussions differently. Some of the posts appear condescending and disrespectful, but when we read them in the context of who sent the post and considering their level of experience on the subject, asking what exactly they meant is the better approach. A further explanation might some food for thought, or just as important, give the other person a moment of pause to step back on their words.

I have empathy for your struggle to feel as comfortable with experienced male leaders as you do with the female leaders. It may be you have a timid personality, but I agree with the other poster, nothing like experience to feel confident with advice and guidance. And remember, integrity comes from the humility of learning, not from loud words fueled by pride and arrogance. 

We all have our reasons for the 1 hour a week we give to the BSA. Some are noble, some are not. The difference is who you are trying to serve. 

Barry

 

 

[qwazse]

20 hours ago, Treflienne said:

... What if the choice is between a troop with inexperienced adults who at least think they want to learn,  and no troop at all?   (This may be the case for some of the new girls' troops.)  We have youth wanting to be in Scouting and use the BSA program.   Do we offer them a troop full of inexperienced scouts (them) and inexperienced adults?   Or do we offer them nothing at all?

By the way,  this is one reason why I think that the linked troop idea is a good idea --- so that the experienced scouters in the boys' troop can mentor and help the scouters in the girls' troop.

Give me two such teachable adults (at least one of them female if the unit has girls) and I can get us a pack/troop/crew that will outlast and outgrow any one that I've lead.

Throw in one unteachable adult, and the whole thing will stagnate. It doesn't matter how high the numbers on his/her service stars climb.

I think linked troops are a great idea ... IF : you have an SM/ASM pair who have proven to be good partners, and one will peel off to work on the girls' side as either SM or ASM, and every other direct contact leader (seasoned or newcomer) is willing to fall in behind both of them, officially supporting one or the other.

And, I think it works both ways. We have a new SM (a young dad, Eagle scout) ... and I'm learning stuff from him about areas of interest that I wouldn't have bothered with.

[ParkMan]

27 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Give me two such teachable adults (at least one of them female if the unit has girls) and I can get us a pack/troop/crew that will outlast and outgrow any one that I've lead.

Throw in one unteachable adult, and the whole thing will stagnate. It doesn't matter how high the numbers on his/her service stars climb.

I think linked troops are a great idea ... IF : you have an SM/ASM pair who have proven to be good partners, and one will peel off to work on the girls' side as either SM or ASM, and every other direct contact leader (seasoned or newcomer) is willing to fall in behind both of them, officially supporting one or the other.

And, I think it works both ways. We have a new SM (a young dad, Eagle scout) ... and I'm learning stuff from him about areas of interest that I wouldn't have bothered with.

I'd suggest that this is where a good CC & committee comes in.  They can be working with the adults to find the teachable folks and encourage them to help, finding the unteachables ones and discouraging them or finding them a nice side project.

[Eagledad]

18 minutes ago, qwazse said:

Give me two such teachable adults (at least one of them female if the unit has girls) and I can get us a pack/troop/crew that will outlast and outgrow any one that I've lead.

Throw in one unteachable adult, and the whole thing will stagnate. It doesn't matter how high the numbers on his/her service stars climb.

I think linked troops are a great idea ... IF : you have an SM/ASM pair who have proven to be good partners, and one will peel off to work on the girls' side as either SM or ASM, and every other direct contact leader (seasoned or newcomer) is willing to fall in behind both of them, officially supporting one or the other.

And, I think it works both ways. We have a new SM (a young dad, Eagle scout) ... and I'm learning stuff from him about areas of interest that I wouldn't have bothered with.

You might be right. Statistically, a 2nd unit that splits from a very successful first unit is rarely as successful, while the first continues it's success. The risk of failure was so high for the 2nd unit that our district chairman only considered a split as a last resort. Which made council angry.

I know in theory linked troops are a sound idea to get the girls side up, but that hasn't been proven successful in reality. So, the two teachable adults might be required for the 2nd troop. 

Barry

[Treflienne]

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

You might be right. Statistically, a 2nd unit that splits from a very successful first unit is rarely as successful, while the first continues it's success. The risk of failure was so high for the 2nd unit that our district chairman only considered a split as a last resort. Which made council angry.

With a boys unit splitting off from a boys unit --- new youth have to choose between the units.   With a girls unit linking to a boys unit,  it is clear which unit each new youth should join.  That might help.

 

1 hour ago, Eagledad said:

I know in theory linked troops are a sound idea to get the girls side up, but that hasn't been proven successful in reality. So, the two teachable adults might be required for the 2nd troop. 

Barry 

Nobody yet knows how this is going to work out.    We have the idea, locally, that the girls troop may be quite heavily supported by the boys troop initially,  but start doing more and more stuff independent of the boys as the girls troop (girls and adults) gain experience.  

[Treflienne]

@John-in-KC

This is morphing in the direction of a discussion of new leaders for linked troops.

How about a Forum or Subforum devoted to Linked Troops?

3 days till we start.    I expect that we will all be learning as we go along,  and being able to pool experiences here will be helpful --- and it will be even more helpful if it is easy for people to find the posts relevant to linked troops by having a Forum or Subform for them.

 

 

[cocomax]

The thing that I see that destroys troops faster than anything else is when you have an adult that whats to be the center of attention. They want to boss everyone else around and create a storm of drama.  Anything going on has to be refocused on themselves.  Scout outings can ONLY happen on weekends that their son can go. If you look at them wrong, use the wrong tone of voice, use the incorrect wording, do not pay enough attention to them then there will be hell to pay. These adults are not interested learning about how scouting is suppose to work, they have their own ideas based on things outside of scouting.  If you try to explain anything to them they will find a reason to become very very offended.  All the adults have to walk on egg shells at all times around them. There is just no room for scouting to happen in this environment.   Adults fight, scouts feel like they are being treated like cub scouts, the program gets boring and toxic and the scouts quit and the troop dies.  

I have seen this happen over and over again.

[Eagledad]

46 minutes ago, Treflienne said:

With a boys unit splitting off from a boys unit --- new youth have to choose between the units.   With a girls unit linking to a boys unit,  it is clear which unit each new youth should join.  That might help.

The reasoning behind split units not working well is the adults. Successful units generally have one or two adults with the Vision and program ideas for success. Some adults are just good big picture visionaries who keep the rest of the adults on track. So, when the unit splits, one unit is left without the visionary driving adult. 

Understanding that reality might motivate a few adults to follow and learn from the visionary adult. Maybe even have that adult visit the other unit often enough to advise.

But, keep in mind that all adults have different experiences of life and expectations of program processes. If leading a scouting unit were so easy, they would all be successful.

Of course everyone has their own idea of success, but If I were a new adult looking to build a new unit off another unit, I would look for the most successful unit I could find. They are doing something right.

54 minutes ago, Treflienne said:

Nobody yet knows how this is going to work out.    We have the idea, locally, that the girls troop may be quite heavily supported by the boys troop initially,  but start doing more and more stuff independent of the boys as the girls troop (girls and adults) gain experience.  

I agree that is an ideal plan. But understand that every unit leadership has an ideal plan. So consider why some units do so much better. The one advantage of the new girls program is that the leaders are forced to admit they are starting something new in unknown territory, which may allow them enough humility to seek knowledge instead of following their own idealistic theories. 

Barry