Poor Leader V No Leader.

[Eamonn]

Many of us. - Me included! Don't know when the time to step-down or step aside is upon us.

I was happy when my three year term serving as a District Chair. was over and looked forward to moving on and doing something else.

I have the odd moan and groan that having served as a WB CD, that I'm no longer allowed to serve as a staff member. But I think that if I was allowed? I'd be an easy "Ask". That is to say that people who are serving as CD's would ask me and I'd more than lightly say yes. The end result would be that someone new with new ideas and a fresh outlook would be passed.

The SM's in my area seem to have been around forever.

We tend to look at anyone with only ten years in as being new!!

We have a couple of guys, who while very nice fellows with many years in are just not very good and if he truth be told never have been very good and the chances of them ever changing are slim to none. (We have one Troop that manages to recharter each year, but when you look at the names on the charter they change from year to year and the membership never goes above ten Scouts.)

The SM is a really nice fellow, has a WB, but couldn't organize a one car funeral.

In the thread that this was taken from it was said that someone would step aside gracefully. I think this sounds great but I just don't see it happening.

Of course we know that removing a leader is not an easy task and if asked we could talk about an alphabet of CO's, COR's, CC's, UC's and DE's that should and could get involved. But in a lot of cases the CO isn't involved, the COR is some poor soul who somehow ended up with his or her name on the charter. He or She hasn't attended any sort of a meeting in a very long time, the UC is so busy doing FOS presentations and Camp Promtions that he doesn't even know that he is assigned to that unit. The DC knows that if he gets too deeply involved that someone will get upset and before he can drive away the unit will be gone, along with his dreams of Quality District and promotion.

This leaves the adults in the unit with a not so great leader with little choices.

They can close their eyes, cross their fingers and pray that things will work out and get better.

Or they can duke it out.

Very often when this happens people take sides, people get hurt and even if one side wins, the result is that there isn't enough survivors left for the unit to carry on.

My question (Yes there is one!!) is:

Is a poor leader better than no leader?

Ea.

[CMPA]

That's a hard one to answer. It really depends on what you consider a poor leader. Someone who is new could be a poor one due too lack of experience, but with an open mind could become pretty good. So in that case yes it is better than none. Or you could have someone who does it their way only and won't listen to help. That could be better off with none. So I guess that if you have a poor leader that is willing to improve than a poor leader is better as long as the leader isn't harmful to the youth.

[Eagledad]

Boy that is a tough one.

 

I tried to kill such a Troop (with the blessing of the DE) in our District when I was District Membership chairman. It had long and bad reputation of terrible leadership. I also had concerns of safety and bad examples of role modeling (adultery among the leaders). Our goal was to kill it long enough to clean its reputation then start it back up with a fresh new CO and committee. Our problem is that this is the oldest Troop (real old) in the area and a few of the committee members (real old) were scouts in the troop during its hey day. They would rather have a bad program than see the troop of their memories die. Because of that, they accept anyone willing to SM there worn out troop to keep it alive, and they have had many bad SMs. I think I wrote of the beer incident? That was about ten years ago, but the boney fingers of the old guard hold tight and the troop still survives.

 

There must be a reason for these units to stay alive because they wont die.

 

Barry

 

[SR540Beaver]

A little of topic. Eamonn, who serves as support staff in your council's WB courses? In our council, it is previous CD's who do all the cooking, serving, KP and food draws during the outdoor experience. By being available, we don't have to hire kitchen staff, they are selected by the CD and serve as moral and practical support to the CD and staff and they don't take away from other folks getting to experience WB staff.

[Beavah]

Is a poor leader better than no leader?

 

Simple answer? Yah, of course!

 

If there are boys in the program, they're their for a reason, eh? One man's poor scoutmaster can easily be one lad's revered hero. And there's somethin' to be said for those adults who are that loyal to their unit.

 

Generally speakin', I think of these folks as "keepin' the lights on." They're keepin' the thing alive and doin' what they can for kids until the next great leader comes along. Darn hard for one of those young parents or young 20-somethings who will be great leaders to start up a unit from scratch, eh? But if there's a functioning shell they can step in and take the reins. Problem is it's takin' longer these days, and we aren't really attractin' those young adults "of the right sort" as much as we used to.

 

If we limited membership only to well-run, top-notch units we'd have ceased to exist a long time ago. Best not to dwell on our many failings. Better to be grateful for all da units we have, and identify the good things each one is doin' and build from there.

 

BTW, I enjoyed readin' gwd-scouter's report of their excellent recruitin' year. I reckon her unit is a good example of what I'm talkin' about, eh? In the 8 years before she took over, they had 5 different SM's, weren't boy-led, were very small. After 5 tries, they got gwd, now they're boy led, increasin' in size, and lookin' fine.

 

Be thankful for those who kept da lights on.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Nike]

Well, I guess it depends on what kind of bad leader you have.

 

Immoral or amoral?

Fumblingly incompetent?

Plays favorites?

Clueless?

Knows he needs to improve?

Wants to improve?

 

Some of these can be mitigated with training and help. Others are the kiss of death and can kill a unit.

 

[fleetfootedfox]

Yeah, we had some older guys, both past SM's, who over-stayed their welcome. One in particular kept butting heads with the SM. One of our ASM's who had his eyes on the SM job eventually became SM and drove off these two older guys. However, the whole process, which took over a year, created hard feelings which drove other people away too. Now we are left with a very young troop and making it boy-led has become very difficult.

[Eamonn]

Have to own up to most times being willing to go with the old "Even a clock that isn't working is right twice a day".

I have never been a member of a unit with a poor leader.

So my dealings with poor leaders has come from my serving as a member of the District Committee.

While of course you'd have to be blind not to notice what was and what wasn't going on. In most cases for whatever reason this poor leader (I'm not talking about Immoral or amoral) doesn't have a replacement lined up and the adults who do come on board, don't seem to hang around for long.

 

From looking at charters from the past few years (Part of something I'm doing as Membership Chair.) I looked at the charters from some of the weaker units.

Then I looked at the charter from the unit that has shown the biggest growth in the past five years.

The units with the biggest growth were the unit that the guy who had been District Commissioner and who went on to become District Chairman belonged too. (He was listed on the Pack/Troop/Crew charters as being the Executive Officer.) It seems that if and when someone (Youth or adult) wasn't happy where they were at he invited them to join "His" Unit.

I pointed this out to our now District Chairman and he became very upset, going on about how his wasn't what should happen and how this isn't how things should work! (He really doesn't have much time for the District Chairman who was asked to resign.) While I do see his point and see where he is coming from. I also see that chances are if these un-happy people weren't found a home, they more than lightly would have just quit.

A good pal of mine tells how that when he was a Scout, a new SM came along who wasn't doing things as they ought or should have been done, so him and his brother quit Scouts.

He didn't return until he was an adult and from what I see now has made it his quest to try and see that people do get the training's and do their best to do things "By the book".

He sees poor leaders in a very dim light.

As we know for the most part, District types can do very little about a poor leader. Sure we can offer all sorts of training's and support. But that's about it.

SR540Beaver,

As a rule the CD selects Quartermasters to take care of the food and the equipment. These guys do get to make a presentation and if they don't already have the third bead do get one.

To be very honest working around food for a living, I'm not and really would not like to end up back in the kitchen on my days off. Kinda like a bus-man's holiday!!

Eamonn.

 

 

[HICO_Eagle]

This sort of relates to a posting I just made in the training forum but in my opinion, we are hurting for willing volunteers. I would much rather try to fix a leader's shortcomings or make up for them in other ways than drive off someone who is willing to put the effort out. How many smaller units that have generated countless Eagles (or better yet, MEN who became productive members of society later in life) would have folded if they had held out for fully trained leaders with the background and time to commit in this vision of a perfect leader?

 

I know I for one would never have gotten my Eagle because never once in my career as a Boy Scout did the SM have the time to get all that training. Heck, we were lucky back then if the SM had time to spend all week at summer camp with us!

 

I think the bottom line is that the leaders are there to serve the boys, helping them on their journey to manhood. Any leader who is willing to help that progress should be welcome even if s/he is incompletely trained, doesn't have time to participate fully, etc. Any leader that is blocking or retarding that progress should be helped and encouraged to help rather than hurt the boys -- and only removed if they are recalcitrant or unwilling to address that problem.

 

My experience is that most SMs/Committee Chairs/etc. know when it's time to step aside -- and probably know it sooner than the Troop Committee is willing to admit. The only experience I had where someone flat out didn't have the temperament to be SM didn't have to be asked to step aside, he quit (albeit very loudly, in the middle of the meeting and in full view of the Scouts). This led to my "temporary" reign as SM which was finally terminated by permanent-change-of-station orders.

[SR540Beaver]

E,

 

Our CD selects a QM and two AQM's to handle food procurement and equipment handling. The support staff made up of former CD's does all the kitchen work to free the QM's to do the heavy lifting. We do two courses a year and pretty much have it down to a science with a best practices approach. We know what table and chairs have to be moved back and forth between locations and presentations and what gear has to be available when. We have a matrix we have devised that gets tweaked for each course that goes far beyond the course schedule. The QM and AQM's all do a presentation during the course. All prepared meals are heat em up and eat em up with virtually nothing being from scratch, so the former CD's/support staff get a little nap time/down time built into their day.

 

Now, back to the discussion at hand. Sorry for the second hijack.