Handling poor election results

[Buffalo Skipper]

So, how do you overcome the results of a poor election? One patrol selected for PL a scout who (I feel) is just not ready. He is narrowminded, has tunnel vision, is headstrong and has no patience; he yells and will likely be completely ineffective. What is worse, is that the troop (largely led by that same patrol) elected an SPL who is inexperienced, uncommitted and has no real sense of responsibility. He is unfamiliar enough with the troop model that when I asked him who he wanted to appoint as instructors or troop guides (the scouts who should have been elected are the most capeable and who now have no POR) his reply was "I'll have to think about that. What do instructors and troop guides do?"

 

Obviously my first responsiblity is to support these scouts, and I will. And of course, I will need to train them, which will begin this Saturday. But these scouts are this way because of their homelife, and a few hours of training over the next six months will do little to change their attitudes which is reinforced by constant exposure for nearly 100 hours a week.

 

I am discouraged by the outcome, and I am concerned about the direction these scouts will take this already small and youthful troop over the next few months. One of my biggest concernes is that their (lack of) leadership will actually drive away some perspective Webelos recruits, at a time when good leadership is needed to build the troop. I can see this as a significant setback to the troop, undoing all (and more) of the progress which as been made by our previous scout leaders and adults over the past 9 months.

[dg98adams]

I guess my question would be, if the Scouts feel as you do, why were they elected?

 

I'm guessing it is either the scouts that voted for these boys do not feel as you do, or there were many new Scouts in the Troop that did not know them, or they did not have any experienced Scouts to "run" against.

 

I have seen the last 2 in our Troop. Some boys will surprise you and step up, and some won't. Give them all a chance, because they can all learn something from it.

 

 

 

 

[John-in-KC]

You mentor him. You do not lose patience with him. You have some sidebar conversations with Mom and Dad. You and the SPL do your best, as long as he's doing his job.

 

If he really fails to do his job, National, like it or not, has given you latitude to remove him for cause, have a SM conference, and stop the clock on his credit for POR on the rank advancement. Note, that is not "he didn't do the job the way the Committee and I expected him to..."

 

He's their PL. Just like the rest of us, the youth have to learn with the results, no matter how ridiculous/lamentable they think they are.

 

 

[John-in-KC]

Give each of them the PL Handbook/SPL Handbook, the one that Kudu recommends, as part of your mentoring toolbox.

[SR540Beaver]

Democracy in action. In part, the boys live with the results of their votes and hopefully learn from it and put themselves up for election later and vote more wisely in the future. I second all the comments about mentoring, counseling and coaching. There have been a number of threads about the purpose and value of a JASM. Here is where a good one is worth his weight in gold.

[Buffalo Skipper]

Thank you for your replies. We have Green Bar training set to begin this Saturday, which was scheduled before elections, regardless of the outcome.

 

The scout who was elected SPL won by telling the scouts (we allow a 2 minute pre-election speech) that if elected he would make everyone laugh and cook them all ribs (his only 2 real skills); he stammered and stuttered through with "ums" and "ers" until his "time" was called. The other scout is 2 years older (but smallest boy in the troop regardless of age), and actually has scout skills and a vision to lead. He spent his time talking about organized and fun troop meetings, being supportive toward advancement, helping the PLs run learn what they needed, working with fundraising to get better equipment and such. With 0:45 of his 2 minutes remaining, he said what he needed to say and he stepped down.

 

My concern is that the second scout has been groomed (by me) to prepare him to be SPL, and to lead the troop. He has been fed up for some time with disorganized meetings and a lack of (scout) leadership and initiative. He "left" the troop a year ago for 5 months ago for this reason, and only came back because I assured him we would work to change that. I am concerned that I may lose the best leader we have to another troop.

 

I believe the scouts who were elected to these positions have great potential, but they need more prep before they take over. We have spent the past 9 months working ever more effectively toward a boy-led troop, and now we will have to backtrack significantly.

 

Perhaps what it boils down to is I see this as a lose-lose situation for the troop. If they do fail, it will leave a bad taste in their mouth about leadership and scouting and will ultimately cost us scouts who may well quit, or at least maintain a false vision of what scouting can be. On the other hand, if I do all the hand holding, it will only reinforce their belief that they are not capable of leading and that the adults do it all.

 

Yes, there is the third option, that they will learn, take over and be responsible and everything will be happy, the birds will gather and with our scouts at the campfire and our scouts will share their campsite with the rabbits and deer which will gather to admire their greatness.

 

Democracy in action. I would have been very interested in crossing over to the Dark Side under Kudu's advice and select the best leaders for the key positions fo the troop. But with the current guidelines of the SM and Scout Handbooks, I feel that we would somehow no longer be BSA scouts and instead some vision of Buffalo Skipper scouts. I am just not willing to cross that line (yet).

 

I guess what is most frustrating is that under our older scout's leadership (the one who was not elected), we just had our best campout in over a year. He organized and ran a good campfire (something we had been lacking), and he had taken the scouts away from camp without adults to run an orienteering course on Sunday morning after breakfast. As insignificant at that may sound, it is the first time in years that a youth leader has been trusted have unsupervised activity, and I saw that as the most positive small step the troop has taken since I became Scoutmaster, almost a year ago; I cannot see trusting our new SPL to do this, even in 6 months--he just doesn't have the skills or experience, and that is something that takes more than one term to learn.

[prairie]

Didn't I just read here in the last week or so that by one long term scouters memory it was always the taller boy who won?

[John-in-KC]

We grownups elected Obama.

 

The kids aren't allowed a bad choice? Wrong-o, G.I. They're allowed to make bad choices.

 

Now, take a deep breath, and then accept the fact and drive on. It's adult-run Troop Method for Mr SM to hand-groom the next SPL. Let the boys have one or more failures, then help them learn from it. It may be the biggest gain you'll ever see in collective maturity.

 

The only time I know that a SM is allowed to hand-select an SPL is when the Troop is a start-up, and the SM has a "ringer" transfer he brought in to help the Troop in its first 6 mos to year.

[meschen]

You're closer to the situation than I am, so I suspect youll have a better solutions than I could provide, but one though I had was to divide responsibility a little wider than is usual. Unilaterally appoint the Scout who you groomed as SPL to an ASPL position. Alternatively, if he is 16, you can make him a JASM (which is legitimately a SM appointed position). Redefine the leadership roles in the unit. Explain that the new ASPL / JASM position will be responsible for planning the monthly outing and lead one Troop meeting a month. Use whatever excuse you like - shared responsibility / training for next year, whatever.

 

Of course, you will still need to mentor the actual SPL to lead in the way you expect. I agree with John-in-KC's comments. If after a month, you consider his meetings to be sub-standard, put him on notice. After another month, perhaps its time to put him on probation. Hopefully, if he has a good model to follow (the other Scout), your SPL will step up. You never know, if he really understands the expectations he might surprise you. If not, remove him from the role, but I would only do this as a last resort.

 

[John-in-KC]

Unilaterally appoint the Scout who you groomed as SPL to an ASPL position

 

Again, doing these kinds of actions places your Troop into the category of adult run

 

I strongly recommend against this guidance. If your "ideal" candidate is 16, JASM him. If not, let the youth live with their results. Let them experience failure. They'll learn more from failure than they will from most successes.

 

BTW, one month? Heck no. Let the youth experience failure. You'll know the right moment to move from mentorship to directive supervision of your SPL (I'll bet about 10 weeks into tenure). You'll know if you have to remove him (my guess is about the 5 month mark).

 

Remember, talk with the parents of your youth leaders, particularly if they are among the 1-2% of all Scouts who have to be removed from a POR. You do not want the unintended consequence of a parental rebellion at the Committee, or worse, to the Chartered Partner, calling for your head on the silver platter.(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)(This message has been edited by John-in-KC)

[Mafaking]

 

"I am concerned that I may lose the best leader we have to another troop."

 

Doubtful most Troops are like yours in voting patterns.

 

"Perhaps what it boils down to is I see this as a lose-lose situation for the troop."

 

It is.

 

Although we follow the program just like it says; SPL elected in troop wide elections every six months an PL elected by patrols. This program element does not always promote the highest skilled scout into leadership positions. Its a reward system or popularity contest.

 

Then during the SM conferences the Tenderfoots complain that the meetings are disorganized, they would like less nonsense from their leaders. - Well then you should have elected the serious High School student and not the silly middle school scout.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Buffalo Skipper]

It is always good to hear perspective, whether I agree or not. Thanks. To make it clear, since our last election back in March, we had an SPL who was doing a reasonable enough job. He was 14 years old, and the best "natural leader" of the troop. He lacked initiative, and always did just enough, consistently doing the minimum to get by. He advised me in the middle of the summer he would not be finishing his term as he would be was getting active in football. I appreciated his honesty, and kept him in the position while I groomed the only other reasonable leader in the troop, who is just a few months older. We have no ASPL as we only have 2 small active patrols, so I appointed the other scout to fulfill the remaining 6 weeks of the term before elections. I would have also worked with the other scout (who was elected last night) but he is uninterested in anything aquatic, and our summer activities were canoeing, swimming, and surfing; hence he has not been to an activity and only a few meetings since summer camp in June.

 

Sure these scouts are allowed to make wrong decisions. I see it all the time. And I accept that completely. Do I expect them to fail? Yes. Am I going to set them up for failure just so they will learn from it? No. As SM, I must be enough of a fortune teller to decide if the consequence is worth the action. Who will learn what, if after 6 months this troop of 12 active and 4 older (inactive) scouts becomes 5 active and 1 older scout with no new scouts joining in the spring.

 

I am really looking for advice on how to work with these scouts to succeed, in spite of my predictions to the contrary. If anyone here is wrong, I hope it is me. In spite of my complaining, I do not want to take this troop in an adult led direction. I spent the last 9 months working with the COR to recruit a competent committee, raise the standard of training, challenging the scouts to advance and believe in themselves, and generally foster an environment in which the troop is healthy, patrol-centric, youth-lead, and happy. It is just frustrating that the day after I see real progress, things happen which threaten to undo all that a few of the scouts have worked toward.

[John-in-KC]

I think the best course of action is a LOT of mentorship. Coordinate with Bobby SPL's parents. Every week, after troop meeting, under two-deep, take him to have a friendly burger and shake. Thorns, Roses and Buds: What went right, what went wrong, what is within him to change.

 

Now and again, take a Scout who's not a leader (but who you know didn't vote for Bobby) along with Bobby to the after meeeting meal. Let him get do the slam dunking. Allow the SPL to feel the frustration of his members. Then guide him along the way to doing what is right.

 

What has happened is you may have a huge buy-in moment for the leadership vision you want. Once Bobby buys-in, you'll be amazed.

[Beavah]

Democracy in action. I would have been very interested in crossing over to the Dark Side under Kudu's advice and select the best leaders for the key positions fo the troop. But with the current guidelines of the SM and Scout Handbooks, I feel that we would somehow no longer be BSA scouts and instead some vision of Buffalo Skipper scouts. I am just not willing to cross that line (yet).

 

Yah, well, then you and your boys and your program are goin' to feel some significant pain. And yep, yeh might lose some good kids and recruits.

 

Elections are like learnin' to light a stove or learnin' to swim. Boys who have no experience with elections that really "count" aren't yet ready to handle that responsibility on their own, any more than you'd let a patrol of new scouts go camping by themselves.

 

The lads need to see what good leadership is first, eh? They need to see how things should be, so they can identify what it takes to be good, and quickly recognize poor leadership and choices when they come their way.

 

There are lots of ways of doing that. Sometimes yeh can select folks. Sometimes yeh can put requirements on candidates for rank, or age, or prior adult approval. Yeh can also do it by asking questions of candidates after each speech, to defuse da joke candidates. "How many outings have you helped run this past year?" "What are your first steps going to be for this year's XXX trip?"

 

If yeh didn't prepare your guys for an election by helpin' 'em to see what a good youth run troop is first, and then helpin' 'em to see how to look at people for their strengths and choose 'em for positions, and then help 'em see how to do that with an election process, and then coach that election process then all yeh did was set 'em up for failure. Same as throwin' a new swimmer into the deep end and hopin' he lives.

 

Da books are guidelines, and describe a process that works for long-standing troops, not startups.

 

Now, where do yeh go from here? You've allowed elections so you're stuck for a bit. I think yeh re-think your Green Bar trainin'. Yeh need to make it more challengin' and intensive. And yeh need to build in evaluations. Each month, collect evaluations from da patrols and other adults, and have a SM conference with your SPL and each Patrol Leader. Give 'em regular, thorough feedback - what you're seein', what other adults are seein', and most important, what their fellow scouts are seein'.

 

Then yeh go from there, eh? Maybe with really blunt feedback they'll get it. Maybe they'll bail. Or maybe it'll let you make a switch faster so as to get your young program back on track before yeh run into too much difficulty.

 

Down the road, when yeh have more years under your belt, and da kids have more experience knowing what "good" looks like and how to get there, yeh can give 'em more leash to let 'em fail.

 

Beavah

 

[gwd-scouter]

Skipper writes: So, how do you overcome the results of a poor election? One patrol selected for PL a scout who (I feel) is just not ready. He is narrowminded, has tunnel vision, is headstrong and has no patience; he yells and will likely be completely ineffective.

 

I believe you've accurately described the PL/SPL we had for the past year.

 

First, a bit of background on our troop which may help folks understand my perspective on this. Until last April, our troop was always small and at that point we had 9 scouts. We were one patrol. The guys like the title SPL, but in reality he was a patrol leader. Last September we had elections. He was the only guy running - age 13 and 1st class. Our three senior scouts decided not to run. Under pressure from other scouts, one of our seniors ran against him and won. The senior scout selected the 1st class guy to be ASPL/APL. After about a month, sr. scout realized he would not be able to give proper attention to the job, being very busy in 11th grade, marching band, etc. etc., and turned the job over to the 1st class guy.

 

So, 1st class guy, totally in it for himself, began his term. Always had an excuse why he couldn't make a campout or a meeting, so sr. scout in reality was our SPL/PL. He, along with my son were our PLC and took care of business. They complained about the 1st class guy, but my response was that they made their decision, all three could have run against him, sr. scout didn't have to step down, so live with it.

 

Younger guys at the time didn't like, nor did they respond well, to 1st class PL. It really was a tough year.

 

Which brings us to April, when we grew from 9 to 23 scouts. Patrick and our 3rd sr. scout were selected to be troop guides and spent time up to summer camp working with our two new scout patrols. It was fantastic. Then came summer camp and I had finally reached my breaking point with the SPL/PL. Open disrespect for me, screaming at the guys, no compassion or helpfulness for the new guys, among other things.

 

After summer camp it was time for our troop to form permanent patrols. Now, here comes the part where I believe many on this forum will disagree with me. With all due respect to those that feel the boys need to suffer the consequences of their actions and live with the results of their elections - let me say that while I agree with that in principle, there comes a time when adults must intervene.

 

1st class guy wanted to run again, either for SPL or as a patrol leader. I talked with him and suggested that he sit out of leadership for a term. No effect on his advancement here as he has several merit badges to go before Star Rank. Outrage, complete outrage received from the mom, veiled contempt from the scout. To the scout's credit, about a week later he came to me and asked if we could talk again. He said he realized he had areas to work on - especially compassion, respect for adults, and giving others the benefit of doubt (he's the type that is always right and everyone else is wrong).

 

Too much intervention on my part? Perhaps. But, he made a good point when he said that if the guys in the troop don't like him, then they won't elect him. Fair point.

 

The guys ran their elections for SPL and, in an interesting twist, my son ran unopposed. He's in 11th grade, just earned Eagle, and was one of the troop guides mentioned above. Overwhelming support for him. Then, he announced we would have a meeting the following week just for those that were interested in running for patrol leader or any of the troop level PORs. The guys decided to split the troop into three patrols and selected (not elected) patrol leaders for each from among those that showed up for the meeting. Agreed with their choices except for one, which I posted about it another thread.

 

Two weeks ago, with all the scouts in attendance except the 3rd patrol leader that I had concerns about, two patrols were formed and leaders in place. This decision to make 2 patrols instead of 3 came from the fact that the 3rd scout that wasn't there is a guy whose attendance is sporadic and one never knows when he's going to show up. Patrick, and a few others, figured that wouldn't make for a good PL.

 

Sorry for this long post, but I'm trying to describe our situation and how we handled things. What it came down to for us, was our three sr. scouts feeling great ownership in the success of our troop, how we turned around from adult-led to boy led largely because of their influence, and how they wanted to make sure that we kept all the new guys. So, when they decided we wouldn't have elections and they would pick the patrol leaders, I honestly had no problem at all with that. It was, in fact, what I would have done.

 

Next year will be a different story, though. We will most likely break out a third patrol after about six months. We anticipate receiving at least six new scouts in the spring and the guys suggest rather than having a new scout patrol we just roll them directly into the permanent patrols. Good idea I think. We will also have patrol leader elections at that time.

 

You post about your concerns for your small, young troop and that the actions of your SPL and PL may drive away prospective Webelos. That is a valid concern and one I had as well. In our case, we thankfully had two excellent older scouts working as Troop Guides with our new scouts and that shielded them from some of the impact of our SPL. When we were recruiting these new scouts we invited them to a couple of campouts. Some of our existing scouts mentioned to me that the campouts went really well, largely because the sr. scouts were running it and SPL was absent. Hmmm.

 

What it comes down to for me is just how much work are you willing to put into working with your new SPL. I'll tell you, last year was very hard for me. Any time I counseled that 1st class SPL and said something he didn't like hearing, I got a scathing phone call from his mother.

 

Beavah points out that many troop use some kind of criteria for the guys to be eligible to run - age, rank, prior experience, etc. These are good ideas, but can also backfire on you. For instance: your troop has a policy that only 14 year old Star Scouts can run for SPL. So, you wind up with only one guy eligible and he's the type of fellow you've described or you feel a guy shouldn't run unopposed. In that case, you lower the requirement from Star to 1st class. That opens the door for other guys to run. An immature but jovial fellow decides to run and wins by a single vote - all votes received from young scouts that he told would never have to do anything because he'd make all the older guys do the work. You spend the next six months listening to his mother complain that the job is too hard, too much responsibility, he's only 13 for God's sake, how can he possibly be expected to tell the older guys what to do, etc. etc.

 

Yeah, that's what happened to us two years ago. We only had two scouts elegible at the time and one had already served for a year. I felt it was wrong for my son to run unopposed (trying to not show an appearance of favoritism). I will NEVER do that again.