Scoutmaster Podcast 209

I'm Doug Marks. I've been Scoutmaster of 251 in Turlock, California, for 18 years. This addition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by Packers like us. Thanks, Mark, Appreciate all you do.

And now for you, Scoutmaster Doug, thanks so much for being a backer and thank you for serving Scouting And for doing it for 18 years as Scoutmaster. Good for you.

If you want to be coming back, you're going to find out how a little bit later on, But before we get started, yes, I want to talk about the weather again, Because, wow, the weather has really been something around here: Lots of snow, very cold temperatures. As a matter of fact, the old man was heard to say this on our last camp out And it ain't a fit night out of man or beast. And it's true, It was true, Not a fit night out for man nor beast. Thank you, Mr Fields. Hey, this is podcast number 209. Hey,

Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green And, if you haven't already been able to figure it out, I got a little bit of a cold today. But hey, we're going to soldier right on ahead And we're going to start by looking in the mailbag. Matt Rosenfeld is a unit commissioner in the Pathfinder District with the Crossroads of America Council in Indiana.

He wrote in to say: I want to thank you for all the useful information you provide on your podcast. I recently was a recipient of the district award of merit for the work I do as a unit commissioner. My first reaction upon hearing that I was going to receive the award was that I'm just doing my job.

Why me? Upon further thought, I think I have you to thank for the award. As a commissioner, I am constantly sharing the information you discuss on the podcast with other leaders. When I go to visit my units, it's interesting to hear what other units go through and the different dynamics of how other units function. I'm able to share what I learned in your podcast with other people and it really does make a difference in their program. I just wanted you to know I appreciate the time you spend with the podcast and the website.

First off, of course, congratulations on the district award of merit, And it sounds to me like they picked the right guy, because you know, actually the right guy you give an award to should have exactly that reaction, right? I'm just doing my job.

Well, apparently you're doing an excellent job, and thank you for your kind comments there. I'm really happy to find that we are doing things that are useful to other people and they are making a difference in the program. And speaking of that, if you weren't able to join us last night for our February scout circle, do make sure to go to scoutmastercgcom and watch that presentation.

Last night we had as our guest Enoch Hysie- And Enoch, as you know, is the author of our Green Bar Life Post And these are aimed at youth leaders And I was really pleased to be able to have him as a guest on scout circle and to talk a little bit about youth leadership and for him to be able to answer questions from other youth leaders who did show up and did watch the whole thing and they had some great questions And I think Enoch had some really good replies. One of the things I think that we can offer that I think is an important resource is a place for youth leaders to be able to get together and talk, kind of share ideas and challenges and triumphs and things like that.

Now we're getting off the ground with it. We've got a forum set up, a Green Bar Life Forum.

We've got Enoch doing some really excellent writing that I think can be a real help for youth leaders. And remember, Enoch is 19 years old. He's recently been a youth leader himself. He's a well-spoken young man who writes really, really well.

So if you haven't already looked in, check out the Green Bar Life Post on ScoutMasterCGcom and share them with your youth leadership and see if you can get them interested in joining in this conversation And the scout circle presentations. They happen once a month. We aim at the second Sunday. We had to move it this month. They're a live presentation. It lasts about an hour.

It begins nine o'clock Eastern time And I am joined by my co-host, Arlen Ward, who is out there in Colorado, And Arlen pointed out that we started doing these presentations last February. Now we haven't done them every single month over the past year, but we've done nine or 10 of them.

I think they've proven to be a pretty useful resource. I finally found a chat application that works.

I'm going to overestimate how difficult what would seem to be a really simple thing can be, But I was really pleased with the way that that worked last night and look forward to some more events like this coming up in the future and maybe just some chat evenings where we'll open up a chat room and people can come on and we can have discussions about a particular subject. If that interests you, get in touch with me at Clark at ScoutMasterCGcom. Let me know how you would like to see that unfold and we'll make it happen.

Now, one of the reasons we can kind of spread our wings a little bit and expand our offering is because of the people who become ScoutMasterCGcom backers. If you are a regular reader or listener and you're finding what's offered by ScoutMasterCGcom to be helpful to you, you can return the favor by helping us keep things up and running by becoming a backer. Funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcasts and the Scout Circle presentations and the chat application that we used in there- all that kind of stuff. It doesn't cost a mint of money, but it does cost something. And this week my personal thank you to Mark Engel, who became a backer since last week's podcast.

In this week's podcast we're going to talk in ScoutMasterCG in seven minutes or less about the relationship between citizenship and leadership, And then I have an email question to answer and that's going to take up the remainder of my kind of croaking through this podcast. So let's get started, shall we Scout MasterCG in seven minutes or less?

When Ben Powell started the scouting movement, one of the things he had his eye on was helping young people learn the benefits and responsibility of being good citizens. And I want to talk a little bit about the relationship between being a good citizen and being a good leader, Because I think the two are kind of synonymous. A good leader and a good citizen both have a sense of individual responsibility and the desire to be of service to others.

I think when we engage youth in leadership, we are engaging them in learning the skills of citizenship. Now, naturally, we aren't all destined to become leaders in the classic sense of the term by directing others or leading a group.

There's much more to leadership than simply being in command, And I think leadership has four basic components. The first component of leadership is tied very closely to the Scout motto: be prepared, because that component of leadership is self-leadership. Before you lead anybody else, you have to be able to care for your own spiritual, mental and physical needs. If Scouts don't care for themselves, if we don't care for ourselves, we end up limiting our preparedness and our ability to help others.

So the first person we lead is ourselves. And then the next component that builds on this is leading by following, by doing your best And following cooperatively requires a positive attitude and positive actions that actually contribute to what's going on. The next component is assisting leadership: Not just looking after ourselves, not just following, but assisting our fellow Scouts and Scouters by being kind and friendly and helpful at every opportunity, Looking for opportunities to serve other people.

And then, finally, the fourth component is directive leadership. Scouts who lead themselves and follow cooperatively and help their fellow Scouts are prepared to become directive leaders. And directive leaders- that's a classic kind of leader, The guy with the patch on his shoulder, whether it's a patrol leader or a senior patrol leader. These are the people that you look to for direction and leadership and definition as to what's happening. It's not a choice of whether you want to be a leader or not. All of the Scouts are leaders in one way or another.

You can't be a Scout without being a leader. In our younger Scouts we want them to have the ability to look beyond themselves and to see how their actions and attitudes affect others. We help them associate good actions and attitudes with the Scout Oath and Law And we help them develop that first component, that self-leadership.

We want them to have a growing sense of basic altruism and the desire to serve others and to lead by being a cooperative follower. We see the evidence of that when they start to find satisfaction in helping others more than just fulfilling their own needs and wants and desires. In our younger Scouts they have great capacity for assisting leadership, to help with simple tasks and to work cooperatively together. And that all builds onto that directive leadership where they can take on direct roles.

Now they might not take on a direct role as the guy that wears the patch. They can lead in games and ceremonies and activities with the help of older Scouts and appropriate oversight.

And in our older Scouts we want that self-leadership idea to be very strong. We want them to have a strong sense of how their actions and attitudes affect others And to be readily able to associate the Scout Oath and Law with their actions and attitudes. Cooperation and readiness to help others should come with little or no prompting. They should have a heightened sense of fairness and empathy and be growing more and more tolerant and accepting of different points of view and levels of ability. In our older Scouts the ideals of service and cooperation are strong. Assisting with leadership comes very naturally to them.

They should have some pride and group accomplishments over individual achievements and they associate their well-being with the well-being of everybody around them. And those first three components- that ability to lead yourself, the ability to be cooperative and the ability to lend a hand- all form the fourth component, which is that directive leadership.

I think we're successful in building good citizens and good leaders, not so much necessarily gauging by metrics the things that result from their leadership. That can certainly be an important indicator. What we're looking for are Scouts that have the moral and ethical obligations of the Scout, Oath and Law- as a central guiding point in their lives. They're welcoming, supportive and helpful towards their fellow Scouts and confident in their outlook and relationships. They have fully formed ideals of service and they readily subordinate their needs to the needs of others.

They have a desire to offer help and to make a difference And they have a keen sense of responsibility to lead fairly and well, with little or no oversight. And we want to order things in our mentoring and advising so that they feel as though they can seek advice and assistance and we can help them get on the right track.

Nobody can be a Scout without being a leader, even at the very basic level of just leading yourself, And I think we need to recognize that and recognize that development in our Scouts and help them develop those four components of leadership: The self-leadership, cooperative leadership, assisting leadership and then assuming a position of responsibility where they have some directive leadership involved. In doing that, we are making a fantastic contribution to every community that they're involved in. We're building good citizens and we're achieving the aims of Scouting. I'm Kevin Callan, the Happy Camper, And you're listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast. Beautiful, beautiful. Write me a letter, send it by name.

Email: that is folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. I'm Kevin Callan, the Happy Camper, And you're listening to the Scoutmaster Podcast. Beautiful, beautiful. Write me a letter, send it by name. Here's an email question And the sender has asked to remain anonymous. A scout preparing for his Eagle Border review in my troop received this email from the District Advancement Chairman.

It said: I will be conducting your Eagle Border review And I'd like you to be in uniform And please bring your Merit badges and your Boy Scout handbook In previous boards of review. This District Advancement Chair has sent me an email. I'm Kevin Callan and this District Advancement Chair has suggested that Scouts cannot pass because they don't have a handbook with them, because they didn't include a permission slip for the Eagle Project and other rather insignificant details. To my mind, In the end, after much pontificating, he does allow Scouts to pass their Border review, but I can't help but feeling that he doesn't really get it. Spoken to our Council Advancement Chair several times and I'm aware that other troops have the same attitude to issue with him.

Where do we go from here? The first thing we do when we have any question like this is naturally we run to the resource and I'm sending everybody to the Guide to Advancement. Read about Eagle Boards of Review. There's no direction or requirement that a Scout brings anything with him to a board other than himself dressed neatly.

There's no requirement to have a uniform, There's no requirement to have a handbook And there's certainly no requirement to bring all your Merit badges with you. What I'm thinking is that they get to kind of have Scouts run the gauntlet when they sit down for an Eagle Board of Review. The Guide to Advancement characterizes the Eagle Board of Review as, yes, it's an evaluative tool. The other aspect of it is is: it's a chance for us to find out what kind of a job we've done as Scouts And to see if we've hit the mark, not to take an Eagle Candidate and run him through a gauntlet or something kind. It's pretty natural to assume that Scouts are going to be somewhat nervous and reticent to approach something called a Board of Review.

If you get reviews at work, that might not be your favorite day to sit down with your boss and go through a review, And I think that an Enlightened District Advancement Chair would understand those things. But this one sounds like he's a little off of True North. He's going to challenge that attitude And if nobody cares enough to put this to a stop or replace the person in this position, he's going to keep on doing what he's doing. If the District Chairman won't tell him, if the Council Advancement Chairman won't tell him, maybe the next step is to talk to the Council Commissioner.

Commissioners are pretty good at working with things like this And if the issue still doesn't get resolved, well you know, the Council President and the Council Executive may want to know what's going on. I've been in the same sort of situation before and it is terribly frustrating.

If I knew them what I knew now by basically, you know, looking at the Guide to Advancement. I would have been able to resolve the issue with Eagle Boards of Review a little bit faster and without quite so much frustration, because we have this excellent resource that really just puts down in black and white how they're supposed to be administered.

That well, they need to get in line with the policy and get with the program, don't they? And sometimes all it takes is somebody with a little backbone insisting that things need to change. I hope that helps give some direction to answering the question and resolving the issue. If you have a question or an issue or a comment, hey, I'd love to have you get in touch with me and you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment.