Scoutmaster Podcast 234

I'm Bill Merck. I'm an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 159 in Pasco, Washington. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like us.

And now to you, Scoutmaster. I was trying to sharpen my pocket knife the other day, but well, to put it bluntly, there was really no point to it. Oh my, yes, send me a new joke please.

Hey, this is podcast number 234.. Hey, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag.

Bob Moneymaker got in touch with us and Bob is a committee chair with Troop and crew 690 in the Golden Empire Council in Sacramento, California, And he wrote in about the post that we had last week- Little League and Scouting- And he said: oh my gosh, how true is this? Never thought of it this way before. Thanks for the excellent comparison. I'll be sure to use this in training and committee meetings and anywhere else it may apply. We also heard about the same post from Patrick Thompson. From Patrick Thompson who said also: Little League or any other sport is not a participatory thing for adults.

They don't get to bat or pitch the ball or run to bases. There are the observers. Scouting is a little bit different, even though we're not in the action, we're a little bit more participatory. Scouting offers a great vantage point to watch your child grow while you rediscover your childhood as an adult. Also heard from Tom Dewey, who is an advisor with Venturing Crew 6 in Gastonia, North Carolina, And he wrote to say congratulations on your retirement. 30 years is one heck of a run.

Think of all of the young lives you've influenced. I've been a Scouter for almost 20 years and it never worked out that I'd be a Scoutmaster, But I'm now a Venturing Advisor and starting a new crew. It's a great time to be a Venturer. Yes, indeed, it is, Tom. That's what I'm in the middle of too.

So, yep, it's pretty interesting, isn't it? Speaking of Venturing and Scouting and all that kind of wonderful things, I want to take you to Switzerland next summer- That's right, in the summer of 2015,- to the Bernese Oberlin, and to enjoy the fellowship of the continuous mini-world jamboree that awaits you and your Scouts at Condorsteg International Scout Center.

Now, I've successfully provided that opportunity for my Scouts a couple of times, and it's an incredible experience. You can see the videos of our 2014 trip at ScoutMasterCGcom. I'd like to host your group in 2015.. And to do just that I've tentatively secured accommodations.

I've started working out all of the planning and the administrative things that need to happen, so you don't have to worry about it. I have two weeks set aside in late June and early July of next summer. Week one starts on June 20th. Week two starts on June 27th. Both of those are Saturdays.

Now, to make this idea viable, I need a minimum number of participants to make a commitment to attend by October 1st, And that's coming up very, very soon. Your group can be of any size. I can handle up to 50 participants each week. The next step is for you to get in touch with me. Email me at clark C-L-A-R-K-E at ScoutMasterCGcom.

There are two or three groups that have contacted me thus far who are interested, and we're getting things put together, So get in touch. Condorsteg 2015..

You know there were a couple of comments about a pulse we had on the podcast this past week- Little League and Scouting- And I want to thank Dave Klein for his contribution. Dave wrote, Dave and I collaborated on getting that post out.

The one thing that I think is really an interesting point there is that parents understand sports better than they understand scouting, because they get to sit in the bleachers and watch sports like baseball happen, And they don't really get to see what happens in scouting. In quite the same way, They're not necessarily going to understand exactly how it all works, And so our challenge is to communicate that to them. Read the post. It's Little League and Scouting, and you'll see it at ScoutMasterCGcom. Let's see. Over the past week, too, I published an infographic about keeping your camping gear dry by doing something horrible and heretical: Putting your ground cloth inside your tent.

This is a piece of advice that I got from a book by one of my favorite authors, Cliff Jacobson. He wrote a book called Camping's Top Secrets, And it just came to me last week.

You know what More people would understand how this works if there was an infographic about it. So I made up an infographic. I sent it to Cliff for a quick check before I published it last week, And he said: you did a terrific job explaining the concept and easy to understand visual form- Best explanation I've ever seen. My hat's off too. I love it.

Well, thank you, Cliff. Sometimes all it takes is getting a picture of exactly what's going on to people And they understand it a little bit better.

So do go and check out the infographic And it's also part of the Scoutmaster CG PDF package. I've put together a whole package in a zipped file, a number of infographics and other helpful that you'll find available at scoutmastercgcom. Let's see One more thing here before we get going. If you're a regular reader and listener, if the information that we're offering has helped you, you can return the favor by making a one-time contribution as a scoutmastercgcom backer. Funds from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the blog posts and the podcast and the videos and all the other resources that are accessible to scouts all over the world. It's a pretty easy thing to do.

Go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose any level of support, And some of them entitle you to premiums like autographed copies of my books. I want to take a moment to personally thank Ron Blaisdell, who signed on as a backer since our last podcast.

Thank you so much for your contribution, Ron. Really really appreciate the help in making all of this possible. In this week's podcast I've got one thing for you, and it's going to be in scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, and it's never seven minutes and it's never less than seven minutes and it's often more, and I have a feeling this week is probably going to end up being more. And that is just some thoughts about resolving difficulties and I hope you'll find that useful.

So, without any further ado, let's get started, shall we

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less. I get a fair number of emails with questions about policy and procedure and things like that, but I would say they are equaled, if not surpassed, by the numbers of emails that I get with people asking my advice about how to resolve some kind of problem that they're running into in their troop or their pack or their crew. One that recently came over the wire said we're experiencing some difficulty in our troop and it's causing animosity between the scoutmaster and the assistant scoutmasters and the committee members, and they went on to ask my advice about how to solve it. I get emails from parents whose scouts are having difficulties getting along with the adults who are volunteering for their troop. I get emails about adults arguing with each other.

If you've spent any amount of time in scouting, you know that we have difficulties and problems and obstacles to overcome once in a while. One of the things that I think really helps with this is a little bit of perspective.

You know this is all nothing new. This has been going on for as long as scouting has been around, and before there was scouting there were other things.

And you know we're dealing with human beings, and human beings can be a little unpredictable and a little temperamental, and we have to work with each other. Baden Powell wrote this about a century ago when he was confronted with one of these issues.

He said: it is almost beyond belief that grown-up or nearly grown-up adults can take little matters so seriously and so narrowly as some of them do. If they only had a sense of humor or had a slightly wider range of view so that they could see the other side of the question or its greater aim, they too would smile at the littleness of it all. I was bealed to the other day in a case which was evidently considered of vast importance by the contending parties, but which would have seemed ridiculously simple to an outsider who saw both sides and the higher motive which was supposed to be their joint aim.

My reply to them was one which might apply to many similar cases where the contestants cannot at once see the right line to take, and it was this: It is curious to me that men who profess to be good Christians often forget, in a difficulty of this kind, to ask themselves the simple question: what would Christ have done under the circumstances? And be guided accordingly. Try it the next time you are in difficulty or doubt as to how to proceed. That very good advice still rings true today. It's a century later. It still rings true today, and while Baden Powell called upon people to emulate the founder of the faith that he followed, I do want to make sure that everybody understands that whether you follow Christianity as a faith is not really what's important here, but that we use the example and the tenets of conflict resolution about getting along and assuming goodwill.

Now there are conflicts and difficulties between adults and there's conflicts and difficulties between adults and scouts. For some reason, there are a lot of adult volunteers who feel they have to be hard on scouts and they get a little overheated or they want to prove a point or win some actually really pointless power struggle with a scout between the ages of 11 to 18..

When you look at it, come on, Really, we can work this out right if goodwill will work it out, If everybody just kind of cools their jets a little bit and gains some perspective, as Baden Powell said, having a sense of humor or a slightly wider range of view, a different perspective, so that you can see the other side of the question and it's greater aim. You will probably do what I do a lot of times when I get these emails and that is kind of a smile at the littleness of it all, because in the end, a lot of this does not amount to a hill of beans. Let's take a step back and give the whole thing some thought and find more compassion and understanding. All too often, when these conflicts come up, it's the failure of people involved to possess the compassion and understanding required of scouts to transform difficulties and conflicts into positive experiences.

Sometimes all we need to solve these monster, what looks like monstrous problems but are really not, is a slight shift in attitude. What would things look like if our first assumption when confronted with any one of these conflicts or difficulties was the assumption of goodwill? The patrol leader who forgot to do something may have honestly forgotten to do it, not just willfully ignored their responsibility.

I forget all kinds of things I don't know about you, so we assume goodwill, The scout who earned three merit badges last month. You know what? They may have worked hard to achieve something rather than trying just to get around your standards. I would assume goodwill. An honest misunderstanding between adults, or an honest misunderstanding between scouts, or an honest misunderstanding between scouts and adults. It's not a punishable crime.

I would assume goodwill if you have to explain something to someone for the thousandth time and who hasn't had to do that. I know you know what.

It might just be that we're not communicating well, rather than they're failing to listen. I would assume goodwill if it looks like someone's pulling in the other direction. Look for good intentions in what they're doing before you start pulling back. I would assume goodwill that the scout sitting across from you at the Scoutmaster's conference.

They're doing their best, so assume goodwill on their part. The scout sitting across from you at the border review is doing their best. Assume goodwill on their part. An eagle candidate is conducting his project and finding his way through the process and the best way that he knows how. Assume goodwill. Our assumption of goodwill is really the key because it starts us from the perspective of that.

Other people aren't necessarily wrong. We just may misunderstand what they're up to. Let me read you another quote from Bate and Powell. He says: brothers we are to our boys, brothers to each other, we must be if we're going to do any good. Aloofness or jealousy could not exist where there is a true ideal of brotherhood.

What we need, and what, thank God, we've got in most places in our movement, is not merely the spirit of good nature, tolerance, but of watchful sympathy and readiness to help one another. We don't only need this, but we've got to have it if we're going to teach our boys by the only sound way, that is, through our example, that the greatest principles are goodwill and cooperation.

So if you're listening to this podcast, it's more than likely that you are an adult volunteer in scouting, that you have some responsibilities and things to take care of and that on occasion you feel unappreciated. I think that feeling has more to do a lot of times with conflicts and difficulties that arise than anything else.

So let me tell you about my buddy, Burke. I don't think Burke really cared too much about what other people had to say about the ceremonial campfires he built for our scout camp, and they are some really impressive campfires we're talking about, you know, a graduated pyramid of campfire that stands about six feet tall- just beautiful things. What he cared about most was not what everybody else said about them but what he had to think of them himself.

Now I can recall some occasions where, at least in my eye, engaging the reaction of the people who were watching the campfire. The campfire performed perfectly. They lit easily, they flooded the ceremonial campfire circle with light. They died down at the appropriate time in the program, like they were on a timer almost. But to Burke's eye there may have been some slight imperfection, something it improved upon.

Is he always immune to what people had to say about them? Well, I don't think so. I don't think any of us are immune to what we hear people say about what we do. But his own standard was the important benchmark, not his expectation about how others would react to his work because, seriously, he could have put a lot less effort into building those campfires than he did and people probably wouldn't have noticed. But it was important to him to get it right. Our expectations for acceptance of an engagement in our work as volunteers can have unintended results.

I don't know about you, but I know I get disappointed and discouraged when people's reactions don't meet my expectations. We can get subtly or not so subtly aggressive or resentful, and this colors the work that we do with our scouts or our fellow leaders.

Now if I'm disappointed in the reaction that my work as a scouter receives, I'm really tempted just to kind of tell everybody off and take my ball and bat and go home. But you know that's not the thing to do right now.

If we didn't attach a personal value to the acceptance of our work but only to the work itself, how would that change our approach? If we didn't allow our personal expectations to get in way of the program, what would happen?

Now? I'm not suggesting that you lower the expectations you have for yourself. I'm saying: don't have expectations for the way people are going to react.

Now that sounds a little impossible and maybe even a little heretical, but give it some thought. If we keep working hard and we don't tie that work to an expectation about how people are going to react to it, that means that we'll be working hard and accepting whatever we get in return.

As a veteran of a dozen or so years of staffing summer camp, I know that some troops can show up and they can really make something of their experience, and some seem to be pulling in the opposite direction, no matter what you do, and that's just plain frustrating. Once you run into that sort of frustration, there are two basic ways to react. You can change about how you do things to produce the result that they expect. In other words, you can alter the program and you can change everything around and try and please people who are really difficult to please. Chasing that result, chasing their reaction: most of the time it leads to shortcuts, but it gets results and it fulfills expectations, even if those expectations are pretty hollow. The other reaction is to work harder, because working hard is in itself a good thing to do.

If we adhere to an internal standard of value that energizes our work, that work is going to be all that much more valuable to others. The right kind of energetic hard work with good intentions creates participation and engagement, and engagement usually fulfills the expectations of the people you're serving, creating a positive feedback loop that energizes everybody.

Now scoutmasters experience this. We can work with the expectation of some result and mistakenly think that the higher our expectations of a result the better.

If scouts don't react as we expect, well, we get frustrated because we're aimed at their reaction. When we meet with these frustrations and disappointments, we ought to be able to double down on our efforts and stop expecting things and start doing things.

We have to be brave and resolute about these things. Examine your own expectations and understand the value of the work itself.

If your work doesn't advance the aims of scouting, well, stop doing it that way. I mean nothing personal, but we all miss things sometimes. And double down on work that advances the aim of scouting, I can guarantee your energy level will rise and you'll begin to experience better results. This is podcast number. Let's see 234. That's 234 weekly podcasts.

That's about four years, and there was a point where recording a weekly podcast brought very little in the way of results, bought very little in the way of reactions, and I really treasured the very few that I got because it let me know that this was actually useful to some people. Now, if I had gone on for 50 or 60 podcasts and nobody reacted positively, I probably would have given up, because at that point I would have understood that what I was doing really didn't have any value to people.

And sometimes it's a big challenge to turn on the computer and turn on the microphone and record a podcast every week, and there are there are periods of time where I don't get a whole lot of the way of reaction, but I keep doing it and this isn't because I'm an especially great person. Okay, I'm pretty convinced that this helps people. I'm going to keep doing it until I get it right. 234 podcasts later, I like to think that this helps people more often than not.

The work that you're going to do, you're going to put it out there, and the reason that you're going to do it is because it's the right thing to do, not because you're hoping that people will react well to it. And if you don't get the kind of reaction that you expect, don't blame the customer. Look at yourself, look at what you're doing and you might have to make some adjustments to it, but usually it's just putting a little more hard work into it that gets the reaction.

So, bringing this back around full circle, we started by talking about how to resolve conflicts and how to deal with problems between adult volunteers or adult volunteers and scouts, and the way to do. It is all about perspective and attitude and having a sense of humor. The source of a lot of our difficulties is is we expect everybody to react to the work that we do in a certain way and when they don't, we get disappointment, and disappointment leads to a lot of negative emotions, and we kind of get in that spiral to avoid conflicts and difficulties.

A lot of times, the thing that we need to do is to concentrate on doing good work that advances the aims of scouting music.