Scoutmaster Podcast 238

I'm David Wilkes and I am an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 68 in Dallas, Texas. This edition of the Scoutmaster podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now the old Scoutmaster, Tony the clava, is a cub master with pack eight fifty eight and also works with Boy Scout Troop 581 in Bristol, Virginia. He had a situation that he wanted a little help with. He said that on a recent camping trip he lost his mood ring and he doesn't know how to feel about it. Lost his mood.

Okay, So hands up all those who know what a mood ring is. Yeah, you're old like me. Thanks, Tony,

I think. Hey, this is podcast number two thirty eight. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. We're going to look at the mailbag and if I'm I know I'm a little behind on my email correspondence.

There's been an awful lot in the past week or so, So be patient with me. I'll get. I'll get to you, But this past week we heard from Aaron Weissman, who is a Scoutmaster with Troop 1026 in Great Falls, Montana. He said we just had our fall corner of honor after summer camp.

We were giving away awards for a full 49 minutes. Well, at least he kept a clock on it. That's good And we're not a very large troop. One great idea is to make a court of honor into a potluck dinner.

We've done this for the past few years and it really encourages attendance, especially since we have grandparents and other family members coming. I also send out a note to the families of each boy getting an award the day before, to make sure they know about it. Thanks, Aaron, for getting in touch. That email came in response to a post we had on the blog last week. That is basically like a court of honor FAQ, and more about that in a moment. Dave Klein is an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 918.

And he said we hold a leadership training camp out for each incoming group of leaders. This weekend will be our second experience doing this training using articles from Enoch Heisey's Green Bar life series on your blog. We're repeating some of the articles we used last time and found other articles that support some of the topics our adult leadership group wants to emphasize this time. As always, it promises to be fun and interesting. Thanks, Dave. I'm glad that you're finding those articles useful.

If you don't know about Enoch Heisey's articles on the blog Green Bar life, These are aimed at youth leaders from a youth leaders standpoint and you definitely want to go and check those out at scoutmastercgcom. David Goldenberg got in touch and said: love your site. Use the 15 minute patrol leader training today. Keep up the great work. I hope you keep blogging in the coming years, but also enjoy your retirement.

Well, I will make sure to include a link to my take on 15 minute patrol leader training and. Thanks for getting in touch, David. We'll definitely be around for a bit on the blog in the coming years if everything goes according to plan. Also heard from Ray Britton about last week's podcast and he said another excellent podcast. When I became scoutmaster, the tradition was for the adults to choose all of the youth leaders. They had a very formal interview process and while there was some benefit to the scouts with an interview, it really wasn't the correct way to choose leadership.

When I became scoutmaster, I wanted to change this, along with a few other things that weren't supporting the patrol method. I spoke to my son, who is about 14 years old. He really wasn't in favor of changing this because he said the adults would do a better job of picking the leaders rather than the scouts voting for a friend.

I told him that's one of those lessons we were taking away from scouts by selecting leaders for them, and I haven't regretted making that change and having the scouts elect their leaders for a minute. Well, Ray, good for you. Scouts, interestingly, will usually allow adults to do everything.

If you want to pick all the leaders, well they'll, they're fine with that. That removes the responsibility of having them to deal with it.

If you want to pick out all the food and buy all the food and prepare all the food and serve it to them while they sit in their sedan chairs that you brought along to bring them back and forth on a camping trip, you know they'll be very happy to let you do that. But we know that that just doesn't feel right, does it?

And there's also this kind of strange recursive loop that some scouts can fall into, where they'll say: well, we asked the scouts if they wanted to have elections and they said that they were happy to have us pick the leaders, and so, being boy led, we're going to do what they said and keep picking the leaders. Well, that's kind of like asking a basketball team if they like the size of the basketball court or the height of the nets.

You know, should we make the court a little smaller, a little larger? Maybe we should bring those nets down a little bit.

You know, there are some rules involved in the game and one of the rules of the game is that scouts elect their leadership. So good for you, right for knowing there was some changes that needed to be made and going ahead and making them. Also heard from Matthew Godelman and he said: I came across an article from one of your blog posts on Pinterest the other night when I was searching for Cub Scout activities to do with my weeblows done.

I saw that you had an app and I wanted to check it out, and I'll make a plug for the app right now while I'm reading Matthew's email. The Scoutmaster CG app is available for iPhones and iPads and for Android devices. You find it on iTunes or at the Google Play app store. Anyway, go on with what Matthew had to say. I'm always looking for new ideas to use with Cubs. I was my son's Tiger Den leader and I've held the office of Cub Master for the past three years.

My wife always tells the story about how excited I was when my son was born so I could get out all of my Cub Scout and Boy Scout stuff. Hey, there's.

There's been a lot of us who got excited like that, Matt, so good on you. I'm an electrician in St Augustine, Florida, and work by myself most of the time, So I listened to the podcast on my iPhone. In fact, in the first three days I started listening to the podcast, I've covered about 70 of them, Holy Moly. I don't know if this is a record in the shortest amount of time going through the archives, but I might be in contention.

Well, you know we haven't been keeping records, but, Matthew, I would say that 70 podcasts in three days is definitely a record and maybe an indication of needing professional help of some kind. But no, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast.

Seriously, I wanted to let you know how much I'm enjoying all of this and I can't wait to listen to the rest of the podcast. Thanks so much for doing this. It's been a blast listening to it.

Well, thank you, Matthew, I'm glad you're enjoying the podcast and thanks for getting in touch with us. And don't get your wires crossed, please.

Okay, Last week on the blog posted the Court of Honor FAQ that I mentioned before, and there's a good comment streams of that. You should go check it out at scoutmastercgcom. It's called the Court of Honor FAQ and just dealing with some common things about Courts of Honor and how they work and making some suggestions, giving some advice, as always. And also there's another good comment stream from last week's podcast with some great comments about some of the things we discussed, from Frank Maynard, who is the author of Bob White Blather- and I've mentioned that blog several times, but Frank is aimed very specifically at helping troop committee people figure things out.

So you definitely want to check out his blog and check out the comments on last week's podcast. Now, if you are a regular reader and listener, if the information and the inspiration and ideas offered by scoutmastercgcom have helped you out, you can return the favor by making a one-time contribution as a scoutmastercgcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing the podcast and the blog posts and the videos that are accessible for Scouters all over the world. It's easy to do: just go to scoutmastercgcom, click the support link at the top of the page and you can choose any level of support. Some of them entitle you to premiums like autograph copies of my books.

I want to take a moment and personally thank Ralph Ospog and Michael Manager, who signed up to be back or since our last podcast. Thank you so much. You're the folks that make all this possible and I really, really do appreciate it.

Well, in this podcast and Scout MasterChip- in seven minutes or less, our fourth and final installment about basics of the patrol method. And this week we're going to be talking about how to make the patrol method happen if it's not already happening in your troop.

And then we've got several email questions to answer and that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. So let's get started, shall we? Scout MasterChip in seven minutes or less.

So this is our fourth installment of our four part series about the patrol method. The first time we got together to talk about this, we identified the patrol method as being the character builder. The patrol is the character school of scouting and that's our main aim.

So we need to have the patrol method active and vital to really achieve the aims of scouting. And then, the second time we got together about this, we discussed the adult role and we talked about the kind of responsive leadership that's required to implement the patrol method.

And then last week, in the third installment, we talked about the typical objections arise in troops where the patrol method hasn't really been very effective or in practice, and we start working our way towards it. That objections will arise and we talked about how to answer some of those and to finish up with the with the series, this week we want to talk about actually putting things into practice. Just a couple of key concepts about how to make this work in a very practical way.

Now, trying to work with patrols as though it was 1810 instead of 2014 is kind of like sending a telegram in the age of email. We have to tweak our application, the patrol method, because things have changed over the last century. The basic, broad, underlying principles are the same, but some of the applications are going to be slightly different and what I do that I find effective with my troop is going to be different in some practical ways than what you do Now. A century ago, the whole patrol idea was basically based on the neighborhood gang, and that's exactly what Baden Powell called it. Boys naturally form this kind of neighborhood group or gang and he levers that kind of naturally occurring grouping in the way that he built the scouting program. But remember, a century ago boys could just kind of cross the street and walk into each other's houses and organized youth sports leagues and youth clubs and other activities weren't all that common.

There was a lot more in the way of unscheduled free time. Today scouts are much more mobile, so their neighborhood gang is not necessarily going to be confined geographically to a place they can walk and there's a much bigger organized menu of activities that are planned and scheduled that they have choices from now.

That's not to say that it used to be good and now things are bad. I don't believe that for a moment. It's just a different set of conditions now.

From observing hundreds of troops over the years, it's clear that most of us have a more troop oriented rather than patrol method oriented way of doing things and patrols and patrols become more of an administrative nicety of dividing boys up into smaller groups than they are actual living patrols- and you know a lot of our talk and a lot of our training in scouting- reinforces the idea that the troop is the central organization and the organizational charts put all the adults at the top and the scouts at the bottom and it sends a pretty clear signal, doesn't it? That the Scoutmaster and his assistants are in charge of things and they simply delegate responsibilities to the scouts. They allow scouts to have responsibility. While I have five practical bits of advice that can help shape a more 21st century approach to the patrol method, and the first is is to redraw that organizational chart. And it's kind of hard to talk about an organizational chart on a podcast.

I can't show it to you, but if you look at the post that contains this podcast, I put my redrawn organizational chart right there, and charts can do just so much, but it kind of presents a picture. It's meant to graphically represent that the only reason we have troops is to serve patrols and patrols serve scouts and all of the resources and all of the organization and administration is aimed at that individual scout who is a member of his patrol and his patrol just happens to be part of a troop. The patrol leaders council exists only to serve patrol leaders and the support network of adults exists only to serve the patrol leaders council and, by extension, then the scouts themselves. The various positions of responsibility in a scout troop exists to form another support network for the patrol leaders council.

So basically, you can take the chart and turn it upside down, put the scouts at the top, put all of the adults at the bottom. Put the patrol leaders council in between and you have a much better idea and you get a better mental picture of how things are actually arranged.

The second thing that's vital to a lively patrol method is that scouts form their own patrols and choose their own leaders. And when I say things like that, this causes a lot of agita sometimes.

Now if a scout isn't in a patrol with his friends, he's not going to observe the structure of the patrol because he's going to gravitate towards his friends anyway. Then the patrol leader is going to be chasing scouts out of the wrong patrol or searching for his lost sheep all the time. And when the adults in a troop decide to do a little social engineering, they sit down and they come up with uniform, balanced patrols and that makes perfect sense. Point of view, it certainly does. But from a scouts point of view it makes absolutely no sense, because he's in a patrol over here with guys he had- he doesn't know- and his friends in a patrol over there and on a camping trip or at a meeting.

You know what's going to happen. He's going to find his friend and that's what's going to happen.

So one of the reasons we want scouts to form their own patrols is because they're going to form patrols that best work for them, and that's the point right. Once they set, all of this takes a very few minutes when scouts are doing it.

And now tenure towards a position of responsibility and rank requirements have driven the interval of leadership elections in most places. It's kind of putting the cart before the horse, right. I have no problem with patrols electing a patrol leader whenever they want. A lot of times that period of time where they decide they want to have a patrol leader election is longer than the tenure requirements for a position of responsibility for a patrol leader. Sometimes it's shorter, it doesn't matter. It should be based on what the scouts want to do and the way that it's going to work best for their patrol.

Now what I'm describing makes all the patrols a little more fluid, then fixed and efficient and evenly numbered, because when scouts are able to choose up their own patrols, some of the patrols may be five or six, some of the patrols may be eight or 10. There's some basic rules of thumb to follow and I would say you know patrol under- even though I've seen patrols of three work pretty well- and a patrol over eight or ten members is going to be a little too big.

There's a scale to all this and so when I'm advising my scouts about the selection of patrols and how they're going to make up patrols, you know I say aim between five and ten and that seems to work the best. But there are always exceptions to the rule, right, and you know. To tell you the truth, if we looked at the way that are fixed, adult, chosen patrols function, we'd have to admit that there are much more fluid in practice than we think. The patrol member whose best friend is in another patrol wanders over to that patrol. Like I explained, when less than four or five patrol members show up for a camping trip, they get folded into another patrol. It is all a little pretty fluid to begin with in a lot of ways.

So instead of our ideal picture of what a patrol ought to look like, let's have the scouts make those choices, because it directly affects them and they'll get very good at it once they have a little bit of practice. The third thing I think is kind of self-evident, but let's mention it anyways: let's be patrol centric. Instead of thinking of the troop all the time, let's think of patrols.

Now our patrol leaders council started scheduling patrol meetings in lieu of troop meetings at least once a month. There's no troop meeting that night, only patrol meetings planned and presented by patrol leaders. They're held at the same time and places- troop meetings because this is a good way to get everybody together.

With the constraints of scheduling and the fact that our scouts are spread out over a large geographical area, that one night a week that we have planned to get together is a good night. Just say okay, no troop meeting tonight, only patrols. Patrol leaders plan something, there you go. They can function independently as a patrol on that night without having to try and overcome all the logistical hurdles of doing it on a separate time at a separate time or in another place.

And then every outing and event that the troop has needs to be based on the interest of patrols working together. We may have a troop camp out, but on that troop camp out we make sure that the patrols camp together, they cook and eat together, they hike together and they do everything together.

We want to pay attention to the patrol because the patrol focuses on the individual scout and we don't want to treat our scouts as one big herd. And there are very practical results of that, and let me point one out.

One thing that comes up when we discuss backpacking is I usually hear from somebody who says: yeah, we go backpacking, but how do you handle the stragglers, you know, the younger scouts or the smaller scouts or the not so fit scouts who end up in the back of the herd, you know, kind of dragging their way along the trail? And I'm very familiar with that problem because we had it years and years ago that when we went backpacking it was kind of: you know, the troop is going backpacking, it's every man for himself.

Here we go and when the first hour of the hike, of course the guys who are a little slower are going to end up at the back of the pack and the guys who are really fast are way ahead of the herd there. How we did away with that happening was actually pretty simple. You go with your patrol, you hike with your patrol, the whole troop is there, but you stick together with your patrol.

That can be a bit of a challenge for the scouts, but you know what they seem to do it. They do it just fine. And we no longer have a big herd of scouts hiking.

We have patrols hiking who are sticking together and there's no three or four slow guys wandering around at the back of the herd. So that's one practical result of focusing not on a troop or a herd of scouts, but individual patrols. The fourth thing about the practical ways of applying the patrol method is that adults have to keep their distance, and what I mean by this is youth leaders are not going to lead much if an adult is standing right there.

We have more influence on this than any of us really think. Of course we lead and present and organize everything better than a scout. We do a much better job of it.

It's less chaotic, we can command attention, we can make things happen, but when we do that, we've taken the opportunity away from that patrol leader or the senior patrol leader or any of the other scouts tasked with doing something. So we need to keep our distance.

Now what does it? What do I mean by that? We're far enough away to observe, but we're not close enough to be heard unless we raise our voices. That's just kind of my rule of thumb. Now. This makes most of us pretty uncomfortable at first.

I mean, how will scouts know what to do if we're not? They're telling them exactly what to do, how will they know?

Or what if they behave poorly? Or what if they get hurt?

Aren't I supposed to be teaching them things and telling them what to do? And I mean, to our minds they're either awfully young to have that kind of responsibility or just old enough to make real trouble if we can't keep an eye on them. I can't really tell you step by step how you're going to make this happen.

I can tell you it's possible and if you make it your goal, you'll get there and you won't feel so uncomfortable when you do. Keeping your distance and letting scouts lead and letting them do things is very important to the successful implementation of the patrol method. And finally, the fifth thing that I will tell you is be open to new ideas, rethink and retool and rebuild. I had to kill some of my sacred cows because they weren't getting the results that was actually reaching and benefiting scouts. Nice, neat organizational administration, controlling the variables, focusing on the indicators rather than what was really going on. It wasn't really doing much for my scouts.

When I accepted that the patrol method drives everything else- it drives advancement, membership, attendance- you know it is these core of what we do? I started focusing more on patrols. When I started focusing on patrols, I found myself focusing more and more on scouts instead of measuring what they do. I also began to understand the sense behind all the policies and procedures were trusted to follow. Patrols aren't intended to break a troop up into more manageable administrative segments and make your job as a scout leader easier. Patrols are the central unit of scouting and troops are just containers for patrols.

Patrols are the character school where scouts lead, instruct and guide each other, where all the real work happens. So we need to turn that chart upside down.

We need to focus on patrols, make our activities patrol centric, step back, let the scouts make choices, give them plenty of latitude to be able to lead themselves and be ready to make changes when it makes sense to improve and strengthen our application of the patrol method. In these past four podcasts, we've introduced the subject, we've given you the main points. There's always ways to improve our approach to this and I leave you with this thought from our founder, Sir Robert Baden Powell, who said: the patrol is the unit of scouting, always, whether for work or for play, for discipline or for duty, and you can't come up with a much higher authority than that. The patrol is the unit of scouting. Always take me back to dream again: by campfire on the trail, by campfire on the trail when day is done, by campfire on the trail when day is done. Write me a letter, send it by name email.

That is, folks.

And here's an answer to one of your emails. Well, let's see, there have been a lot of email questions lately and I welcome them. I'm certainly not complaining and you can get in touch with me.

You'll find out how to do that at the end of the podcast, so I just wanted to take a moment to say: if you haven't gotten an answer from me, be patient with me. Like I said, there's been a lot of emails coming in the past couple of weeks. I heard from Joseph Gray, who is with Scout Troop 384 in Temecula, California, and he said: I've recently discovered your website and your articles regarding the patrol method. I'm really curious to see how the boys and our troop would divide themselves into their own patrols, but I'm uncertain how to proceed. I thought I maybe would tell them to pretend that our current patrols didn't exist and take five minutes to form their own patrols. My fear is that this approach could backfire in a number of ways.

They may start from the reference of their current patrols, and those patrols that are more active may stay somewhat intact and swell to an unmanageable size. The exercises described could be very uncomfortable for some of the boys if they weren't chosen to be in a patrol. I'm sure there's a much better approach to what I described.

What would your advice be? Well, Joseph, I'm glad you found ScoutMasterCGcom and got in touch, so I was glad to hear that things are useful for every. What I'd advise you to do is to ask all the questions and communicate all the concerns that you express in that email with your senior patrol leader and your patrol leaders council. You might sit with them and say something like: I've been doing a little studying lately and thinking about our patrols.

Do you guys think we could do a better job of deciding how patrols are made up? What do you think is important about this?

How would you change things? See, if you can imagine a conversation where you're not really telling anything, you're just asking questions and listening to answers, you're helping them discover what comes next, start by talking to one individual Scout.

I would say the senior patrol leader is a good place to start, because if you try and do this with a group, you know the secret laws, rules of boyhood kick in when they're together in a group, because it's not cool to talk honestly and openly with adults, right? So start with one, ask some questions and see what kind of answers you got, and you're going to find some guidance in how to make this happen in those answers. And while we're talking about questions, I have questions of my own for you too.

So who's responsible for making things happen in your troop? What decision making is being done by adults and what do Scouts decide?

Who makes announcements at troop meetings, for example? Who prepares and presents the program at meetings and on outings?

I have a very unscientific patrol method self assessment tool that I'll link to in the post that contains this podcast, but it's a format you can sit down and you can look at and fill out and see if you can assess how well you're applying the patrol method. So instead of trying to be in control or just experiment with the way patrols are arranged, I would start asking Scouts questions, see what kind of answers they came up with and what next actions those answers indicated.

Now you say you have some concerns about the things that would happen if you kind of open the door to this sort of thing. Well, we all have those kinds of concerns and, as I said, the best place to share those is with your patrol leaders. Council.

Look, I think you guys should set up your own patrols. But here's what I'm concerned about.

Can you do it and consider those concerns at the same time- and you know what they certainly can, and when you open up a dialogue with them and you start talking about these things, lots of answers will be right there. For obvious reasons, I'm withholding the specifics about this next email question. A scout in our troop was suspended from school for a very distasteful prank. He played a school dance. I discussed the situation with one of my assistant Scoutmasters and he believes the incident was not at a scout event and merits no disciplinary action from the troop. I feel, however, that this an integrity issue for a scout who happens to be life rank, and that this needs to be addressed.

I don't know if his prank was out of maliciousness or just stupidity, or perhaps both, and I wanted to know how you might handle this sort of situation. Well, I think there was probably one percent maliciousness involved in 99 percent stupidity. Scouts and boys at this age. They sometimes don't think and they think they're going to be really, really cool in the eyes of their peers and they do some stupid thing.

Then they get in trouble and you know, thank goodness we get second and third and fourth chances at that age. One of my first bits of advice is that the scouters and troops don't punish or discipline scouts. We don't involve ourselves in any of that. That's the job of a scout's family, of his parents or guardians. We deal only in proportionate consequences, never in punishment. This scouts already been punished.

They've been suspended from school and there's probably a few things that their parents have done to embellish being suspended from school as well. Now the behavior didn't happen in a scout activities. There are no actual physical consequences to be addressed as far as scouts go.

So I believe in that sense your assistant Scoutmaster is right. It didn't happen in scouts and other than having a discussion with the scout, I wouldn't do anything else, especially since scouts and troops don't punish or discipline anyone.

Ask this question: if the scout did something like this during a scout activity, would you expect disciplinary action from his school? It wouldn't be fair or particularly useful, would it?

Now you do want to sit down with the scout and discuss your concerns about what happened and discuss your concerns about their personal integrity. Now, when you go to do that- it's my guess that the scout is probably already pretty embarrassed and ashamed at this point- and you may be able to help them make the best of a difficult situation. Speaking for myself, I did plenty of stupid things at that age and it would have been great to have an understanding adult to talk to. The last thing I needed is somebody else piling on with another punishment or judgment. Yes, I understood. I did something wrong.

I've been punished. You don't have to tell me how wrong I was. You don't have to punish me a second time. What I would have welcomed was someone who, as a friend and mentor, kindly and cheerfully helped me work through the situation and who would knew that I was capable of being a better person and encourage me to do just that.

You know, when you think about it, situations like this can become pivotal events in our lives and they can really have an effect on who we become in the future. How adults around us react to this type of situation can either aggravate it or make it worse, or help see our way through it and use them as a stepping stone to being a better person.

The only time I've ever taken actions regarding misbehavior outside of scouts was in a situation that involved a threat of physical violence and then ended up in the hands of the police. Now the scout who was involved in that. We told him he couldn't be actively involved until the charges against him were resolved. He was exonerated subsequently. He came back, participated with the troop, no problem. The actions of the scout who you told me about.

They were stupid and maybe even a little malicious, but I don't believe they represent anything more than adolescent stupidity. If they did involve a direct threat of physical violence or some other action that I thought represented a risk to the safety of their fellow scouts, I may have to treat the situation differently. But you have the opportunity to be able to sit down and have a good discussion with this young man and help him find his way through his present difficulties into becoming a better person, and that's the whole aim of our work as scouters. Paul Fife is the Scoutmaster of troop 510 in Belton, Missouri and he writes to say: I have become a Scoutmaster podcast attic in the past two weeks, while we do have a 12-step program in a group. And no, actually we don't, Paul.

But anyway, I have a question regarding a topic I believe you mentioned on a previous podcast. Can a scout hold a position like troop quartermaster and patrol leader at the same time? I always seem to have parents complain that their boy did not get a leadership position because another scout ran and obtained more than one. I explained to them that the scouts elect their leaders and if their son didn't get elected, it's maybe they felt he wasn't ready. Boys in a good balance of age groups.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Well, Paul, to answer your first question, the answer is no. Scouts don't hold multiple positions of responsibility at the same time.

Quartermasters and other positions of responsibility, by the way, aren't elected and there's some important reasons why they aren't. Now, this isn't just my opinion, it's there in black and white in the Scoutmaster's handbook. According to the handbook, there are two elected positions: senior patrol leader and patrol leader. All other positions of responsibility are not elected but appointed with the Scoutmaster's approval by the senior patrol leader or, in the case of patrol positions of responsibility, by the patrol leader.

So, reading from the Scoutmaster's handbook. It says this: depending upon the size and needs of the troop, all are more of the following positions may be filled, unless otherwise indicated. The senior patrol leader selects the scout who will hold each position. The Scoutmaster can help the senior patrol leader make his decisions on the basis of the candidate's overall qualifications rather than merely on friendships. Scouts serving in any of the following troop positions continue to be active members in their patrols. And what follows is a list of all of the positions of responsibility in the troop quarter: master, scribe, etc.

And if you read through the next part of the Scoutmaster's handbook, there's no indication in any of the descriptions of those positions that they're filled in any other way than the senior patrol leader appointing them. Now, this isn't my opinion. Once again, it's not an optional approach.

This is the way that scouting work and there's very good reasons why we don't have elections for anybody else other than the senior patrol leader and the patrol leaders. Think about our own representational system of government. We don't elect positions like the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, for the secretary of education.

Those positions are appointed and then go through an approval process by the representatives we do elect, and those appointments aren't on the ballot because they're based, hopefully, on the skills and experience of the appointee rather than the appointee's political popularity, and you see exactly how this translates into what we do in scouts. There are only two elected positions and the remainder of the positions of responsibility- and they're not leadership positions, but more about that in a moment. They're all appointed according to the candidates overall qualifications rather than merely on their popularity or their fact that their friends with the senior patrol leader.

So when the senior patrol leader appoints these positions, he ought to be thinking about having as many scouts involved in positions with responsibility as possible and suiting the scouts that he chooses to the job. As it says, these appointments are made with the Scoutmasters approval and, in my opinion, most of the time that should be yep. That sounds like a good choice, but that doesn't mean that there's no guidance involved. If the senior patrol leader wanted to appoint the same guy to two positions of responsibility, I would have some questions origin from doing so. The other important piece of the puzzle here is there are no leadership positions. We only have positions of responsibility.

Look at the rank requirements for star life and evil- no leadership positions involved. Does that mean that we don't teach leadership or anything like that.

Well, no, no, don't, don't. Don't go off the deep end here, but if you look at this, the only positions of leadership that are specifically leadership or the senior patrol leader and patrol leader- but not every position- requires leadership.

All of the positions do require responsibility and the guide to advancement 2013 says it better than I can, and if you look, do you have your pencil ready? Here's the section that you'll find it in the guide to advancement 2013: 4.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.6 man. I feel like Barney Fife, but that section is titled responsibility and leadership and it reads thusly: many suggest this requirement should call for the position of leadership rather than simply responsibility. Taking an accepting responsibility, however, is a key foundation for leadership. One cannot lead effectively without it. The requirement, as written, recognizes the different personalities, talents and skill sets, and all of us- some seem to be the leader of the group, others provide quality support and strong examples behind the scenes.

Without the ladder, the leaders in charge have little chance for success. Thus, the work of the supporters becomes part of the overall leadership effort. I sent that answer to Paul and he wrote back and said: that's good information, thank you. We just had elections for all those positions last night. I wish I had asked you sooner.

We have always done it that way. Do you ever hear complaints from parents of scouts who don't get an appointed position, maybe because they're not friends with the senior patrol leader?

My reply to him was: you know, I don't recall any time that a parent has complained about their son not being appointed to something or other, and this is probably because we don't make appointments based on friendship. You know, as I said, it's the Scoutmaster's job to advise and make sure that that's not happening. My guess is, the complaints that you're getting, Paul, are because you aren't following the program and this is resulting in a selection process that's more based on popularity than merit or ability.

Now I'm being a bit of a pain here, I know, and all this is attended in the best spirit possible, but that's the way we've always done. Things is never a good reason. It's never too late to change. You can go next week to your troop meeting, get the patrol leaders council together, explain the mistake and ask what they think they ought to do next to fix it. This may be very energizing to the patrol leaders council, but it may upset a few adults involved. You may have to manage that.

As I often say, the Scoutmaster advises and mentors in council scouts so they can lead themselves. But the Scoutmaster leads the other adults. They chose you for the job and that means they need to follow your directions and it's the Scoutmaster's job to keep things on track. If you were the coach of a basketball team, you play on a basketball court with a basketball and follow the rules of the game. You don't take a basketball team to a baseball diamond and play football right. You train your youth leadership in the rules of the game of scouting and this is the context for everything they do and all the decisions they make.

This is the direction we're all traveling in. This takes some choices, like you know. Let's elect the quarter master off the table, and it also marks out the field of play. Their decisions and actions have to follow the program.

Now, this sounds limiting at first but I can tell you from experience is very energizing once scouts know the rules of the game they love to play. Now, in a way, you just aren't the coach, you're kind of the referee too. Every Scoutmaster is ever play a game where the ref didn't know the rules is pretty frustrating for everybody.

The folks that were there before you may not have read the rulebook, so now it's up to you to make sure that everybody's playing by the rules. You've been doing things one way. You guys had it wrong. No harm, no foul. You just need to change the way that you're doing things. If you take those changes to the scouts and you ask them for a solution, you'll find it's pretty easy and actually a whole lot of fun.