Scoutmaster Podcast 239

I'm Michael Meninger and I'm the Cub Scout Roundtable Commissioner for the Foothills District in the Atlanta Area Council. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by people with backs like What?

Not the same thing? No, It's sponsored by backers like me.

And now, the old Scoutmaster, Andy Hall, is the Unit Commissioner for Troop Impact 637 in Onsted, Michigan, And I heard from him this past week he wanted to share a story with you. He was on a hike walking through the woods one day not too long ago and something caught his eye. And it's alright. His ophthalmologist says he should recover in a week or two. Oh, my, Yes, Thanks Andy for that.

Hey, this is podcast number 239.. Hey Well, welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look at the mailbag. Something caught his eye and the ophthalmologist says he'll be.

Yeah, Okay, From Andy once again, who's a Unit Commissioner in Onsted, Michigan. He said: I stumbled across your website and podcast recently and I apologize for leaving them around So that people would: oh, the jokes just keep coming, don't they? And I'm delighted beyond compare.

I've been binge listening to the podcast for several days now And that would probably account for your sense of humor to some extent, Andy. So, And it's been an inspiration to me, I can't thank you enough for the time and energy you obviously pour into it. Thank you once again.

Well, thank you, Andy, I'm so glad you found us And thanks so much for getting in touch And thanks for the story, I think. Hey, this past week on the blog, I announced finally the almost completion of a project I've been working on for a while, And that is an index of the website.

Now, if you go to scoutmastercgcom and you look at the very top menu there, you're going to see a link to the index And the index is going to take you to well, an index of what is now over 1600 blog posts, and it indexes them by subject. So check that out and let me know what you think and any improvements you have to suggest in how we can better make that information available for you. I heard from Daniel about that. He said the index is brilliant. Once again, you exceed expectations for what one scouter can do. The only thing left to do in this regard is design a short course of podcasts for the new Scoutmasters- early training.

Thanks so much, Clark. Well, thank you, Daniel, And I guess maybe if you could stitch together some things into kind of a training course, And actually that's been an idea of mine for quite some time. And wait a little later on this fall I'll have some things to say about that. Also heard from Chuck coats about the index said: nice job, I'm positive this addition will be extremely helpful. Many thanks for your continuing efforts.

Well, thank you, Chuck. On BP's blog, Baden Powell's blog this week, a post about patrols And there's one really great quote from that post. But to get first class results from the patrol system you have to give the patrol leader real free handed responsibility. If you only give partial responsibility you only get partial results. And I mentioned that as an introduction to an email I got from Dale Neck who is with troop 240 in Hillsborough, Oregon, And Dale wrote in to say thanks for providing such a great and important resource for all of us, parents and Scouts. Our troop just celebrated our 60th year all with the same chartering organization.

Our Scoutmaster proposed to us assistant Scoutmasters in the troop committee that we continue on the development of a truly scout led troop by getting the Scouts to select their own patrols. We talked it over and we settled on the idea of Scouts telling us two or three other Scouts that they would like to be in the same patrol with, and we got their responses And we did our best to work out how that would look.

So picture, post it notes, each with a Scouts name on it, all arranged on a dining room table somewhere, and, lo and behold, it worked. With just a few minor adjustments, The Scouts pretty much ended up getting their buddies together in the same patrol. Last night we had our first troop meeting with the new patrols and the room was electric with excitement.

The boys appear to be very happy with their new patrols and there's a renewed level of energy and their actions and ideas. Thank you again for your website, podcast and everything else you're into. Thank you, Dale, for getting in touch, and it's really exciting to find out that this stuff works.

Isn't it Now? Maybe the next time around if, when it comes time to choose up patrols, you won't even have to bother with forms and post it notes and things like that?

But you know it works and the Scouts will make some great decisions about who they want to be in a patrol with And, as you said, it's very empowering and very exciting and it really kick starts a lot of things once they have made the decision about patrols, And that's how we want it to happen. From our pal Matthew Godelman, who said thanks for the shout out on podcast 238.. My son and I had a blast listening to you read my letter. Hey, here it is again.

Okay, I'm up to 118 in the archives and having just as much fun as I did listening to the first 70 I told you about. Last week I had a question about something that I think is a scouting urban legend: Am I allowed to use a liquid fuel camp stove? I'm like on camp outs. I've heard it's against BSA policy and I wanted to ask if you would ever heard about this. Thanks for all you do. I can't wait to hear back from you.

Well, Matthew, first of all, thanks for getting in touch once again to answer your question. It's actually a pretty simple question to answer. Go to the guide to safe scouting and you're going to find a liquid fuel policy there that says yes, indeed, you can use a liquid fuel stove.

Now there are some caveats and some great advice in the guide to safe scouting about this that I'm not going to try and go over here on the podcast, But I shared with you in the email. Everyone else get the guide to safe scouting. Look up at the liquid fuels policy and it'll explain exactly how that works. I heard from Michael Beals through Google plus this past week. He says: as a leave no trace trainer, I really like your post about tropic cascades and the scout law- Great information to share with our scouts on how we affect our environment, And that's a post that was on the blog this week. Trophic cascades: If you don't know what that is, it's really pretty cool and you should find out about it, And I'm going to have at the end of this podcast, a Scoutmaster minute that I shared with everybody this week about just that.

One of the other things that was on the blog this week was a post about how we instruct scouts. What I'm doing with that is I'm kind of updating a series of posts that I did very early on in the blog And that I kind of rediscovered going through and indexing everything that I think are going to be useful for you, And what it is is a number of different instructional methods that are really great for scouts.

So you want to make sure to check that out at scoutmastercgcom: how to instruct scouts Now if you're a regular reader and listener and you're finding the information and the ideas offered by scoutmastercgcom have helped you as a scouter, you can return the favor by making a one-time contribution and becoming a scoutmastercgcom backer. The funds we get from backers go towards the expenses of producing and publishing all the blog posts and the podcasts and the videos that are a valuable resource and accessible to scouts all over the world. It's pretty easy to do. Go to scoutmastercgcom, Go to the main menu at the top of the page, Click the support link and you'll be led to an explanation of exactly how this works and your choice of a level of support, and some of them entitle you to premiums like autograph copies of my books and things like that.

I want to take a moment to personally thank Andy Hall, Mike Bailey, Scott Green and Brian Frey, who signed on as backers since the last podcast. Well, in this podcast I am going to chip away at the giant backlog of email questions that I've received over the past couple of weeks And then, as I promised, we're going to end with a scoutmaster's minute about tropic cascades and you'll find out a little bit about what that means.

So that's going to take up the remainder of the podcast. Let's get started.

Shall we Write me a letter? Send it my name Email. That is folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. So we're going to dive into a few email questions here. If you want to get in touch with me, it's pretty easy to do. Email me at Clark at scoutmastercgcom. C-L-A-R-K-E at scoutmastercgcom.

Now, sometimes people ask to have their names withheld because we deal with sensitive subjects sometimes here. And that's true of this first email question, And it reads like this: can a troop decide to do Eagle Courts of Honor for several Eagle candidates at once and not permit parties at the same time? The troop combines several scouts into one Eagle Court of Honor. They buy a couple of cakes, but they ask families to go elsewhere if they want to have a big celebration or a party. The troop meets at a church. Three of the scouts getting their Eagle for this Court of Honor attend another denomination and they would like to have their Court of Honor at that church.

So, once again, can a troop committee dictate this sort of thing? Can they say when and where a court of honor is to be held? Any help is greatly appreciated. By the way, love your site and the emails.

Well, that's a fairly easy answer. Yes, the troop committee can choose how to define how Courts of Honor are held, where they're held and whether or not there's going to be a big celebration and a party afterward.

Now the piece that you may be missing about this whole thing is what happens if the troop committee doesn't define those things. I know from experience that without some definition, things can get out of hand pretty fast and there can be a lot of misunderstandings.

So a troop committee really should kind of think their way through exactly what they want to have happen around Courts of Honor. If you put yourself in the troop committee's shoes for a moment, you may see that what they're trying to do with these definitions is attempt to treat every scout fairly, to prevent overburdening the troop schedule. If you have more than three Eagle Scouts at a given time and you do separate Courts of Honor for each and every one, that could really present a problem. It's a wonderful problem to have.

So I can see the wisdom in what they're doing by asking all the Scouts to combine in one court of honor, And they're also trying to minimize what I have seen in my own troop before And that is families kind of playing the one upsmanship and trying to trump one another about who can throw the biggest party. That's really happened, And boy, that can cause some difficult situations too.

Now, that being said, that a troop committee can make a decision about these things and lend some definition to it, it would be perfectly appropriate and probably smooth things over with everyone involved. If you have a presentation at the other church in addition to the other Court of Honor, okay, There's nothing that says a scout can't have a couple of different presentations of his Eagle, And I have done just that in the past. One of my Scouts wanted his Eagle presented during a service at his church and they were happy to have that happen And I was happy to attend and I did that for him.

The understanding that we had with him and his family was that he could invite whoever he liked, But we wouldn't compel anybody to attend that separate service because he was having a troop Court of Honor as well And he was recognized at that troop Court of Honor with two other Eagle candidates And he also had the other presentation during a church service and I was happy to go do that. You can avoid a lot of possible conflicts and bad feelings about these things By having the troop committee sit down and kind of think their way through exactly how this should work And then also make the offer that somebody from the troop will go- and hopefully it would be the Scoutmaster- would go and preside over a second presentation at a location at a time the Scouts family requests.

So once I sent that advice out, I got this reply. Thanks so much. I appreciate your input. I'll pass it on to the parents who voice concerns. Much appreciation for what you do.

Well, I really hope it helps. I'd like to hear how it all works out. Here's another email that came in.

If a senior patrol leader is not performing up to par and the Scouts are unhappy with that performance, How does he get removed? Well, it's a fairly simple question, isn't it?

How did he become a senior patrol leader in the first place? The troop had an election and they elected him as senior patrol leader, right? If the Scouts are unhappy and they think that it's time for another election to elect a new senior patrol leader, they can do that, And the same is true for patrol leaders.

So you know, I think it's a fairly easy situation to deal with. It might be a little uncomfortable and there may be some disappointment involved, But if you're a wise Scouter, you're going to counsel everybody through this and you're going to put as positive a face on it as possible. The reply I got back from that particular email was: thank you. This is exactly what I've told the other adults and Scouts who've expressed the concerns to me about our senior patrol leader.

So far, no one has decided to do anything about it. I think what they want me to do as Scoutmaster is remove him, and I'm not going to do it. I continue to support and nurture him, even though he doesn't apply himself right now.

He may turn the corner yet And you know what I really support you in that I have had 30 years worth of senior patrol leaders. Some of them take a long time to catch on and it takes a lot of nurturing and working with them. And yes, I've had adults and parents and Scouts kind of give me the stink eye about.

Well, you know you really should do something about this And my reply is always: look, he was elected. If you want to have another election, you can do it. What they want is they usually want the Scoutmaster to be the bad guy and to make the change. But the Scoutmaster didn't appoint the senior patrol leader. He was elected.

You want to have another election? Let's go.

If you don't want to do that, well, we're going to continue to work with this guy and we're going to try and help him find what he needs to find to be a really good, effective senior patrol leader. I've had that happen in the past. It can be a little frustrating, but if you keep working at it, most of them will step up and make things happen. Heard from Allison Benton, who said: hi, I'm an assistant Scoutmaster. We recently got our second patrol.

Now I'm excited about this because it means we're growing, We have two patrols and we can now elect a senior patrol leader. But how do you do that?

Is there a correct way of electing a senior patrol leader? I need a little advice here.

Well, Allison, there's really no right or wrong way to have the election, so don't worry about getting it wrong. What I would suggest to you is go to the Scouts, get them together, tell them they have two patrols now and that this means that they can elect a senior patrol leader if they want to, And they probably will want to Ask them how they want to do it and what they think makes a good choice for a senior patrol leader. That question should start a pretty good discussion. Ask them what they'll do to make sure the election is fair and above board and how the candidates will be chosen and exactly how voting happens and everything. And if you guide them through that process of discovering these things for themselves, they're going to be pretty sure that it was their idea in the first place. They're going to be very excited and empowered by it.

Tell them to have the election and let you know how they chose and then walk away and let them at it. That's what I would suggest doing. Once you've had this discussion with the Scouts, you're going to create a tradition in the troop of how the senior patrol leader is elected And, like I said, get them to explain exactly how it's going to happen and everything like that. You may have to give them a little direction if they don't seem to get it exactly right, But then walk away, let them have their election and tell you who the new senior patrol leader is. The next email is one that tells a familiar story.

I go to Roundtable, to Pow Wow, to the University of Scouting- I even did Wood Badge- And what does my son say at the end of our first den meeting? Do I have to be in Cub Scouts? It isn't very fun. I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing with you. I'm also a committee chair and the meetings and planning, They just seem to suck my soul away.

I know what you're going to tell me: Get help, Ask specific people to do specific jobs- But there is just so much I can give Scouts in an hour or night And I feel horrible by the end of that hour. I feel like I'm doing it all wrong and I don't know what to do different. Either I'm not doing my best or my best is inadequate, But I just can't walk away as many times as that crosses my mind. I'm sorry, I'm kind of venting here. I do appreciate your podcast and your blog And it gives me enough inspiration to plot on ahead for another week.

Well, everybody's been there, Every single Scouter. If you stay around long enough as a Scouter, you're going to have those dark nights of the soul where you wonder if anything is going right. You're wondering why nobody will help and you're getting a very strong urge just to chuck it all in.

So what? You're looking for some advice on how to be an effective volunteer and how to get other people to help you make things happen.

So let's start thinking about how you can turn into the orchestra leader. Rather than running around trying to play every single instrument on your own, You've got to get some people in the seats helping you right.

So step one is understanding the problem. What you told me, it's obvious. Like many good souls, you feel that you must be personally responsible for everything.

Now, that is partially true, and that partial truth is what leads many of us- And I'm saying us, because I've been there before, as have just about every Scouter that's listening at this very moment has been there before too. We tend to take on too much. There's a big difference between being responsible for everything and making everything happen.

So step one is differentiating between those two things. I'm sure you understand what I'm saying. The trouble is that there's usually this barrier of fear or trepidation that keeps most of us from soliciting and accepting help.

We're pretty sure in the back of our minds that people won't do what we're asking them to do as well as we can do it, or they will simply not do what we're asking at all. So let's understand that we all feel that way, at least to some extent, and we need to get over that.

So step number two is writing down all that you do, Make it like a task list, a to-do list, and then triage that list. What must you continue doing personally and what can you delegate? You need to get that list of what you must do, down to two or three items and everything else you're going to delegate out. Step number three is overcoming the fear of disappointment and handing things off to others. You have to take these things off your list and not pick them up again. If someone doesn't get the job done properly to your lights, or they just drop it, step back, take a few deep breaths and move on.

Find somebody else, Or you may find that that thing that you thought was terribly important, that had to be done, really didn't interest anybody and didn't need to be done in the first place. Now, if you don't do this, you're not going to last long. You'll collapse and the whole program will collapse around your exit, and that happens.

So it becomes your responsibility to make sure that you're looking very hard at what you're doing, You're triaging that list, You're delegating it out and you're not picking it up again. This all sounds very simple, but I know how difficult it can be. I also want to address one thing. Usually scouts are hyper-responsible people.

They see the need, they step in and they feel the need, and then they are amazed and dismayed at the fact that nobody else seems to understand that there's a need there and wants to help out. Now the natural reaction to that is to be a little discouraged with human nature. All these parents, their children, are participating in this wonderful program. You're doing the yeoman's work of keeping everything going and they just seem to sit there, pay no attention to what you're doing, not really appreciate it too much and have no idea that it takes a lot of effort.

And so when we feel that way, naturally you get discouraged. Naturally you want to pitch it all in because nobody really cares.

Well, I've got some news for you. People really do care, but people really do not understand, on the same level that you do, the kind of effort and involvement that is needed to make things like this happen.

We think, because of our own hyper-responsibility and the way that we see things, that everybody else is like us and sees the same thing, and even though they realize we need help, they're just going to stand by and say, well, yeah, I don't really care. That's not true. They don't realize that you need help.

So you have to express that very specifically and, like I said, write down that list of tasks. You triage the list, you find out what you need help with. You don't make a general appeal to a crowd of people.

You go to an individual and you say: this is what I need you to do, Can you help me with this? And you know what. Most of the time you're going to get a good reaction.

Well, I didn't know you needed help with that. I'd be happy to give you a hand.

Now that might be an oversimplification of the whole process, but that's basically the big, broad, underlying concepts about the way that it works. I heard back from the person who sent me that email and they said: you know, I actually had a decent PAC meeting. I did what you said. I wrote out a job description of our Scouting for Food Coordinator. I asked a specific person and they said, yes, it was all of the theory in action.

A specific request, well described. Ask a single, specific person instead of casting a net.

Give them enough lead time to put everything together and then step back and let them at it. My weakness is procrastination. I put off asking. I don't have time to write the description.

I feel guilty for approaching people with a vague request on a short deadline, So I just end up doing it myself and I get stressed out. Here's hoping I can get ahead on the documentation and approaching folks about specific things that need to be done. Thanks again for your help and for the resources that you've created.

Well, I think that that answer describes exactly what I was talking about. You have to be specific.

You have to go to individuals, You have to ask and you know you need to give them enough lead time to do it. But sometimes the lead time won't be there and you explain that You say: look, I'm kind of up to my elbows here and I need some help.

I know that this is a short notice, but can you help me with this? You're going to find a lot of people are there willing to help. They're just waiting for you to ask.

I got this email from a patrol leader who said: can backyard camping fulfill one of the overnight campouts to reach first class rank? I'm going to be planning a winter camp out at our scout camp and another one in June or July, but we need to have a third one to get everybody to first class. Thanks for your help.

Well, as the patrol leader, you ought to be able to plan and carry out a camping trip that qualifies for one of the three overnight activities for first class. There's nothing that says this camp being somebody's backyard. Overnight activities with patrols do require one scouter who has youth protection training and at least one other adult to be present, but you can certainly make it happen And, like I said, camping is camping. If it's in the backyard, it's in the backyard. I don't see anything that says it has to be camping in a certain place or a certain type of place. I'm always happy to hear from patrol leaders or senior patrol leaders or other youth members.

I want to note, though, that because you're a youth member, I want a parent involved in any further discussions we have about this. So show this parent the email message and ask them to get in touch with me, so I know that you have their permission to continue corresponding by email if you have any other questions for me. James Ezenwein is scoutmaster of troop 104 in Navar, Florida. I'm a fairly new scoutmaster. I've been an assistant scoutmaster for two years and I was an Eagle Scout as a youth. I'm in the process of catching up on podcasts and I would like to say thank you for doing all this.

It's been a great help. I really enjoy being a scoutmaster, teaching the scouts what I know about scouting and my life experiences as an officer in the Air Force. I also learn a lot from them and enjoy getting to know them. My troop, for the most part, is scouts whose parents are either active military, like myself, or retired military.

Now, my biggest challenge really isn't the scouts. They're great and we're in the process of getting the patrol method in place and from your podcast, we have what I would call a boy-led troop.

Well, good for you. My biggest concern is my committee and getting them to change their ways and follow the program. In one of your podcasts, you talk about the rank requirements as being written in stone and cannot be added to or subtracted from, And I wholeheartedly agree with you. My committee, on the other hand, has a policy where, once a scout has completed everything he needs for his next rank, he has to track down the advancement chair and request a form to be cycled around the committee to ensure all his requirements have been met and that his dues are paid. My view is that this is an additional requirement for the scout to complete towards advancement. Some committee members, but not all, feel that this form that we ask the scout to fill out is necessary to get the scout to talk to other adults and be responsible for the logistics and the bureaucracy for his own advancement.

I'd like to know your thoughts and where it is written that the rank requirements are written in stone. Thank you for all your time and all that you do.

Well, I'm glad you got in touch with me and I want to thank you for your service in the Air Force. Really do appreciate it, as well as your service as a Scoutmaster. This is actually a pretty easy question to answer. You need to get yourself a copy of the Guide to Advancement 2013.. It's very simple to get.

I'll have a link in the post that contains this podcast so you can get the PDF version and then distribute that to your committee members and read through it yourself. And, by the way, folks, every Scoutmaster should have these three important resources: The Guide to Advancement 2013,, the Guide to Safe Scouting and the Guide to Uniforms and Insignia. They're all available in PDF versions. You should have them right at your fingertips. You should be familiar with what's in them- You don't have to memorize them, of course- And you'll be able to answer 99.9% of the questions that cause difficulties in scout troops.

So, right on page two of the Guide to Advancement 2013,, you're going to find this: The policy on unauthorized changes to the advancement program. No council, committee, district, unit or individual has the authority to add to or subtract from the advancement requirements.

So that's a fairly self-evidence statement. The requirements are written in stone. You can't add to them. You can't subtract from them. Nobody can.

Now it's about your question about Boards of Review. Guide to Advancement. Again, section ready 8.0.0.2, Titled Boards of Review must be granted when requirements are met, And it reads thusly: a scout shall not be denied this opportunity When he believes he has completed all the requirements for a rank. Note what it says: When he believes he's completed all the requirements for a rank, including a Scoutmaster conference, a Board of Review must be granted. It's not any question about that. It must be granted.

Scoutmasters or councils or districts- in the case of the Eagle Scout rank, for example- do not have the authority to expect a boy to request or organize a Board of Review, or defer to him or ask him to perform beyond the requirements in order to be granted a Board of Review. So there you go. This isn't really subject to opinion or how anybody feels.

It's right there in black and white And I don't see any other way of interpreting it other than what's happening in your troop right now is not in accordance with advancement policy. So once everybody's read and understood this, you can toss away your Board of Review forms and all that stuff and stop adding to the requirements.

And now, requiring a scout to kind of jump through that request of Board of Review hoop is a fairly common practice, but, as we can see in the Guide to Advancement, it is altogether forbidden. In the process of looking at this, you might want to look at everything else that's happening and you might find a few other things that are out of sync. Everybody ought to sit down, read that Guide to Advancement, make sure that they're pointed to true north and that they're adhering to those policies. You'll see that the advancement program is all about helping scouts, not throwing barriers in their way. But I suspect, James, that you already know that Heard from Ranjit Sudan, who is an assistant Scoutmaster with Troop 4002 in Oak Park, Illinois.

Ranjit says we have a fairly unique situation. We've recently had a recruiting year and I have 16 new young 11-year-old scouts joining a troop which, prior to their arrival, numbered only 22 to 24 active scouts.

Well, Ranjit, I would agree it's fairly unique, but it's actually more common than you think. You're about doubling your troop, which is a great problem to have, isn't it? We kind of find ourselves in this wag the dog situation. The troop has been boy-led, but this bounty has many of us- including, maybe, and especially the older boys- on edge. To compound matters, two of the newcomers have special needs. I'd appreciate your advice on balancing the boy's natural desire to be in a patrol with their buddies with making sure that they all find a niche.

The need and desire for social engineering is hard for many of us adults to resist. So, Ranjit, I would say this: First of all, let's understand that being youth-led, being scout-led, isn't really a destination we travel towards with any hope of arriving or a building project that is ever going to be finished. It's a continuous journey and an ongoing project that really is never completed.

Now you describe a challenging situation, but if things are going as they should. You will always have some kind of challenging situation. This is a pretty big one, I admit, but there's always going to be this little edge of uncertainty and kind of chaos involved. We never arrive at a place of total stability and efficiency, because that's not what we're aimed at creating. We're aimed at creating opportunities for young people to learn how to be responsible, to learn the Scout Oath and Law, to become good human beings.

That's not ever going to be a stable situation, is it? It's always going to be changing because young people are involved in it.

Now, having this big crowd of new scouts is challenging and it's going to be difficult for everybody involved. It kind of upsets what you thought was a pretty stable situation, But it's also a fantastic opportunity for developing youth leadership and youth responsibility.

So what I would suggest you do is sit down with your youth leaders, ask them lots of questions that are posed to get them thinking about this situation and forming strategies to meet the challenge. How do you guys think the new Scouts are doing?

Do you see any problems or difficulties that our patrols are chosen? Do you think we should make any changes to that? Open that discussion with your older Scouts and see what they have to say. They're going to have some fantastic ideas.

Now, if they're just used to adults intervening and fixing things, they might just stare at you and wonder what you're talking about. In fact, they may rather resent the implication that this is something that they have to do, that they would rather have the adults take care of it. Right, But you have to explain the responsibility to make decisions, and the adults involved are going to help, support and back them up, But they're not going to make those decisions for them. And once they get this, they're going to start suggesting changes.

Some are going to be promising ideas, some maybe not so promising, but that's where you continue asking questions, getting them to think their way through things. That process of mentoring and guidance will ultimately result in resolutions to the situation you describe.

Now, once they have a plan of action, walk away from things and let them start putting that plan into place. After they've started making those changes, it's time to follow up with another discussion and another round of questions.

So how are things working? Are they working as you expected?

What's working and what isn't? What are you going to do to further change the situation Once you get in the habit of asking questions like this, rather than making statements or explaining things, your youth leaders will begin finding the answers and hearing things out for themselves, And that's a pretty exciting thing, Question after question, asked in a spirit of honest curiosity, a lot of listening to answers and unlocking resolutions and potential. I understand that this is a big challenge, but it's one that's very exciting and has tremendous possibilities attached to it.

So do let me know how things go. That's a lot of email questions for one podcast. If you have a question and you want to get in touch with me, you're going to find out how to do that in just a moment. That's right. It's time

For a Scoutmasters Minute My hand. I want to make sure you go to scoutmasterscgcom and you read the post called Tropic Castigades and the Scout Law, Because in that post there's a video that I really want you to see that explains this incredible phenomenon. In 1995, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park.

Now, to make this very simple, this caused what is called a tropic cascade, Because wolves prey on elk, Elk feed on aspen trees. When there are fewer elk, there get to be more aspen trees and the aspen trees grow bigger.

More aspen trees and bigger aspen trees mean that now there are more beavers who feed on the aspen and build with them. More beavers mean more beaver dams, and beaver dams change the course of rivers and they change the environment. More aspen trees also stabilize the river banks and this changes the course of rivers.

So it's amazing, but it's true, that reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone nearly 20 years ago has changed the course of the rivers in Yellowstone. Isn't that something Scientists call this natural system? I've just described a tropic cascade, and tropic refers to the food chain, and cascade describes how top level predators like wolves affect other species like elk down the food chain and how that relationship affects the very environment that they all share.

Now every scout has the chance to go camping and see the great cycles of nature, like tropic cascades, up close. I would say hopefully, maybe not seeing top level predators up close, okay, But we learn a lot about ourselves from observing the natural world. The tropic cascade that wolves caused in Yellowstone makes me pause to think for a moment about the same kind of cascading effect of what we say and what we do.

It's all there in the Scout Oath and Law, isn't it? When we're trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Our own happiness cascades down to those around us. Our actions and decisions affect our environment. They create opportunity. They influence others.

They affect all of our relationships. Wolves occupy a specific role in nature.

They don't make many rational choices, do they? But we get to make rational choices as individuals every day. What we choose to say and how we choose to act can have either negative or positive cascading effects.

So when Scouts make a choice to follow the Scout Oath and Law, the cascade that follows always has a positive effect on their lives and everything around them.