Scoutmaster Podcast 301

I'm Joe Stone and I'm a Scoutmaster from 773 in Dallas, Georgia. This edition of the Scoutmaster Podcast is sponsored by backers like me.

And now for you, Scoutmaster. And I said I'm sorry but we can't have time travelers here in our campsite, So this time traveler comes into our campsite.

Hey, this is podcast number 301.. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. Let's take a look in the mailbag Heard from Jim Hilliard, who I mentioned during last week's podcast. He said I'm honored to be the first story of the third century of podcasts.

Well, thanks, Jim. I'm always happy to oblige And remember. I'm looking for stories. Peter LaRue, the author of the ropes and poles blog, is in South Africa and he wrote in to say congratulations on the 300th podcast And thanks for all of your hard work. That makes volunteering more rewarding for all of us. Looking forward to seminarcgcom.

Thanks so much, Peter. I'll mention more about seminar CG in a moment. Doug Boyce, who has the Bright Idea Scouting podcast, also checked in. He said congratulations on 300 podcasts.

Thanks so much for all your wisdom and help. I'll give you links to Peter's blog and to Doug's podcast and the podcast notes. As I told you last week, I'm recycling some of the backlog of just about 1700 different articles that have been written on Scoutmaster's CG over the past 10 years. What I'm doing is I'm going back, taking a look at them, fixing them up a little bit sometimes and putting them on the Facebook feed.

And one that got a lot of attention the past week or so is called Every Scout a Leader- Again a link to that in the podcast notes. Mike Manager replied saying: nicely done, thanks.

Paul Blinkow said when I think of leadership I think of responsibility. It may be my exposure to Spiderman as a youth, but I always think with great power comes great responsibility. Heidi Parr commented on Facebook. This is pretty cool and fits our talks about the Scouts and what they have wanted for our troop. Kenneth Thillerman said I could have used this in my leadership training I just conducted.

So once again, that's Every Scout a Leader. Take a look in the podcast notes for a link to that article. Try to have a live chat a couple times a week over at scoutmastercgcom, Usually on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. If you'll keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter feeds, I'll post a notice that we're live and come on over and join us. A lot of people checked in this week.

A lot of our frequent flyers have been on the live chat before, as did Steve Schaefer, who is an assistant Scoutmaster for Troop 147 in South Philly- If you want to pronounce it properly, it's South Philly. Steve and I are nearly neighbors.

I'm somewhat south of the city here, but we had a very useful discussion about hoagies, So you never know what's going to happen on the live chat, right? If you were tuned in last week, I am still getting the Patreon thing together and that is going to drive getting SeminarCG set up. And if you weren't listening last week, or if you were and you want to hear it again, SeminarCG is going to be my approach to online training for Scouters.

Naturally, it's not official training, right? You won't get certificates or patches. I did a pilot course this past summer with a few listeners and readers who volunteered.

I think it was useful, taking some notes from that, setting it up a little bit differently. I want to launch SeminarCG in the near future and more about that as things develop, But right now, before I go any further, I need to ask you to do something for me. If you're a regular reader and listener and the resources that I've created have helped you. I would like to ask you to return the favor by becoming a ScoutmasterCGcom backer Now. The funds I get from backers cover the expenses of producing all this stuff- right, Everything on ScoutmasterCGcom, including the podcast you're listening to right now.

So go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page And you can choose from another options, and a lot of those include getting autographed copies of my books. But I want to take a moment to personally thank Joseph Stone and Christopher Cogswell and Edward Graytricks and Matthew Cheney, who've all become backers since our last podcast. Once again, go to ScoutmasterCGcom, click the support link at the top of the page, Become a backer this week and I'll make sure to thank you personally on our next podcast. In this week's podcast, let's see, I have an email question to answer.

I think it's a pretty good email question And I have some thoughts to share with you in Scout MasterChip in seven minutes or less, 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.

Hey, have you ever taken the time to really examine the vision of your work as a scouter? Ooh, vision, Oh, that's a loaded word, isn't it.

Either you're thinking about, like you know, Carlos Castaneda in the desert, or some really interminable corporate team building session where we talk about visions and oh man. But visions aren't really mystical, They're not difficult to understand. They're not just apparitions we glimpse through the ether somewhere.

They're not just a fuzzy cloud of inspiration And you know they can be all of those things, but they don't really have to be, and they're much more practical and pragmatic than that. A vision isn't quite a goal, maybe, but it's hard to tell the difference between the two. Basically, what I'm talking about today is the way you picture where you're headed.

What's the picture in your mind? A vision is really just a picture of a future state that we're working towards, Kind of like a street view. If you're familiar with Google Street View, right, If you're headed for a destination you've never been before, Street View will show you a picture as if you're standing right in front of that destination. It's something I find pretty reassuring. If I'm going somewhere I haven't been before, I can look at a picture.

I say, oh, so this is what it looks like, This is the storefront or the house or whatever, And it's very reassuring because when I finally get there, I go: oh okay, I had this envisioned as being looking like this and I know that I'm in the right place. So, like I said, a vision is a picture of the future state that you're working towards, Just in the same way that having a picture of the address that you're headed for is kind of reassuring. Hey, I'm here, I got there. I have something in my mind that is able to help me figure out that I've arrived or I've gotten to the right place.

So, if we extend the analogy a little bit, Google Street Views- they come from vehicles that travel around with cameras. Where do the pictures of our future state come from? They have to come from somewhere. We imagine them based on things that we've seen before, places that we've been before. When I first became a Scoutmaster, my vision was defined by what I knew at the time, what I had seen, what I had listened to, what I had read, And one of the things that was like a really, really strong part of that vision was a very old copy of the Patrol Leaders Handbook from the 1940s that was illustrated with black-and-white kind of cartoonish drawings, And in that handbook everything was perfect, right, All the tents lined up in the campsite and the scouts were smiling and cheering and gathering around their patrol flag. They all had impeccable uniforms and everything.

So the vision that I had of scouting originally was a very heavily idealized and sanitized representation of what I actually encountered in working with scouts, And I was frankly disappointed when what I was doing as a scouter didn't look like those drawings. The pictures in my head were really, really powerful. It took a long time to realize that's what was driving my ambitions were those pictures.

I mean, it sounds silly now, but I was trying to recreate what I understood and what I knew based on my past experiences, without really examining or questioning it. And when things weren't working out to look like those pictures, I needed to really sit down and question my presuppositions.

Right, I needed to say: have I really understood this at all? Have I really got a handle on this?

And so then those questions and just observing what the scouts in my troop were doing helped me to kind of get over the fact that perhaps I had envisioned something that was not only impossible, it was something that was not going to actually achieve the aims that I thought it would. So that's kind of disillusioning, isn't it? But disillusionment if you look at the word right, You get rid of the illusions, And every once in a while you got to sit down and you got to go: oh wow, I'm trying to achieve something that is perhaps an illusion. Maybe I should get real about this, Maybe I should be more pragmatic, and that will help.

And so that begins by just sitting and observing and seeing what's going on and trying to reconcile all these various things in your head and thinking about: well, this is the direction I've always been headed in. Maybe I'm right, Maybe I'm wrong here, at least introducing the fact that maybe things need to be changed, Yes, And then moving on to build a more substantial vision or picture of that future state that you're going to be in Now.

What I found out, though, about scouting and about my work as a scouter? That it wasn't really about following my vision at all.

It was about helping scouts form a vision for themselves and then make that vision a reality. My work as a scouter then became simply letting the scouts realize their own vision and abilities and the vast stores of potential in every young person. Scouting is designed to respond to the natural enthusiasm young people have for the outdoors, their curiosity, their desire for achievement and recognition, the strong drive for social membership and acceptance. I mean young people have a natural propensity for cooperation and for leadership, And if we accept that they come to us with these powerful characteristics in place, then we simply maintain an atmosphere that encourages all the positive expression of these qualities And we guard against influences that might quash their natural enthusiasm. And in doing that, we begin to get them to form a vision of their future state, a picture of themselves. Once I realized that things just made a lot more sense And it became easier to be a scouter and to become effective and to help young people.

Right, And this is not to say that somehow we just abandon everything and we say: well, scouts, what do you want to do now? Because what I want to do obviously doesn't work.

So what do you want to do? No, no, this vision has some definition to it.

You lend definition and help them figure out that picture of their future state, that vision, And we have so many different tools to do that, The strongest among them being the precepts and the ideals expressed in the Scout Oath and Law right, In whatever iteration. You happen to have it, wherever in the world you are, we have a defined program of methods and approaches that we use.

You know, Scouts do what scouts do. As I'm fond of saying, we go camping and we go adventuring, and we do that in small groups or patrols, and that's the form of the game of scouting that we play. This isn't about a vacuum where we create something apart from those things.

No, no, We use those things to help young people shape a picture of their future state, a vision for themselves, and then we help them realize it. So sit down and examine the picture that you have in your mind when you do your work as a scouter.

What picture is that? What's your vision, And is that driving you and making you frustrated, Or is it leading you to help your scouts shape and realize their own vision? Like I said, this was a pretty important thing for me as a scouter. Once I got that, I was much happier.

I think the Scouts were happier too. E-mail, that is folks,

And here's an answer to one of your emails. James sent me this email and said: congratulations on episode 300.. I'm looking forward to hearing more of your advice on episodes to come. I'm a unit commissioner and I've heard something at a troop committee meeting that I wanted to share with you and get your take on. One of the adults said our courts of honor are poorly attended. I'd like to propose we stop handing out rank badges at our troop meetings and start requiring Scouts to attend a court of honor to get the badge.

We could still mention that they achieved something at the troop meeting, but we'd make them get to the court of honor to get the badge. And James said: I went straight to the 2015 Guide to Advancement and it says- quote: when the Board of Review has approved his advancement, a scout deserves recognition as soon as possible. This should be done at a ceremony at the next unit meeting. His achievement may be recognized again later during a formal court of honor.

Unquote: The Guide to Advancement does not specifically say when the scout should receive the badge, so I guess it would be okay to hold the badge until the next court of honor. But I always pause when I hear adults trying to put barriers in place that require Scouts to do things we think they ought to be doing. For example, one unit I work with requires Scouts to go on a camp out to get a Scoutmaster Conference, which seems kind of forced.

I believe that if camp outs were fun and appealing. Adults wouldn't need to do things that require Scouts to attend. The same would be true of a court of honor.

If courts of honor are of value to the scout, then why do we need to require them to attend? And if a Scout doesn't want to attend, why should we force them? I'm curious to hear your take on this.

I'm hoping that I'm on the right track and that my Scoutmaster CG training is paying off Well, James, I agree with your assessment of both of these ideas being forced on Scouts. How is it that poor attendance at a court of honor or a camp out is a Scout's fault?

I mean, I can imagine ways that it could be, but is that really where we want to start? I think it's poor manners and bad business to blame the customer, isn't it? I mean, if they don't like your product, shouldn't you begin by asking what's wrong with the product rather than what's wrong with the customer If your sales are bad, you can't just decide that you're above the law and flaunt the rules and regulations and do anything possible to compel customers to buy your product.

I mean, that wouldn't be very Scout-like, would it? And I would argue this: The Guide to Advancement certainly does specify when a Scout gets the badge. I mean it's just playing its day. The Scout deserves recognition as soon as possible. This should be done at a ceremony at the next unit meeting.

Speaking from my troop, we have quarterly Courts of Honor. In place of a troop meeting We have a parents meeting just prior to the court of honor. Anyone who thinks they'll get good attendance by scheduling a court of honor in addition to troop meetings is not really keeping up with the times.

I don't think, And you know we have a great time. Everybody shows up because they were going to show up that night anyway, And we're having cookies and punch within an hour or so after we begin.

So we keep it short, we respect people's time and we make it easy to be there. That's not very difficult to do, right.

And as for requiring Scouts to attend a camp out to get a Scoutmaster Conference, you know that's just another example of these kind of coercive things that we think we have to do to force Scouts to do something because we're disappointed that they don't go on our campouts or come to our Courts of Honor and things like that. I get that. I get it If you want to coerce your Scouts and force them into doing things. I can't stop you from doing that.

But what I would suggest- and I think James would join me in suggesting- is that you know, instead of trying to force people to do things, how about looking at the things that you're asking them to do and see if they're really reasonable? James replied to that answer and he said: sounds good. I'm glad we're on the same page with this one.

I'll admit that years ago I was one of those forced the Scouts to do what we want them to do, Scouters. But a couple of years of listening to your good advice and I've come to see the error of my ways. Keep up the good work. I especially like the business customer analogy in this case.

Well, James, everybody tries and does what seems reasonable to them, and then you maybe discover that what you're doing isn't reasonable, And so you know, hopefully you change, because just keeping on doing unreasonable things is kind of a frustrating way to be, isn't it? And the business customer analogy works up to a point, like all analogies.

All analogies just kind of break down at some point, And so I offer it here with that in mind. I mean, don't go crazy calling Scouts customers and the troop of business.

Sometimes that analogy works and sometimes it doesn't, So you know, let's not try and break it. But anyway, I really appreciate you getting in touch and I'm glad you sent me this email question. If you have an email question, just like James, and you'd like to get in touch with me, it's pretty easy to do. I'm going to tell you how to make that happen in just a moment.