Scoutmaster Podcast 40

And now, for you, Scoutmaster.

Double pun coming up. Double pun. That's right. Two campaign huts go out on a hike. One gets worn out, and the other went on ahead. Worn out. Go on. Alrighty, this is podcast number 40. Hey!

Welcome back. It's Clark Green, and this is podcast number 40. You know what that means, right? The podcast and I are now officially over the hill. So, a little special music is in order. Thank you, Aaron Copeland. But really, no, in all seriousness, I wanted to take a moment and thank everybody for their gestures of support and encouragement about the podcast and the blog. These things are always appreciated. And reaching podcast number 40, that's a big deal. And so, it's going to be a big podcast. I recorded an interview this week with a couple of the authors of a new book called Working the Patrol Method. And it is a longish interview, but I think it's going to be worth your time. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Here it comes.

There you go. Celebration concluded. And 40 is the new 30, right? Well, anyway, this interview that I recorded is a little long, and I considered trying to break it up over a couple of podcasts, but I wanted to keep it together because I think it's worth your time, and we'll look at it in a moment. But there's plenty of things that have come in in the way of comments and emails and tweets over the past week, and so I wanted to make sure to acknowledge them and to answer a couple of questions. Alan from Tulsa said, I love your show. Find myself looking forward to each Monday. Keep it up. Well, thank you, Alan. I'm going to do my best. Here's another. I wanted to pass on my thanks for your continued excellent work on the podcast. You have consistently put out a thoughtful and insightful program week after week, and I appreciate the hard work and effort you put into it. In regards to the jokes on the top of each podcast, I found them to be clever and at times chin-scratch worthy. I'm still getting a chuckle over the penguin canoe desert joke. Oh, let's not bring that up again. Anyway, he goes on to say, keep up the good work. The podcast and blog give me lots of food for thought and helps keep me going along knowing that those who travel with me have the same questions as I and that those who have come before are there to show me the way. And that's from Jason. Jason, thank you for the kind words. Jason's in Golden, Colorado. You will have noticed on the blog over the past week or two, we did a survey called the Patrol System Survey, and many of you answered that. I think we got 90 answers altogether before we shut the survey down. And I have taken the survey results and analyzed them, and you'll find them on the blog. And to find the blog, you go to scoutmaster.typepad.com. Scoutmaster.typepad.com. Look up in the upper right-hand corner, and you'll find a link to a PDF file that is the results of the Patrol System Survey. And Scouter Adam sent me a tweet, and it said, the Patrol System Survey results, amazing results, great info. I had this email. I wanted to send you another thank you for your survey. Since taking over as a scoutmaster, I've made some small, subtle changes to nudge us towards my understanding of Boy Run. I was quite pleased to read your comments on the effects of proximity on leadership. It was very reinforcing to my hunch regarding the importance of some physical distance. What he's referring to there is keeping adults away from scouts who are leading so that they can actually lead and the adults don't interfere. I also liked your comments about leadership advice being best given in small doses and being related to immediate tasks. I have found this to be true time and time again. And since my son is the current senior patrol leader, it's good for me to keep this in mind. Thanks for continuing to share your knowledge and experience. Every day there are new scoutmasters, such as myself, who learn from it and are reinforced by it. And that is from John. Well, John, thanks right again there for some very kind comments. On the blog, I had this comment from Michael about the survey. He says, very interesting results and eye-opening. The range of troop cultures is quite remarkable. If you decide to expand upon your section on methodology and potential sampling error, I have a couple of comments. And then Michael goes on to mention a couple of questions in the survey and the way it was constructed that could be easily misunderstood. And Michael, I couldn't agree with you more. What happened is that I put the survey together and then, you know, got it rolling. And as soon as people started answering questions, I saw, ooh, that I had not framed some of the questions very well and that they would probably be easily misunderstood. But I couldn't go back in and change them at that point. So in future surveys, I'm going to try and do a bit of a better job. Michael goes on to say, otherwise, I thought your questions and phrasing were dead on and the results were very useful to this assistant scoutmaster. Another thing I've been getting a fair number of comments and requests on are the jokes on the podcast. Now, you'd say jokes. At the beginning of the podcast, I'd try and tell a joke or a humorous anecdote. And jokes is the best definition I can come up for with that particular section. But, you know, it's arguable, I guess. And I had this email from David. He says, I was listening to your podcast 38 and I'd like to get your jokes. Also, is there a link on your website or blog that I'm missing? Well, David, there is one now. Because after I got your email, I sat down and I made up a PDF file of the jokes from the Scoutmaster podcast. And they are on the blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com. And for these, you want to go over to the left-hand column and you'll see a little joke archive from the Scoutmaster blog. After I put that up, I got this comment. Thanks, Clark. Our troop has the fall camperee this weekend and now I'm ready to entertain. I'll have something for the long drive to summer camp as well. And that's from Will. Well, Will, remember, these are only jokes by definition and that there's a very fine line between entertainment and torture. Alan Ward sent this tweet. He said, thanks for sharing the joke list. I love the opening jokes. Keep up the fine work. I learn a lot from you. Well, thank you, Alan. We had an interview, a podcast or two ago with Larry Geiger, Scoutmaster down in Florida. And I got this tweet from Tim. Tim says, great interview with Larry Geiger. He has a very concise one-line job description for boy leaders lead, inspire, and train. And that's definitely gone into my lexicon of handy phrases. Tim, I couldn't agree with you more. Lead, inspire, and train. Also, on our last podcast, Podcast 39, we talked a little bit about courts of honor and ceremonies and such. And I had this comment from Larry Geiger. I, like you, like a specified ceremony. But the scouts usually want something else. So off they go, Googling and writing. And I never know exactly what's going to happen until it happens. If you're a Scoutmaster and you have a significant role in your court of honor, or you're nervous about how it's going to go in your role in it, then you're over-involved. That's a good rule of thumb, Larry. If you're nervous, you're over-involved. That's not bad. Like camping, this is one thing the scouts can do and do well. Nothing puts boys on alert like getting up in front of a crowd. Last night, I was throwing away a bunch of stuff, and I found an old court of honor agenda that the senior patrol leader had done. He left it on the podium, and I had picked it up on my way out the door and shoved it into my notebook. It was something he got off the internet. Basically, he printed it out and then just marked all over it and scribbled some stuff out and renumbered things. It was a real mess. I don't know how he followed it, but he did just fine. If I had more space, I would frame it and put it up in our meeting room. And, Larry, I couldn't agree with you more. That is a fantastic approach to courts of honor and just about anything else in scouting. Go to the scouts. What do you want to do, fellas? How do you want to handle this? How do you want to manage it? And you'll be amazed with the results. That's for sure. I had this comment about Podcast 39. Great podcast, as always. I really enjoy your format with the music interludes and your raw humor. Anyway, you said your troop has a list of items that work well purchased from Campmore. And I see there is a campmore.com, so anybody can order from them. Could you post your list of equipment? And that's from Mark. And, Mark, I will do that this week. What I need to do is get a call into Campmore and make sure I have the information about how to obtain their scout troop discount and exactly what is involved with that. And I want to make sure to expand upon the list and explain exactly why we chose some of the stuff we chose. But I will get that done within the next several days, Mark, and I appreciate the question. Well, like I promised, we have an interview coming up. It's a little bit longer than normal, but I think you'll find it's worth your time. And I think we need to get started. Shall we? Hey, this is Clark Green with the Scoutmaster Podcast, and I am happy to have on Skype with me Rob Ferris and Harry Wimbrough, two of the three authors of a book called Working the Patrol Method. How are you guys doing this evening? We're great, Clark. We're great, Clark. So, Rob, you've got five kits, from what I can tell you. That's right, I do. I do. One of them is an Eagle Scout, and the others are on the way, huh? Well, except for my daughter. Well, yeah, yeah. She was in part inspiration for what we wrote. But she's been a constant supporter, and she actually reviewed a part of the books. You became an Eagle Scout back in the late 60s, early 70s. And then when your oldest son turned 11, you got back in. Just briefly tell me what this statement in the book means. It says, Wood Badge changed your life. Wood Badge was what made me finally get the patrol method inside and out. And it was just an incredible experience for me. It allowed us to actually practice the patrol method as adults, and then to step back and actually realize, okay, how do we create this kind of teamwork? How do we create this kind of camaraderie with our scouts back in our units? And it was an amazing experience. Let me also introduce Harry, Harry Wimbrough. And you also became an Eagle Scout in the mid-70s? Yes, 1975. When you wrote the introduction to this book, your son Joe was on his way. Has he made it yet? Not yet. I keep reminding him on a daily basis that his time is running out. He's a senior in high school, plays in three different bands, plays the flute, and has a girlfriend. So I'm reminded that his time is running out. You and two million other dads are doing the exact same thing. Well, even though I made my Eagle in 75, what a lot of people don't know is I set my board, or got presented my Eagle after I had already completed basic and AIT for the Army. Oh, no kidding. So you were right up against it too, huh? Oh, yes, I was right up against it. Well, you know, your secret is safe with me. I will not tell Joe that. I'll bet he already knows, though. He already knows. Oh, I want to also mention Ted Knight, who is one of your co-authors. You had the three of you author this, and unfortunately Ted couldn't join us this evening. The book is called Working the Patrol Method, and there was a specific reason that you stayed in the book for having gotten it started and taken it all the way through to press. Tell me, guys, who is Bryson Bort? Bryson Bort is an Eagle alumni of our unit. He joined the United States Army, was stationed with the Army where he was exercising a leadership position. As he got into that and started trying to do his job effectively, what he realized was that many, many things that he learned in Boy Scouts were invaluable to him in assisting him and informing him as to how to be a leader in the United States Army. You begin in the first pages of the book with an email that you got from Bryson. It is a very inspirational introduction to the book. It really kind of sets the tone. Why don't you describe exactly what you were after in going through the work to write this book? It must have taken ages. It was a labor of love, Clark, but it actually literally took some years. It took us about four years to put it all together. The stories that are in the book are actual stories that we could take and mold and write about how the adult leader coached and mentored and taught the young scout. What do we call those in the book here? Campfire yarns? Yeah, yarns. Just as Maiden Powell called his stories yarns. We adopt his terminology. They are tremendously helpful in kind of putting some meat on the bones of the concepts that you're talking about because a lot of what was in them was very familiar to me as a scout master. Pretty typical stories that happen in scout troops all over the country. Actually, a lot of what scout masters will see, or I'm experienced scout masters will see in our book, as you say, Clark, will be very familiar. It'll be situations that they've confronted themselves or that they've seen other leaders in their units confront. One of our goals is to suggest at least what's the most appropriate or effective or at least some ideas for some good ways to respond or to react that will further the goal of leadership development. You know, scouting is a game with a purpose. And scout leadership, you know, for youth leadership, you have to turn it into a game for them so that they don't really realize that they're actually learning something, but it's a game. So the yarns are a good way to start. Everybody likes a good story. There's a lot that I've read in the book that I've written on the blog in years past. We're all taking the lead from good old Baden-Powell. So it's not unusual that we should have some of the same ideas and things, but it's been pretty amazing. It's not, of course, that any of us are thinking that any of this is particularly unique. As you say, this is what Baden-Powell intended. Yeah, he was there before any of us. He defined all this, and it seems like that at least some of us in the scouting organization have gotten away from some of the basic things that were probably very clearly evident in 1911. It's just not as emphasized in the training materials. And it's kind of there, but it's not highlighted. You know, I teach, this is Harry, I teach scoutmaster specifics. And the piece for the patrol method is, you know, you get 20 minutes. You just hit the highlights. You really can't, you can't teach the scoutmasters everything that they really need to know. You talk about leadership training and mentoring as being something that is hands-on and not theoretical. You take a young scout. He's been in the classroom all day long. So when he comes to a scout meeting, you don't want to sitting down and talk leadership. You want to put some of it into practical application. But you allow that 11, 12, 13-year-old boy that's in charge of his patrol, you know, kind of make a mistake. And then you're pulling off to the side and you say, okay, what could you have done a little bit better? What went right? What went wrong? And what can you do to improve on it the next time? You let that, you let the boy kind of make those decisions, but you as the leader don't make them foreign. Harry, you're telling me that these guys are going to make mistakes? You know, I don't know about too many leaders that don't make mistakes every day. We, as the leaders, have to be there to kind of pick them back up and say, yeah, okay, yeah, you made a mistake. All right? So, yeah, you got to be there to kind of coach them along and show them maybe a different direction. You spend a lot of time in the book talking history. Why is it important that we understand the history of scouting? Baden-Powell lived 100 years ago. And so you could look back and say, okay, well, yes, scouting is traditional. Of course, we've got all these great traditions. What did what Baden-Powell wrote almost a century ago, what does that really have to do with what's going on in the 21st century? And the fact of the matter is that if you go back and read what Baden-Powell went through in order to create scouting, what influences did he have upon himself? Where did this all come from? What you end up finding is that he had a mixture of remarkable influences. And out of it, out of all of that came what he referred to as, you know, his experimental summer camp at Brown Sea Island. It wasn't just the first Boy Scout summer camp. It was actually the model for the successful implementation of the patrol method. That has never been done before. I mean, he was the first to do that. And it was revolutionary. You know, if you want to be an effective leader, you've got to know a little bit about scouting. You know, so you've got to learn about Baden-Powell and some of the other great leaders that we've had, you know, within the scouting movement. You know, just like, you know, we teach U.S. history in our schools. Why is that? So that we can understand, you know, why our forefathers wrote the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. There's something about the history of scouting that helps put things in context for us. And then I was very impressed with a statement that you make in the book about stewardship and the stewardship of the scouting movement. What can you tell me about that? Modern scout leaders are actually following in the footsteps of a century of highly illustrious, highly motivated, highly passionate, and experienced scout leaders that went before us. We are the ones who have now been handed the torch. We scout leaders. And we owe those in the program who came before us the responsibility to carry that torch as effectively as possible into this new century. Okay, so let me give you this scenario. I'm a brand new, newly minted scout leader, and you've got 30 seconds to talk to me. What are you going to tell me to do? Read the book. Go talk to your SPL and ask the SPL what he wants you to do. And hopefully the SPL will tell you to go sit in the corner. If we need your help, we'll let you know. What we say on page 10 of the book, there's a paragraph in there which actually arguably tells it all. It says, leadership training and mentoring in a scout troop is actually very simple. Any scout master who puts his mind to it can do it. Trust and respect your scouts. Use the patrol method. Give your scouts real responsibility. Mentor. Motivate. Recognize results. What we would tell a new scout leader is do those things. Those are the important things to do. Look at the program from the standpoint of the boys and do those things. But in order to do those things right requires either experience, which obviously takes some time to get, or you can also go and talk to your scout master or district training people or other resources. And we also quote another thing in this book that Will Rogers once said. He said, there are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by reading, the few who learn by observation, and the rest of us have to pee on the electric fence and find out for ourselves. And that's what happens to most scout masters. It's a trial and error occupation, I guess you could say. So what we'd like to do is to give some new leaders a shortcut rather than having to learn everything the hard way. Maybe we can give them sort of a leg up on the learning curve as well as an orientation. So instead of heading off in a direction other than the one that will lead them to a scout-led and scout-run troop, we can sort of orient them in the right direction, that in their journey, in that direction toward a scout-led troop, that they will find a more rewarding and more effective leadership role for themselves. In particular, they'll be much more effective in teaching their scouts how to become leaders. So at one point, you guys were both newly minted adult leaders, and you jumped in with both feet. What has changed about your approach from that first day to what you're doing now? I think we can both say that radical changes have occurred since each of us began being scout leaders. Yes. We are both very energetic, sort of potentially do-it-all kind of people who have ideas. And I think that when we both started as newly minted adult leaders, we were not effective in terms of developing a scout-led and scout-run program. We were acting as patrol leaders ourselves, as adult patrol leaders, as opposed to scout leaders who will allow the boys to be the patrol leaders and the boys to be the leaders. Well, isn't it kind of messy when you let the boys do that? That's the fun part. That's the fun part, you know. Well, you know, but that's, you know, I'm a retired command sergeant major after 30 years in the Army. A leader, and they, you know, they say the big difference between the Army and Boy Scouts is that the Boy Scouts have adult leaders. Every time that one of my non-commissioned officers made a mistake, if I crucified him, they wouldn't learn. They would shut down. And I find the same thing with the boys. The boys, if you always are telling them that this is what you did wrong, this is what you did wrong, this is what you did wrong, this is what you did wrong, well, then they're going to stop doing anything because all they know is, oh, I'm just going to get hollered at by Mr. Wimbrough because it's not being done his way. And that's where I had to step back and really take a look and kind of adjust my leadership style from the Army to Boy Scouts, to scouting. And it works in both places. Yes. It works in scouting, and it worked in the Army, too. When I first became a non-commissioned officer at the age of 19, I was a pretty hard charge in NCO. So I had a wise squad leader and platoon sergeant pull me off to the side and say, you know, Sergeant Wimbrough, he says, you're going to go far in this man's army. However, you need to change some of your leadership style. So I did. There was a particularly interesting section of the book, and section seven is called Planning, How to Facilitate Without Taking Over. How do you facilitate youth planning without just kind of jumping in and doing it for them? Our experience, Clark, is that that actually is one of the most difficult things for a scoutmaster to do. Scouts that are age, you know, 14, 15, patrol leader age are not generally very good at long-range planning. Their time window for planning is totally different from adults. You know, oftentimes scouts are worrying about what they're going to have for lunch, you know, five minutes before they're supposed to eat it. You know, we're asking them to do some planning where, so it's October. Next June, we're going to go to, you know, we're going to go caving next June, and we better start making the arrangements. And they'll look at you like you have to have your head examined. What do you mean? That's next June. What are you talking about? Why are we worried about that? That's a lifetime away. If you're a program director for a camporee, you're planning that camporee a year out. And you know about it at troop meetings. And the boys, just an example, we had a camporee last weekend. The boys started really planning for it two weeks ago. And then the meeting before the camporee is they finalized their meal plans and figured out who was going to buy what food and what time they were going to meet. They had it well under control. As adults, we do long-term planning and short-term planning. The boys plan, when am I going to eat? When am I going to sleep? When am I going to eat? When am I going to sleep? I have a pair of socks. It's good. I don't have to worry about anything else. Have you been talking to my scouts, Harry? And I've been talking to my son. But one thing that the boys, we're going to go camping, but they don't think about the tour permits, safety forms, and all the health forms and stuff like that. And that's where you've got to kind of coach them along on that area until when they start getting used to doing some of the planning. Then they can say, oh, we need to talk to somebody on the committee to get our tour permit. We need to make sure that we have the permission forms. But it takes time. And it takes the coaching and the mentoring of an adult leader to be able to do that. And it's actually a very valuable life skill that an adult leader will be teaching his scouts in taking them through that exercise. It seems to us that there's some pretty important things involved. One of them is the expectation of how much planning. So adults have an expectation of probably much more intense and much more detailed planning than any scout is going to have, unless maybe they're an older scout. And also one of the points we make in our book is that, well, depending upon what it is, you may not need that intense level of planning. So, for example, if you're a type A scout master and you don't want to disappoint the parents by making your unit look like it's disorganized, you want everything organized and running like clockwork, that means you need a very detailed plan. So that way everyone knows everything that's going to happen in advance. Then our suggestion is, well, okay, look at what the objective is. So if it's just a weekend camp out at a local park or whatever, do you need that level of planning? Or would you rather leave it up a little bit up in the air and let the scouts work through it and then actually learn from the experience? Sometimes you do need that level of planning. If you're going to be doing something pretty intense, you know, some kind of high adventure program where you are worried about health and safety kind of issues, absolutely. An adult needs to make sure that those details are locked down and solid. But it does seem to be helpful for a scout master to talk with the parents and to create an expectation that, look, this is not an adult-run and adult-planned unit here. We give our scouts major responsibility for planning and execution. And if things don't go 100% perfectly, well, guess what? That's the way it's supposed to be. And as long as the boys have a good time, they probably planned it that way. Well, I'm going to be the devil's advocate here for a moment. I mean, honestly, guys, I can expect a 15-, 16-, 17-year-old scout to be thinking about things like tour permits and permission slips and stuff like that. I mean, I'm the scout master. Isn't that my job? Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing? So at that point, it ends up being an issue of responsibility. And we agree, Clark, that it's going to be probably an undue expectation for a 14-, 15-year-old scout to be worried about a tour permit and whether all the medical forms are filed and are brought along with the unit. But at the same time, they shouldn't be oblivious to it either. Maybe he's not getting the tour permit, but he knows the adult on the committee that gets the tour permits for us. And that becomes a teaching point, that teaching and coaching. You know, you might want to say, hey, have you talked to the tour permit committee member? So it becomes more of a teaching point than really for him to be a player. But it's something for him to think about as he goes along. So maybe the next time, when he does, as a patrol leader, plans an outing, he knows that, you know, I need to talk to Mr. Smith about tour permits. I can see that, Harry. But like I said, I'm still being a devil's advocate here. That makes sense. But isn't that just, as a scout master, isn't that just easier for me to do myself? Yeah, it'd be easier for you to do it yourself. But what are you teaching the boy to do it yourself? And actually, Clark, that's actually a great comment, because you could extend that to just about everything we're talking about. Isn't it easier for the scout master to do it himself? Isn't it easier for the scout master to define the whole plan for the whole year? Isn't it easier for the scout master to tell patrol leaders exactly what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't it easier to just bypass the patrol leaders and tell the scouts precisely what they're supposed to be doing? That's not the point at all. It is easier. It is easier for a scout master to have an adult-run troop. There is no doubt in my mind that that's the case. It is easier for a scout master to have an adult-run troop. Much less trouble, much less coordination, much more straightforward to have an adult-run troop. A scout-run troop, that's hard. A scout-run troop is harder, because now the adult, now the scout leaders have to start thinking about their interventions. Do we really want to step in and command this or direct that or structure this? Or is this something that the scouts are able to do, perfectly capable of doing? And yet if we step in as adults, the scouts will just back right off and let the adult do it. I mean, I think most experienced scout masters would almost certainly say the same thing. Oh, yeah. Adult-run troops. That's easy. Much easier. It's certainly a lot less wear and tear on the scout master's nerves. Right, and it also takes less time. I mean, the fact of the matter is that it takes more time to have a scout-run troop. It's like, wait a second. And actually, Baden Powell specifically said that. One of the things that he wrote, I can't quote it exactly, but he said something up to paraphrase. He said that what you're supposed to do is to allow your patrol leaders to do as much as possible. It's not so much to save the scout master time. It's to train the scout. And that's what the point is. I continue in my advocacy role for the devil. But parents in our troop are just not going to put up with me sitting around and not doing these things. My committee is going to go crazy if I tell them that we're going to let the boys plan and lead these things. They're expecting me to do that. I mean, how do I handle a situation like that? As the scout master, you have to tell them, you know, go sit in the corner. Let the boys do it. Let the boys come to you and ask you for what they need from the committee. The committee is there to support. Parents do more for their children today than when you and I were growing up. And so they have to allow their boys to spread their wings a little bit earlier than what they normally would at the age of 18 or 19. And so you just got to pull them and say this is a boy. Let the boys do it. You know, yes, it may look like chaos, but it's a boy controlled chaos. The other thing that I would say is that that I agree, Clark, that is that your question is one of the biggest quandaries of a scout master who wants to have a scout led troop. Wait a minute. I'm the scout master. All the parents are expecting me to be the leader. All the scouts are expecting me to be the leader. The program is expecting me to be the leader. That means what? Does that mean that that I, as scout master, need to stand up in front, make all the all the important decisions? Or is there another approach where it's the boys who are up in front? It's the boys who are making the important decisions. It's the boys who are the most visible leaders. And I'll just quote from something which Ronald Reagan said. We've got this quote in our book as well. He says, there's no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn't mind who gets the credit. The scouts are the ones who should be getting the credit for the successes and taking the responsibilities for things that don't work out all that well. So if I invest my scouts with the authority and the responsibility to plan these things, aren't they going to miss some stuff? I mean, wouldn't they get more out of it if I was planning outings and things? Aren't they going to miss opportunities? Just the opposite. Just the opposite. If I, as the adult leader, plan everything, being the type of person that I am, I've written a five-paragraph operations order and have all my execution checklists and execution matrix so that I know everything is going. I've got to have this, this, and everything is going well. Yeah. Okay. Great. But if the boys plan it and say they, you know, they're going to learn from their mistakes, they actually might miss some opportunities in one respect and gain immeasurably other opportunities on the other side. So in a world where our scouts, at least many of them in many parts of the countries, are expecting to be entertained by adults and programmed up the wazoo, out the wazoo by the adults to put the scouts in charge and have responsibility for figuring out what they're going to do. That's an opportunity. If I'm not making sure that it's, you know, really a whiz-bang program and everything, aren't they going to just leave the troop? How am I going to attract new scouts if the scouts are just caught up in leading and doing all this stuff all the time? I mean, they won't be doing anything fun. That's the key. They are doing fun things because they're the ones that are planning the program with the resources that you've given them. With the boys planning the program, with the boys executing their program, that's what's going to keep them active. Because if you as the adult planet, they're saying, huh, okay, yep, here we go again. We're doing the same stuff and we're not doing what we want to do. And the other thing I would add is that it's not like the scoutmaster just sits back and lets the program fall apart. You might need to do that on occasion in order to make sure the boys understand that it's their responsibility, that if they don't do it, it's not happening. But this is where the mentoring and the coaching and the advising comes in, where you don't tell them what to do. You do what any respectful leader will do when training a new leader, okay? Let me show you some resources. Let your scout develop it. And at that point, you're not the one who's dictating it. He's deciding it. He's got responsibility for it. He'll execute it. It'll be great. He'll take the credit for it. He'll have a big smile on his face. He'll have learned a ton of stuff about himself and about how to be an effective leader. So you guys must have a troop of just who are some kind of superhero scouts because my scouts, they wouldn't be able to do this, would they? You know, any scouts would be able to do it. And no, our own troop is not superheroes or anything like that. So obviously, it doesn't always work 100% because basically these scouts who are planning these program events are inexperienced and they have a lot to learn. And so in the course of learning, they may not be able to put on something that is as perfect and clockwork as an experienced type A adult who is planning the whole thing from beginning to end and thought of every detail. It's just not going to be like that. It's more going to be like making sausage as opposed to having some pristine, elegant, finished product that just hand it off to the scouts and say, okay, you guys execute this. If you do this, it'll be great. But you are sacrificing something. There's no doubt about it. In a scout run troop, at least until you end up being able to retain the 16 and 17-year-olds who are now in the habit of taking responsibility and making these kind of decisions. There's going to be a lag. And this is where persistence comes in. This is where you have to keep your eye on the objective as a scout master. What are you trying to accomplish here? Are you trying to have a 100% perfect program? Or are you trying to train new leaders? So I've been to the training and I watched the videos and everything looks really perfect in those videos. And I showed this to my scouts and I went and I worked with them on this. And they're looking at it like a dog with a new pan. They don't seem to understand any of it. They don't plan anything. They don't do anything. So what am I supposed to do? Yeah. I mean. That's a tough one, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah. But maybe what you have to do is take a boy that's not a patrol leader yet but is maybe a first-class scout. He wants to be a patrol leader. So you're sending off to the NYLT, the National Youth Leadership Force. That will kind of get him excited about the program. And he brings it back in kind of making like a leadership trainer so that he can get an advisor to other patrol leaders. Kind of like a troop guide for leadership. If the boys just want to sit around and let the adults do it, well, then what you do is you plan a weekend where you just go and you sit around. And when the boys say, well, this wasn't very much fun, then you say, okay. If you had to plan something, we might have been able to have some fun activities while we were on this camping trip. But you left it all up to me as the adult. The only thing I wanted to do was go out to the woods and sit on the rock next to the fire. For me, that's a fun time. But, you know, maybe before that, you have a conversation with your patrol leader's council. Say, gentlemen, this is your weekend. You're going to plan this weekend. And whatever you plan within reason, as long as there's no issues with health and safety, I, as your scoutmaster, are going to go along with it. But it's your responsibility to plan. And so you challenge them and make them understand that maybe for the first time in their whole lives, they're able to actually plan their own time for a whole weekend. They get to do what they want to do. It's their responsibility and it's their privilege to do it. And no adult is going to tell them, oh, you can't do that. You can't do this. You have to do this and you have to do that. And that is an amazing opportunity for a 21st century, you know, 15-year-old. Because most of them, many of them, at least in many parts of the country, many of them never get that opportunity. If I do this, if I tell them that they can do anything they want to do, all they're going to do is sit around and play video games and, you know, they'll just eat whatever they want to eat. And they probably won't get any requirements done. And, you know, so how in the world can I just let them have carte blanche to go and do whatever they want to do? If you just go and do requirements for the weekend, well, that's not the right way. You go and you do an event and then you have them look at their book and see what requirements that they might have did. And the other thing is that if you challenge your scouts to come up with something, you'll be amazed. Exactly. You'll be amazed. Sometimes, often actually, they will come up with something that you as a scoutmaster would never have thought of in a million years. It's not because it's not appropriate. It's not because it's not safe. It's entirely safe and it's entirely appropriate. And it's theirs. It's not your idea. It's their idea. And it might not be something that you as a, you know, as a 40 or 50 or whatever year old scoutmaster might think is what those boys are going to want to do. So if you had been dictating it, you would never in a million years have thought of doing that. But it ends up being a blast for them. They absolutely love it. And they own it. It's theirs and they own it. We're not wired the same way as a 14, 15-year-old is. They're wired just a little bit different. And sometimes it's hard to remember that we were that 13, 14-year-old boy doing the same thing. Talk to me a little bit about, you have a section about caring leadership. What is caring leadership? Tell leaders three things. One, lead from the front. Set the example and take care of your people. You've got to know them. Everybody that's in your patrol is a valuable member. But you as a leader, you have to know what's his likes and dislikes. And caring leadership actually is one of the most important things to get across to our young leaders because it really is part of the key to the whole thing. Anyone who's studied and worked with adolescents, anyone who's tried to have anything to do with the scout troop knows that a 14- or 15-year-old boy is pretty self-absorbed. They're thinking, oftentimes, they're thinking about one person and that's themselves. To get them to think about the 11-year-old who's just joined the troop and needs some mentoring and some help. And that's important. And that's, once again, that's something that at least some scouts, it's going to be a real revelation for them that they're supposed to be thinking about younger scouts. They're supposed to be caring about those younger kids. But that's what our program is based on. I think, fellas, that we've just scratched the surface of what's in the book. And it's arranged in a way that's very accessible. I think it's just an excellent resource for scout leaders. So let me ask you this, guys. If you get discouraged and you get down and things aren't going quite so well as a scout leader, what makes you keep at it? What do you think about that kind of reanimates you and gets you moving again? Although we can take inspiration from people like Baden-Powell, and that certainly is one place to go. But the other place to go is just to watch your boys. Watch how they're interacting with one another and reflect on the huge potential there. And that you, as a scout leader, can have a major impact on their lives. And so when you start thinking about that, it's pretty hard to stay discouraged for long. When I get discouraged, one of the things that keeps me going is when you sit in a scout master conference and you talk to a boy. And you're asking what he wants to do. And he says, I want to be an Eagle Scout. And you're asking, well, why do you want to be an Eagle Scout? He says, because scouting and Eagle Scouts make a difference. And that kind of rejuvenates me a little bit. And just looking at the boys and their smiles, you know, at the end of a camping trip when it's been raining and you've been miserable, and they say, oh, man, was that a great time or what? The best times always have rain involved, apparently. Always. I mean, that's my experience. Or snow. Or snow. Yeah. Rob, I'll start with you. Tell me your best scouting moment. My best scouting moment is, I would have to say, is a series of discrete events where scouts have come up to me after they have been able to lead activities. And come up to me and say, Mr. Ferris, that was the best. That was the best thing we've ever done in scouting. Those moments are just exhilarating. You just feel on the top of the world that you've made a difference. So, Harry, you're up. What's your best scouting moment? Actually happened last year when I was able to, I was a crew advisor for a crew that went to Philmont. And finally, towards the end, the crew came together as one. And they really got it. And on the bus ride, when they presented me with a belt buckle, I finally realized that they finally got it and what it really meant. That was probably one of my greatest scouting moments. The book is available at scoutleadership.com. You can order with a PayPal account or a credit card, and you'll be able to get the book. And it's a very modest 1998 with shipping. You're taking some of the profits from this and dedicating them to the troop. Is that right? Actually, not just the troop, but to some other worthy scouting organizations. So, that's absolutely right. We wrote this book not to make a profit, I guarantee you. Our main interest with this book is to get the word out on the patrol method. I mean, to try and leave our own legacy by getting that word out to 21st Century Scout leaders. So, we're trying to make a difference. And that's the only reason why we undertook this endeavor. And if you want five or more copies, there's a discount available. Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Just send us an email, and we're happy to accommodate. Yeah, to work through that. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you, it comes with my highest recommendations. I'll have a link to it on the blog, folks, so that you can find your way to a place where you can order the book. And I really appreciate having talked with you, Rob and Harry. It's always good to talk to Scouters. Once again, congratulations on a piece of work well done. Yeah, it's our privilege to talk with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. For discovering us and tracking us down and for doing this. This is absolutely terrific. We very much appreciate it. Thanks for listening once again. I know that this is, it's been a longer podcast than usual, but I hope you found it was worth your time. You can read the Scoutmaster blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com. T-Y-P-E-P-A-D. Scoutmaster.typepad.com. You can follow us at Scoutmaster Blog on Facebook and ScoutmasterCG on Twitter. You can subscribe to the Scoutmaster Podcast on iTunes. And when you do, feel free to leave a comment or a review or a rating. You can email me, Clark Green, with all your comments and questions at ClarkGreen at gmail.com. And it's C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-N at gmail.com. The Scoutmaster Blog and the Scoutmaster Podcast are not official publications of the Boy Scouts of America, nor are they endorsed or sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America. No, it's just me talking into a microphone, trying to lend a hand to Scout leaders and perhaps have a little bit of fun along the way. Well, before we leave you, as we always do, we want to hear from the founder of Scouting, Sir Robert Baden Powell. Sir Robert, it's your turn. Good luck to you and good camping. Well, thank you, Sir Robert. Thanks for joining me on podcast number 40. And we look forward to seeing you again soon. So until next time. Good luck. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo