Scoutmaster Podcast 43

And now, to you, Scoutmaster.

Alright, there's some things that we say as Scout leaders that are taken in exactly the opposite meaning. I'll give you an example. If on a camping trip, I say, lights out, all quiet. It is heard as, it's time to test your flashlight and to talk in a very loud voice. I mean, am I right or am I right? Hey, this is podcast number 43.

Welcome to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clark Green. Hey, I found this blog post on Brian Spellman's blog. He's a Scoutmaster in Fishers, Indiana. He says he's a new Scoutmaster. And, you know, we do a lot of talking about youth leadership and the patrol method and things like that. We talk about our place as leaders and training and trusting and letting the boys lead. That's a tough piece of work. Sometimes you don't see very much. Well, Brian saw something and this is what he wrote on his blog. He says, you know, you think you know when it works, but you really don't. It seems to be going right and everything starts to fall in line just like they told you at training. And you're positive it's working. You talk to other leaders and you chat on forums and you post on Twitter about how it's working for you. And then it happens. You see it and it works. You've been standing on the mountaintop proud of your Scouts when you are really just on a cloudy ledge and the mist clears and you see the top. This is what happened last night. I've been very proud of my Scouts, but man oh man, did last night take the cake. There were 68 Scouts plus 23 visiting Weevlows at the meeting last night. Assistant Senior Patrol leaders sat out front and welcomed the Weevlows and directed them where to go. Flags were put out. The meeting started, patrol meetings run, troop white skill demo gave and game played with the Weevlows and I did nothing. Well, not nothing. I talked with the Weevlows parents. I signed off a handbook, signed off an Eagle project, gave a star Scoutmaster conference and later in the evening an Eagle Scoutmaster conference. Finally, I talked to the troop with about 10 minutes left in the meeting just to plea for den chiefs and then a Scoutmaster minute. I talked with my senior patrol leader afterwards. His patrol leader's counsel is doing a great job and the troop is really humming. But for some reason, last night, illustrated for me just how far they've taken the troop in a few short months and I couldn't be prouder. I think everybody's had that experience. I mean, we have the experience of looking at things and thinking that they're falling apart. Weird. I mean, I have that experience. But there are times when from your easy chair in the back of the meeting room, you look out. You do have one of those, right? An easy chair in the back of the meeting room. I suggest you get one as quickly as possible. You look out and you see that things are really working. This scouting, it really works. It really, really does. Thank you, Brian. I really enjoyed reading that. We talked about hazing last time around. Larry Geiger had this to say. There are some Scoutmasters who, based on their own experience as a boy, think that young men need some shaking up or that they need to be challenged and tested. They need to run some kind of gauntlet. They may think that they should be tough and demanding or harsh and that they should put their Scouts through some kind of trial. Now, they're partly right, but they're misguided. Scouting is challenging, but without being negative. A Scout's first summer camp or trek to Philmont is a test, a challenge, that does shape up a Scout's mental and physical and spiritual makeup. A trip without Mom and Dad at 11 years old is enough all by itself to, you know, be pretty frightening to a new Scout. He surely doesn't need a snipe hunt to do that. Taking a young Scout on his first backpacking trip miles into the woods with nothing but a trail and some blazes to find his way back is really a rite of passage. Surveying a disastrous Sunday morning breakfast and thinking, I'm going to starve to death before Sunday dinner, is enough to give a hungry 11-year-old fits. Walking into the woods with a bunch of Scouts that you don't know and have just met most of them older and more experienced than you and some of them adult-sized is intimidating enough. Do Scouting Right and the young men will talk all their life about how Scouting shaped them up and helped them to grow. How the challenges were very real to them. What we see as normal everyday challenges in Scouting are a rite of passage for most young men. And for those young men who look for more challenge, well, we've got a couple of those in our hip pocket too. How about leading, training, and inspiring their fellow Scouts to achieve first-class rank? Or mentor a couple of dozen new Scouts to get first-class rank? Now, there's a challenge for them. Larry, you put it just right. When we do stuff that Scouts do, it's a challenge. It's going to shape them up. It's going to do all those things that we think maybe being harsh or critical or difficult or even some of this hazing stuff might do for them. That's not going to do it for them. We know what's going to do it for them. Scouting is going to do it for them. So in this podcast, I have an email to answer. It's going to take a little while. It's a good email. Good question. And you know what? That's going to be about it this time around. It is really busy around here. Got a lot of irons in the fire. A lot of scouting going on. And I think it's time we get started, shall we? Write me a letter. Send it by mail. Email, that is, folks. And here's an answer to one of your emails.

This email comes to me from Tim. Tim says, I've been intently reading your blog now for about six months. I've come to value your insight and embrace your principles. Now I consider myself one of your disciples. Oh, Tim. No, I appreciate it. Kind words. Disciple? Putting a little pressure on me there, brother. That's fine, though. He goes on to say, as a former Scoutmaster, now Chartered Organization Representative, I want to ask your thoughts about the fulfillment of the leadership requirement, especially as it pertains to the patrol leader, and more specifically, as it relates to the Eagle candidate. I understand that leadership requirements by BSA standard is fulfilled simply by completing the required tenure in qualifying for the position of responsibility. Initially, as a new Scoutmaster, I erroneously and ignorantly established a minimum qualifying percentile of participation in troop activities, with the commonly held assumption that this would compel patrol leaders to be more dutiful to their patrols. Fortunately, I became aware through some research that I did that this practice was contrary to BSA policy, and I immediately stopped it. I recognize that the BSA concludes the participation policy with the following statement. Unit leaders must ensure that he is fulfilling the obligations of his assigned leader position. If he is not, then they should remove the Scout from that position. Now, we have a few Scouts that get elected as patrol leaders and then habitually neglect to attend campouts, oftentimes without the backup of an assistant patrol leader in attendance as well, leaving three or four Scout, Tenderfoot, and Second Class Scouts without the benefit of the patrol leader that they not only elected, but trusted to lead them. Now, before you retort with the contention that there is something lacking in the program to pique the boys' interest, I assure you this isn't the case. Our overall participation level is really very high by all age levels, and our Patrol Leaders Council controls the troops' program. These patrol leaders, before accepting the position, are informed that the expectation is for them to attend most activities and campouts and provide the greatest opportunity for them to demonstrate their leadership. We emphasize trust, loyalty, and servant leadership in troop leader training. Now, I want to stop there for a moment, because I will guarantee you, Tim, that most of the people who are listening to this podcast could have written me the same email. I guarantee it. I know that I have the same situation, but I'm going to keep moving. Tim goes on to say, At present, we have a patrol leader, aged 14 and a life scout, who is three months into his six-month term so far, is one for three on campout attendance. At last night's troop meeting, he approached our advancement coordinator with a list of Eagle-required merit badges that he was requesting the names of counselors for. The scout then declared he had a deadline to have his Eagle done by June 1st. His dad's kind of a hard-charging, overachieving military type, and the boy is the exact opposite. The scoutmaster and I believe that the boy merely took on the patrol leader position, as directed by his dad, as an avenue to fulfilling the requirement for advancement. It seems to me to be asking a lot of the senior patrol leader to burden him with the unpleasant task of removing a scout from his position. Am I wrong? Should we consider these absences to be justification for removal from his position of a patrol leader? Should he be asked to resign or remove from his position until he can commit to regular attendance? Should he be asked by the senior patrol leader to resign his position of patrol leader and then offered a less demanding position, which he can fulfill the responsibilities of? Should the scout be allowed to continue as patrol leader without consequence? Do the scouts in his patrol have to suffer from his leadership abandonment? I mean, what remedy do they have? Should they elect a new patrol leader to finish out his term? If their votes elected him, wouldn't they be entitled to recall? Should the patrol scouts be informed of that prerogative if it exists and encouraged to exercise it? Can you help us out here? I mean, what are we doing wrong? I'm more than willing to admit that we're doing something wrong. Tell me why it's broken and how can we fix it? I'm mentoring a very enthusiastic but frustrated, committed, and perplexed scoutmaster. This is a perennial dilemma for the both of us. It's easy to see why most troops, albeit incorrectly, hold on to a measurable standard. Well, Tim, it is a pretty familiar story to most scoutmasters, so let's start working on this. Let me answer your last question first. And that is, what are we doing wrong? Well, you aren't doing anything wrong. What you describe is bound to happen. It's not a malfunction or a symptom of some kind of problem with the way you're presenting the program. Now, you say this, and you correctly quote a piece of BSA policy that talks about active tenure as a scout and active leadership. And it says this, unit leaders must ensure that he's fulfilling the obligations of his assigned leadership position. If he's not, then they should remove the scout from that position. And you ask if this is the senior patrol leader's job. Yeah. Yep. The senior patrol leader is the man for the job. He's always nearing the man for the job. But nobody's going to get removed from any position. And nobody's going to have to go through some burdensome procedural to do this. It's really quite simple. It's up for the patrol to decide. You asked a series of questions there, Tim, and I'm going to just go over them one by one. Should we consider these absences to be justification for removal from the position of patrol leader? I think that's an easy answer there. No. No. The scouts in his patrol may think it's a justification to hold a patrol leader election. Now, assuming that you don't appoint patrol leaders and you don't step in and remove them either, right? The next question Tim asks is, should he be asked to resign or removed from his position until he can commit to regular attendance? And I would say that nobody needs to ask him to resign. Nobody needs to remove him from his position as a patrol leader. This is up to his patrol. Should he be asked by the senior patrol leader to resign his position of patrol leader and then offer a less demanding position, which he can fulfill the responsibilities of? Well, if the senior patrol leader sees this as a problem, he'll want to get it fixed. And I'd ask the senior patrol leader exactly what he wants to do about it, and I would make sure that the senior patrol leader sees it as a problem. Nobody has to ask anybody to resign. Should the scout be allowed to continue as patrol leader without consequence? Well, yeah. Yep. But his patrol is going to make the decision of any consequences that there are out there. Do the scouts in his patrol have to suffer from his leadership abandonment? What remedy do they have? Yeah. They have to suffer. I'm laughing, okay, but I understand that this is, you know, I know this is a heartfelt question. But yes, they have to suffer. It's all part of the game. And if they know that they can elect a new patrol leader anytime they want, they won't suffer for long. Meh. Should they elect a new patrol leader to finish out his term? If their votes elected him, wouldn't they be entitled to recall? Shouldn't the patrol scouts be informed that that prerogative exists and encouraged to exercise it? And Tim, there you go. You've answered your own questions. First of all, there's no recall. There's no procedural requirement other than the patrol determining that it's time to elect a new patrol leader. The term a patrol leader serves is the prerogative of the patrol. Now, somewhere in your email, you mentioned that you have a six-month term for patrol leaders. You know, that's fine. But I wouldn't set any kind of artificial term on patrol leadership. I would say that it's the patrol's prerogative to go ahead and have a patrol leader election whenever they want to. It's their patrol. It's their leader. If they select a tenderfoot scout as patrol leader who's 11 years old, I'm going to work with the tenderfoot who's 11 years old. If they select a 14-year-old scout who is a star or life or maybe even eagle, I'm going to work with him. It's their choice. It's what they choose to do. I will give them a little bit of guidance here and there, make some suggestions about, you know, how they should consider candidates for patrol leadership. But boys in a patrol are pretty good at sussing out who is a good leader and who they want to have lead their patrol. I recently watched this happen to a patrol in my troop. The patrol leader was basically a no-show. He wasn't making calls. He wasn't responding to any encouragement from me or the senior patrol leader. I spent some time with one of the scouts in his patrol that was dismayed over the situation. I mean, he had let it be known that he was unhappy that he had a patrol leader that wasn't showing up. So, you know, I asked him how things were going and what he thought he should do about it. And he really didn't know what to do. And I asked him when the patrol planned on having another patrol leader election. And he really didn't know. I mean, he thought that he had to wait for some reason or another or somebody else was going to make the decision as to when they had an election. I told him they could have a patrol leader election anytime they wanted. Within a week or two, they had a new patrol leader. Now, nobody had to remove Mr. No-Show. Nobody had to sit and talk to him and, you know, say that there was a problem and that we needed to fix it or anything like that. The guy's just got a new patrol leader. Now, obviously, this causes us all a little bit of angst. I mean, it causes me angst. You know, you want to fix the problem, but you know that you shouldn't just step in and fix it. You know that the scouts have a role in it. And all they really need is the knowledge to make the changes that they need to make and the forbearance of adults involved not to make the changes for them. You're also pretty sure this may be your fault. I know I am when this comes up. I mean, why wouldn't a guy show up to meetings or outings when he was a patrol leader? And what's, you know, these family trips? What's all this about? Well, it's not our fault. It is beyond the control of anybody. It's what a family decides to do. It's the way life goes. You know, I mean, at one point you have to have a little serendipity about this type of thing. And I got to tell you, the scout isn't really doing anything wrong. He is 14 years old. And that says a lot. That says a lot. Now, that doesn't forgive irresponsibility. It doesn't forgive being cavalier about your leadership position or something like that. But it means that he's 14. And so guiding, mentoring, talking, working through these things with him. That's the best thing to have happen, isn't it? Now, if Tim has read the family situation he describes correctly, and I have no reason to think that you haven't, there's not going to be a whole lot you can do about that either, and I think you pretty much know that. I'll offer this, though. What you see as a hard-driving dad is probably not how you or I would do the job of parenting. But we have to have a little serendipity about that, too. We're not going to change it. Our scouts come to us as they are. Some families are neglectful. Some are over-attentive. Some are, you know, in the full spectrum in between. It's best when we take our scouts as they come to us. We reserve our judgment of how their family is run, and we just let them be scouts. Now, can someone, you know, can this hard-driving dad or a hard-driving parent shortcut the advancement system? Can they lawyer their way through an Eagle badge? Yeah. I mean, they can. It happens from time to time. And that's why scouting is kind of a case-by-case affair. It saddens me that some parents do more than I would like, that they helicopter their son's advancement and the rest of their lives as well. But the integrity of the advancement in scouting does not need my protection. It does just fine on its own, and it has for over a century. So let's say the way that this situation is resolved is that the patrol in question has a patrol leader election, and the scout who has not been attending faithfully stops being the patrol leader. Now he doesn't have leadership tenure towards life or eagle. And dad might hit the ceiling and demand an explanation. The one he would get from me is that the scouts and the patrol made a decision, and I'm not going to second-guess them. There are plenty of leadership opportunities for your son, and he should talk to the senior patrol leader. But I would guess he would probably need to show up more and make some more effort than he did as a patrol leader if he wants the senior patrol leader to consider him for a position of leadership. In short, the decision as to who leads them is invested in the scouts. Adults, I mean, adults really have little or no say in the matter. They vote for their patrol leaders. They vote for their senior patrol leader. The senior patrol leader makes some appointments. I don't think that these positions of responsibility and leadership should be reserved for anybody. They're open to every scout, and the scouts themselves will identify who the most capable leader is. They'll do it almost 100% of the time. Every once in a while, meh, they're not so smart. But I trust them a great deal to know the scouts that they're working with. They know them better than I do. Our job is to mentor and train whoever they select through a process of developing into a good person, into being a good leader. And as for evaluating the job that they do, I put that squarely on their shoulders. Before I sign a leadership requirement, I ask a scout to evaluate himself. And he is usually harder on himself than I will be. From time to time, we're all going to run into the situation you described, Tim. When they come along, the senior patrol leader and his fellow leaders usually have a better way of sorting things out than we do. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that we want situations like you described to happen. I mean, what better way of learning leadership could we offer than dealing with real-world difficulties that are actually real, you know, than theoretical? Scouts will really rise to the moment. And this doesn't mean that our patrol leader with a problem of attending and things like that is now totally out of the picture, never gets to be a leader again, has to go hang his head in shame. No, that would be our job too. To go and to say, well, I heard there was a patrol leader election and you're not the patrol leader anymore. Well, no, sir. Well, how did that make you feel? How's, you know, what do you think of that? Well, I really didn't have the time to do it the way that I should and I was feeling kind of bad about it and I'm glad the guys had the election anyway. That's one possible thing he might tell you. You know, he could say that he's upset and he didn't think that it was fair and we can talk through that. But, you know, everything, every time I get a question like this and every time I start thinking about things that happen in my troop, I realize how easy it is just to place these things within the responsibility and authority of our youth leadership and they usually get it sorted out. Scouts are pretty smart people. Well, thanks for writing, Tim. And if you want to send me an email, I'm going to tell you how just in a moment.

Well, thanks for listening to another edition of the Scoutmaster podcast. You can read the Scoutmaster blog at scoutmaster.typepad.com. And you can follow us at Scoutmaster blog on Facebook and ScoutmasterCG on Twitter. If you enjoy the Scoutmaster podcast, you can subscribe via iTunes. And when you do, feel free to leave a comment or a review or a rating. You can email me, Clark Green, with your comments and questions at ClarkGreen at Gmail.com. ClarkGreen is C-L-A-R-K-E-G-R-E-E-E-N, all one word, at Gmail.com. Wow, wait a minute. I tell my wife that I have disciples now. Wow. She probably won't let me have a podcast anymore. Or write a blog. Or speak to anybody outside the house. 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. Nope. It's just me talking into a microphone, getting disciples, trying to lend a hand to scout leaders and perhaps add a bit of fun along the way. Well, before we go, as we are wont to do, this word from our founder, Lord Robert Baden-Powell. Sir Robert? Good luck to you and good camping. Why, thank you, Sir Robert. Until next time. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Thank you.