Scoutmaster Podcast 8

And now for you, Scoutmasters.

Hello, welcome to the Scoutmasters podcast. This is a test for you. This is a test that Green Bar Bill came up with in the 1930s, in the edition of the Scoutmasters handbook.

I think 1939. This is exactly what he wrote. Get an easy chair and place it in a corner of the troop meeting room if you, the Scoutmaster, can sink into that chair just after the opening ceremony and just sit throughout the meeting without a worry for its success, without lifting a finger or moving a foot until time comes for the closing, well then your troop is run on the patrol method and your boy leaders are actually leading.

I like it. Try it. Let me know if you passed the test. Hey, this is podcast number 8.

Hey, welcome back. Good to have you. I want to say I appreciate all the feedback I've been getting through emails, through ratings on iTunes, comments on the blog. Certainly do appreciate it, and on Facebook.

This time around, well, I went a little long this time around, but I hope you'll think it's worth it. In Scoutmastership, in seven minutes or less, we're going to talk a little bit about ten things that adult leaders do that can be frustrating to your youth leadership. I'm speaking from experience because I've frustrated many a youth leader in my day. Next, I have a little story about probably the best 4th of July I ever spent at summer camp.

I think you'll get a kick out of it. I know I did. We're going to wind up with our theory in the series of moving a troop that is being led by adults to a troop that is being led by youth.

So let's get moving.

Scoutmastership in seven minutes or less.

You know, I feel like sometimes I get a little bit preachy, and I want you to understand that the next few minutes, I'm going to be talking about things that I have done, and that unfortunately sometimes I continue to do because I'm as much of a learning curve as my scouts are in trying to figure this all out.

So this is not a missive from an ivory tower somewhere. This is just my experience and things that I have learned, sometimes with great difficulty over time. But I want to talk a little bit about 10 things that we do that can really be frustrating to youth leadership.

One of them is talking too much. And this is a guy with a podcast and with a blog, and I love to talk. I can talk the ears off of a donkey. You know, I can talk the horns off a billy goat.

I can talk the feet off an iron pot. I am a good talker. But when it's time to talk in the role of being a scoutmaster, we've got to try and keep it short, direct, and intelligible. Scouts appreciate brevity and concision in your speech.

You know, when they start to show an unusual interest in the ceiling or their shoes, you've talked for too long. I can't tell you exactly what that time is, but it's somewhere in the two or three minute category.

That's why we have what we call a scoutmaster's minute. Somebody was really smart when they came up with that because they know that none of us can. And now I'm talking too long about talking too long. All right, let's move on to number two, shall we?

Coercion. Adults can manipulate circumstances and conversations to bring about the result. And narrowly defining all the options and the ideas can be really unfairly coercive. We have to look for direction from honest discussion with our scouts. Scouts come up with some very interesting and simple resolutions to difficult problems when we give them the latitude to do so.

We don't need to coerce them into doing the right thing. We need to help them discover the right thing by letting them figure it out on their own. It really works.

It really does. Number three is nitpicking. If it was up to me, I have a certain way that I would like a campsite set up. I have a certain way that I would like everybody to do everything.

Because, you know, I can be a real nitpicker. But I'm learning not to stress the small stuff, not to concentrate on the small stuff, and to look for the good things that they do and minimize the shortcomings they have sometimes and celebrate their achievements. So I try not to be a nitpicker. Number four is right in there with nitpicking, and it's micromanaging every little thing.

Get a map out, show them the point on the map, and don't tell them how to take every step. Allow them to discover the talents and abilities without having to stop every ten minutes to, you know, give them a minor course correction.

They're going to get there, but they're going to get there in their way rather than yours. Number five, this can be a big one. It's been a big one for me in the past, is anger. Now, Thomas Jefferson said, when you get angry, you count to ten before you speak.

If you're very angry, count to a hundred. It's a dark storm. It'll pass. You're going to be angry at one point, especially if it's your son. I mean, frankly, it's going to make you angry.

And counting to ten, well, maybe that's talking to one of the other adults first. Maybe it's just taking a little walk. It's irresponsible and childish to unload a big, angry load of stuff on scouts.

They're learning, and they need to have the latitude and the freedom to learn without being afraid that somebody is going to just unload on them. Number six is sacrificing the perfectly good for the perfect.

Perfection is not our goal in scouts. Remember you growing up? Remember learning how to do things? It's messy and unpredictable. Let's not expect perfection. Let's expect action. Let's expect moving towards the goal. Number seven, and this is a good one, especially when you're dealing with boys in those adolescent years.

Number seven, a good way to frustrate boys is by treating honest mistakes as some kind of horrible crime. Mistakes are inevitable. They're desirable. You want your scouts to make mistakes. They indicate that they're taking action and that they're growing.

Really, very few of your problems as a scoutmaster are going to be from deliberate, premeditated disobedience or carelessness. Scouts are going to make mistakes in judgment and action and seize on that moment to get on their side and to be a little introspective and to help them figure out what happened and not to punish them. Number eight is hovering.

You heard of helicopter parents? How about helicopter scoutmasters? You know, scouts need a lot of space. They need a lot of real responsibility and they need a lot of autonomy. They don't need somebody breathing down their necks.

Now, you have to maintain safety and propriety, but you can do it from a respectful distance. Let them play the game. Number nine is shifting standards.

Don't change the rules in the middle of the game or otherwise, you know, unfairly shift some kind of fundamental goal. Every course needs some adjustment, but no one benefits from just continuously shifting the standard around and then saying that they didn't achieve something when they actually did.

Usurpation is number ten. How about that for a nine dollar college word, eh? Usurpation. Usurpation. Actual responsibility in a scout troop for behavior, for achievement, and for action leads to actual achievement or actual disappointment.

If the adult leadership usurps this responsibility to make things easier or more predictable, they compromise the achievement. actual responsibility for behavior and achievement and action leads to actual achievement and that's why they need to have real responsibility.

This has to be the truth, folks, because there is no way anyone could make this up. A couple decades ago, when I was on camp staff, we used to be able to buy fireworks and put them off for the 4th of July when the scouts were in camp for the 4th of July.

Well, you can't do that anymore and it's probably a good thing, too. There are a couple near misses there that, yeah, I wouldn't want to relive. So, no more fireworks and we muddled through for a couple years with just normal old campfires and then there was one year that I was camp director that I did the best thing I have ever done in scouting.

Oh, it was marvelous. If I do say so myself. And I do. Late last night when we were all in bed This old Mary hug I let her near her shed When the cow could get over She winked her eye and said Be a hot ton The old town's the night Fire, fire, fire Late last night When we were all in bed I talked to my maintenance guys and I said, find everything in camp that we need to burn And we're going to put it down in a big pile We have a big field in our camp And so we're going to we're going to have a bonfire We're going to have a bonfire like nobody's ever seen before And it's made the maintenance guys very excited And they got very active and they found piles and piles of stuff And they piled up about 15 feet tall this bonfire that was just gorgeous We had a big giant American flag One of our scout leaders who was in camp for the week built a bit of a framework and we hung the big giant American flag on this truck so that it would totally obscure the campfire I mean this was a big flag this was like a 20 by 30 foot flag And so now imagine this The giant campfire is set up and the truck is parked in front of the campfire and the way that the scouts come down into the field they can't see the campfire at all they just see the giant American flag So we built a little tiny campfire out in front of the truck and we didn't light it it was just a few logs oh it was weak it was really weak and we bring all the boys down all the scouts come down and their leaders come down and we get them seated in the field and it's just about to be dark and then we introduce one of our older camp staff members as an official of the BSA from the northeast region who's going to come and talk to us about campfire safety and there wasn't an audible groan that went up from the crowd but there were some kind of strange faces in the crowd so this guy comes out and he starts droning on and on and I mean this is what he was instructed to do he just drones on about campfire safety and you can't have fires that are too big and I mean a scout's worst nightmare so after this guy is speaking for a little while now what I had one of my guys worked at you know he was a student at a high school and he was one of their AV guys and he took his day off and he went up to the high school and he got this giant PA system I'm really not too sure how he got it but I'm pretty sure it got back to the school safely so we had this giant PA system in the field and it was covered with tarps so nobody really knew what it was and so our guy is up there droning on and on about campfire safety and at one point we just whip the tarps off of these huge speakers and there it is it's Jimi Hendrix doing the national anthem if you're an old hippie like me you know exactly what I'm talking about and we started blasting that at ear bleed level and then the truck started up and started to pull slowly away revealing a giant campfire right and then so so earlier in the week I had talked to my guy who runs the camp craft department at camp and I asked him if he had ever heard of something called a flaming ballista and he was thrilled with the idea and so he built a flaming ballista now I'm not recommending this as a program activity for you but this work this was in the hands of qualified experts of course and so he was about 20 or 30 yards away from the big fire the big bonfire set up with this flaming ballista and what a flaming ballista is is it's kind of a deal where you launch a flaming torch again not recommending as a program for you but so so he's off about 20 feet away and it's just it's just perfect because it's just beginning to get dark and so the truck pulls away and the scouts see this giant campfire thing and Jimi Hendrix is blasting over the speakers and the scouts get to their feet and they start to cheer and just as they do here comes the flaming ballista that got launched and perfect arc in the air this flaming torch and hits that fire leg just right and the fire starts to go up and it goes up and up and that fire I have a picture of it and I'll tell you something the flames were at least 60 feet tall and the scouts stood on their feet and cheered for about 10 minutes as this fire just began its glorious path to celebrating the 4th of July oh what a day what a day

boy scout boy scout so this is the third and final discussion we're going to have about transitioning a scout troop from adult leadership to youth leadership and this time we're going to talk about the patrol leaders council so we've overcome the fears of the adults we've put the leadership of the troop squarely in the hands of the youth leaders the Scoutmaster and his assistants have learned their place and now we need to get the patrol leaders council up and moving because a healthy patrol leaders council is going to be the heart of any real youth led troop it needs to gather often and discuss the troops plans and it needs to be run by the senior patrol leader it needs to have the patrol leaders in attendance and it needs to have a scribe keep minutes and it needs to be pretty official okay and it needs to be free of a lot of compulsion or participation by adults I suggest that your patrol leaders council meets before and after every troop meeting the senior patrol leader always runs that meeting the Scoutmaster never runs that meeting they need about 10 or 15 minutes before the meeting to check in and to make sure that they are prepared they need 10 or 15 minutes after the meeting to check out and make sure they're going to be prepared for the next week and to do a little deconstruction of the meeting they've just had and to do a little reflection then I'm going to suggest that the patrol leaders council meets once a month and I would substitute that meeting for a troop meeting this is what we've done and it's worked really well I'm going to give it to you as a suggestion but if they meet on the troop meeting night that is directly after the outing or event for the month then you can also announce that you will have Scoutmasters conferences and boards of review that night so that that doesn't interfere with troop meeting nights and then the scouts kind of get the idea that oh there's going to be a board of review every month and you can do various administrative things that night and scouts if they're working on a special project or something like that can attend but basically it's set aside for the patrol leaders council to get the bulk of their business taken care of and I would train and mentor them to start out pretty formally in those meetings because it's hard to focus those meetings it's going to be a real achievement for your senior patrol leader to be able to run a patrol leaders council meeting now as a rule the Scoutmaster is the only person of the adult cadre of leaders who actively participates in any meeting of the PLC and then only at the invitation of the senior patrol leader I'd like other adult leaders you know to stay away if they need to address something they address it through the Scoutmaster I would say that that is a pretty hard and fast rule especially in the early stages of making this transition we're at the point now where I can have assistant Scoutmasters in the room as long as they're quiet and respectful and they don't interrupt but you know if they have a question they can raise their hand and those questions are rare and this is the way that we train our adult leaders however helpful or informative they feel that they might be it tends to diminish the process of scouts finding out some important things for themselves the role of adult leadership when the patrol leader's council is meeting needs to be clearly understood and it needs to be strictly followed so let's be very specific about what the Scoutmaster does when the patrol leader's council meets can you guess yes he listens you may want to ask some questions but you almost never want to issue edicts or you know present lectures during this time I would just ask questions and that will help focus the efforts of the patrol leader's council you know in forming a new troop or in a patrol leader's council that's significantly changed due to leadership elections or in the case of a troop transitioning the Scoutmaster may have a somewhat more active role but it has to be measured and disciplined and it needs to be aimed at a goal of having a very inactive role at the end of each of the little PLC get togethers the Scoutmaster should have an opportunity to make some brief remarks and when it's running smoothly when things are running smoothly these remarks should be something along the lines of well guys you seem to have a handle on everything you're doing a good job and unless you have any questions for me that's all I have to say now that you're an observer rather than a participant and a listener rather than a talker and a coach rather than a player your observations and what you hear is going to reveal a lot of strengths and weaknesses in the way that things are done and in the individuals that are doing them and the way you work with this information is going to be vitally important a lot of times what we do and especially us characters who end up as Scoutmasters we kind of default to telling people what we think this is economical and direct and effective but there's other ways to communicate ideas and to help people find their way remember our job is to encourage critical thinking and leadership skills in our scouts and to encourage that we can best accomplish that encouragement by asking questions that allow them to discover things on their own let's say you've just observed a really chaotic and poorly run game during a troop meeting and it's the patrol leaders council time after the meeting and you're going to speak with your senior patrol leader and the characteristic of this little conversation is you and the senior patrol leader are on the same side you're not putting him in a position where he has to answer to you for something that you perceive to be bad okay that's not what we're doing here there may be a place for that but 99.9% of the time put yourself on the same side of the table with your senior patrol leader so the first question is so tell me a little bit about the game and the senior patrol leader may say something like well we were trying to play a new game but nobody was really cooperating and my reply would be well why do you think that was well it was definitely a new game and Mark was trying to run it and he just didn't seem to know how to do it then I would ask well what did you do to fix it and the senior patrol leader would say well nothing really we just kind of let it go now I'm beginning to get an idea here and based on my previous experience I'm going to ask this question I would say was Mark prepared to conduct the game had he tried it out beforehand oh gosh no the senior patrol leader would say he just kind of invented it on the spot and then I would ask my senior patrol leader well how do you think that approach worked and the senior patrol leader would say well it was really a mess but it was actually kind of fun too and Mark you know has a decent sense of humor so he wasn't too upset I would ask him then would you want to do this every week and he might reply well not really because it was really disorganized and I would ask him so how would you prevent this from happening in the future there was a time where I would have just stepped in as soon as I saw this game was chaotic and stupid and tried to fix it more than likely it wouldn't have been chaotic and stupid because I'd been running it myself but now I don't run games I'm watching them hey now listen I gotta tell you if the scouts were pummeling each other with sticks or rocks or something I would step in and do it but that wasn't the case it was just kind of chaotic and dumb that in my mind I didn't step in try and stop it I didn't holler at anybody I didn't make a big giant deal out of it I just had a conversation with the SPL afterwards and I gave him the opportunity to think through and to bring bring a solution to it and I actually learned a few things the game was chaotic and stupid from my point of view but the scouts kind of enjoyed it anyway I have to keep recalling that the troop meeting and all of its various elements and the games and the presentations and things are not mine to control I have to maintain the focus on what is the important thing and what's the key to this whole thing about transitioning from adult led troop to youth led troop that's right I have to maintain my focus on my mentoring and coaching and allow my scouts to discover and apply their skills and not ever take their