Scoutmaster Podcast 95

And now the old Scoutmaster. So what's the difference between your average scout patrol and a band of Desperados? Desperados don't have a flag that their mother sewed for them. Hey, this is podcast number 95.

Music. Welcome back to the Scoutmaster Podcast. This is Clarke Green. You may have noticed something in your retarder packet And that is position code 9-2-U. And with this little note I delve into the extreme minutiae of scouting.

But I think this is important. For years and years we have had a lot of people who go on to college. A lot of our boys go on to college. They want to maintain their registration with the scout troop And we usually register them as assistant Scoutmasters. That's worked just fine. But there is a new position code 9-2-U, And that is the unit college scouter reserve.

You should be able to register anybody who is in college using the 9-2-U position code. They will still need to take youth protection training to maintain their registration with scouts, as all adults do.

But you know it will keep them registered And they will be able to go to OA weekends and things like that. And thanks to Bob White's Blather for pointing that out.

But I thought it was a useful thing and we should feature it on the podcast. We're going to have our third Scoutmaster panel here recording this week. We've picked out a subject which is Weevilow's transition.

We did a survey on it within the past couple of weeks over on the blog And we've got a calling question and everything. It should be great fun.

So make sure to listen to podcast 96 next week to hear the Scoutmaster panel discussion. This time around we're going to talk about the patrol leaders council.

We're going to talk about the place of the patrol leaders council and the administration of a troop and the relationship that the Scoutmaster has with the patrol leaders council and just what we can expect from a patrol leaders council, And we're going to do this under the heading of Scoutmaster ship in seven minutes or less. If you are a long time listener to the podcast, you realize, of course, that Scoutmaster ship under seven minutes or less. The title of that particular feature in a podcast is aspirational. It's hardly ever seven minutes or less. It's usually much more than seven minutes. But I'm afraid I just like to talk.

So but as long as you like to listen, we'll be in good shape.

So let's get started, shall we Scoutmaster ship in seven minutes or less. So what is a patrol leaders council?

How does it work? How does it fit into the matrix of decision making and plan making in a Boy Scout troop?

Well, it is really at the center. It's kind of the administrative center of a scout troop, because the patrol leaders council is going to sit down and plan and think through their program.

They're going to make some decisions on the content of the program, on where they're going to go camping and the kind of activities they're going to participate in, And then they're going to take that to the troop committee and ask for whatever kind of logistical and administrative support they need from the troop committee to make those plans happen. Now that, in a nutshell, is the way that a Boy Scout troop is run.

It's run by the scouts who make these decisions, and then it is facilitated by the committee. So that's the place of the patrol leaders council.

In the way that things happen Sounds simple, right? It's not always quite so simple, because one of the misunderstandings I think sometimes when we talk about a scout-led unit or scout-led troop, is that okay, well, we're going to just give them the reins and then we'll sit back and see what they come up with and you know, if they decide that they want to go to the amusement park six times a year, well, it's a boy-led troop. This is the way that it works.

Well, the patrol leaders council starts with a basis. They start with some parentheses around the available things that they can do and that can be various different expressions of the scout program. The aims and methods of scouting is a good place to start. The promises that scouting makes to a boy, to each individual scout, is a good place to start. The patrol leaders council does not have absolute carte blanche on making decisions about activities that are not within the realm of what they're trying to achieve as scouts. We use as an illustration a basketball team.

If your troop was a basketball team and it was self-regulated and self-governing, it would be done within the context of basketball. In other words, there wouldn't be suddenly a decision from the team that well, we're tired of basketball right now, What we want to do is go out into the football field and start playing football.

You have to stop at some point and say, well, I think that's a little bit beyond what we're talking about. We are not a football team, We're a basketball team.

So we concentrate on basketball skills. We concentrate on playing basketball games. We play on this particular court that is marked out here on the floor.

So that is a similar way to look at a scout troop in general and a patrol leaders council in particular. Now they have a broad spectrum of things they can choose to do, a broad way of making decisions and doing them, but they are bound by the scouting program And our job as scout leaders is to help them define what the scouting program is and to shape their activities to meet the goals of scouting.

Once we understand how a patrol leaders council fits in to a troop and then we define the playing field, then we need to start talking about the dynamic of having boys who are starting around age 12 up to age 17 sit down and make decisions and function as a patrol leaders council. And there are some very practical things that have to happen there and they can be a little tricky at first because it is not going to happen in the same way that a similar decision-making body that was composed strictly of adults would do business, Because, first of all, boys at this age have a rudimentary concept of what it means to sit down at a meeting, make plans and decisions. It is important for us to make sure that at least the senior patrol leader who is going to run the patrol leaders council meetings has a basic understanding of how to make things happen. They need to know their place in the administration of the troop, they need to have an idea of the field of endeavor and they also need to have a way of practically arriving at decisions and making plans.

You don't start out from zero and then two months later have an effective patrol leaders council. It just doesn't work that way. Patrol leaders councils develop over time their procedures, their methods, the way that they do things and the way that it is looked on in the troop amongst the scouts and the adults- the adults being a very important aspect of this- that develops over time.

And then, as soon as you have a patrol leaders council that is pretty efficient and doing well and making decisions- guess what? It's time for the next patrol leaders council to take over.

So let's talk for a moment just about the transition that's going to have to be made in adult thinking to get a good, effective patrol leaders council off the ground. There are a number of troops out there whose decisions are made by the adults so far as what the program will be and what the arrangements will be and where they will go camping, what activities they will pursue and so forth. Sometimes that's made at the committee level, Sometimes that's made by the Scoutmaster, or sometimes it's made by a combination of the two.

Well, I have to say that that is not what the intention of scouting is. The intention of scouting is not for a program of activities to be planned by adults and presented to boys.

The intention of scouting is for boys to plan their own activities, to choose what they want to do, to choose what they want to pursue within the paradigm of scouting, within, you know, as I said earlier, that basketball court that's marked off on the floor And it can be quite challenging to arrive at a place in the minds of the adults who are involved with the troop that this is a good thing to do. Usually, the first argument is that, well, if we give them this decision-making power, they will just make decisions that we don't agree with And that would be bad.

Well, first of all, you don't get to give them the decision-making power. Scouting does- The scout program already puts the decision-making power in the hands of the patrol leader's counsel, not the committee and not the Scoutmaster. That's the way that it is. You've improperly usurped that authority from them.

If you're making the decisions about, you know camping and things like that, This is a fine point. So I'm going to say it again: There's a basketball court marked off on the floor. There are a set of things that scouts do. There's a field of activity and endeavor that scouts follow And I'll repeat myself: I am not saying that the patrol leader's counsel gets to step out of bounds on that stuff. They don't. They need to stay in the playing field, very plainly.

But they have the ability to choose and to plan And it's not necessarily the choices they make, It's not necessarily the plans that they make. It's the process of having this happen that is important. I will say that again. It's not necessarily the plans that they make, It's not necessarily the choices of activities that they make. It is the process of having them do that.

That is the biggest part of leadership and character development in scouting that we get out of using the patrol leader's counsel, The process of it, When they are sitting in this kind of little representative government where the patrol leaders are supposed to be talking to the scouts about what the scouts would like to do And they take that to the patrol leader's counsel and they discuss it and they make a final decision about what will happen next month or what will happen, you know, for the annual calendar, And then they take that to the troop committee who's going to give them administrative and logistical support to make their plans real. That's an incredibly wonderful process for a Scout-age boy to participate in. He learns a lot about life and his character and leadership skills are built through participating in that process.

Now, what I hear many times is: okay. Well, we gave this patrol leader's counsel thing and this youth-led thing an opportunity, We gave it a chance and for a couple of months we had a patrol leader's counsel meeting and we did it just like you said and it just didn't work.

And so you know that obviously cannot be the way to go. Well, it doesn't happen in a couple of months. As I said earlier, It can be a long-trying process. To get this to gel and to get your youth members to understand exactly how this is going to work. You're going to be coaching and training and mentoring and encouraging and cajoling. You're going to be looking for the least little bit of initiative and you're going to build on it Now.

You cannot expect a bunch of boys, given you know the outline of what a patrol leader's counsel is, to go and sit in a room and to, in an hour later, come out with a perfectly balanced plan of activities and camping and things like that. That is just. It's ready to publish and put on a calendar. That's not going to happen.

You can expect that after you've built on it for a couple of years, after you've worked with you know the senior patrol leader that you have now and the next one and the next one, and you've seen how the process works and you keep them moving and forging ahead in it, then you'll get the effective plans and things. But with boys it will be led to this point by point, piece by piece, until they begin to see exactly what the big picture is.

Now I go through this process on an annual basis with each new senior patrol leader. Think about this: My senior patrol leaders are usually elected from someone who has sat on that patrol leader's counsel for at least one year. He'll either be a former patrol leader or a former assistant senior patrol leader. That's just usually who the boys elect- And even though he's been in on this process for at least a year, sometimes two, sometimes three years. He still doesn't have the concept of how important his planning is and how important it is for him to have a depth of planning. None of them have that concept when they start the job.

It only builds over time And I don't go beat him over the head every time that there's some little slip-up or failure or something like that. I just Here's with my present senior patrol leader, who's a very sharp guy and who's doing a wonderful job. Just every once in a while I see him standing in the middle of a room or a campsite with this kind of look on his face- What the world is going on, And I'll stand next to him.

I'll say it's not as easy as it looks, is it? And we kind of have a chuckle and smile And I say, look, you're doing fine. You.

Just What do you need to think about right now? And we'll have a quick discussion and he'll move ahead. And this is small, incremental steps.

It's things that we need to exercise a great deal of patience with and that we need to have a realistic expectation for Now, the other part of our job, other than training and coaching and mentoring our senior patrol leader and the members of the patrol leader council is to make sure that we are preserving the field of play. And what I mean by that is: let's go back to the basketball analogy.

Let's say we have a basketball team and they're not a great team. Okay, I mean, let's be honest, We've been, We're a few weeks into the season and they're having fun playing and stuff like that, but they're not making many baskets and they're not winning games.

Well, I'm going to be on the sidelines with my coaching staff and they're going to be getting a little impatient because they want to see more action, They want to see some numbers on the board. Can my coaching staff and I step over the sideline into the field of play, grab the basketball and start making hoops for our team?

Can that happen? Here's the way the illustration applies to our scout troop and our patrol leaders council. We're going to have the patrol leaders council meeting and the boys are going to sit there and they're going to talk about what happened in school the other day and that show on TV in this game or this app from my phone, and they're finally going to start talking about a camping trip or a meeting or something like that. They will plan at the speed of thought.

What are we going to do next Monday night? Oh, we're going to do knots. Great, Good, Write that down. We're going to do knots.

So what's next? We're going to be there and we'll get aggravated by that and then when those plans that are kind of incomplete don't happen properly, the other adults involved with us are going to get a little aggravated by that and we're going to wonder what in the world we're doing and whether or not this is a very good idea.

Well, we have to overcome that aggravation by looking at the process involved. So let's say that my patrol leaders, council, are not exactly that. They sit down and they do. What I say is planning at the speed of thought. If they think it's planned, it's done, Let's move on.

So they say next week we're going to do knots. They show up next week and everybody's kind of wandering around and I talk to the senior patrol there for a moment.

I say what's on the boards for this week? What are you planning to do?

Well, we're going to do knots. Okay, great, Which knots are you going to do?

Well, just, you know we're going to do knots. I say: well, which one's exactly? I maybe a square knot.

Well, that sounds great. Now, what are you going to need to do that? I guess we're going to need some rope or something.

Well, that's right. Now, who's supposed to get the rope? I guess I could.

Well, if you go do that, you're going to have your head down getting rope and everybody else is going to be running around like they are right now. I'm going to do better for that.

So do you understand the process here? Now, I maybe haven't waited until that meeting happens.

Maybe I'll catch them at the senior, at the patrol leaders council meeting, and I'll ask a few of these questions and that will get them to thinking and they'll say, oh, we have to do more than just think about this. We actually have to really think about it and we have to plan things out So you can convince them some of the times to think about stuff.

Some of the times you'll ask questions and they'll say, oh, we'll just take care of it, and then it'll fall flat. And then you have little reflection and you say, so, you really should have done this. You probably didn't think about that, and how is that going to inform what you do the next time.

So you build on little bits of initiative step by step by step. Now we've talked about the philosophic underpinnings and some of the practical things about a patrol leaders council, but let's talk a little bit about the very practical things of the way that it works, and in doing this I'm going to describe how I manage this.

Now you might find this an effective model for you. I'm not saying that it is the be all and end all in the way that you absolutely have to do things, because it's not described in scouting literature as this way or anything like that.

Here's the way that I have been effectively able to work with my youth in putting a patrol leaders council together that, reasonably, that plans and makes things happen. First of all, we need to talk about who meets with the patrol leaders council. You cannot have six adults in the room with a patrol leaders council unless they are incredibly patient, silent adults or they're simply to observe. If they're able to do that, that's fine. They can be in the room, But remember, with them in the room. It changes the entire thing.

It changes the way that boys talk to each other. It changes the things that they say. It changes the way that they approach problems because they know everybody is looking and listening. This can be useful sometimes, but most of the time it's not going to be very useful. I am the only person in the room with a scout for a patrol leaders council meeting. The way that I handle it is I will be there for the first two or three minutes and the last five minutes.

Apart from that, I won't even be in the room. The first two or three minutes I will speak with the senior patrol leader in the presence of the other scouts and I will ask him what he hopes to accomplish at this meeting. I will ask him if he has any questions and usually he will say no. Then I will excuse myself, saying I will be across the hall. If you should need anything or you have any questions,