Relentless Encouragement

If a Scouter concentrates on what Scouts aren’t doing it tends to blind them to what they are doing. Lay aside your expectations and enter into their expectations. If we look for problems, we’ll find them; there will always be plenty of room for improvement. If we look for effort and initiative we’ll find them too. Your encouragement of the good you find leads to more good. Our goal is motivation by responding rather than dictating and suggesting rather than requiring.

Every individual, and every group of individuals, has their own level of skill, engagement and interest. Look for effort and respond with encouragement. When things look hopeless get a magnifying glass, search carefully for any sign of initiative or effort, it is there.

Magnify what you find with honest praise. Fan the spark into a blaze of initiative. Your encouragement of the good tends to diminish the bad.

Problems and difficulties will always be there, just choose not to magnify them out of all proportion. Does encouragement really work? Your first try (or the second, or the third) may not. By the tenth or twentieth, you may start to see something. Keep at it; be relentlessly encouraging! 0