Transition from Adult to Youth Leadership - What Really Matters

Advancement in Ranks, earning Merit badges, and making Eagle recognize that Scouts have passed through a number of challenges and experiences. As laudable as they are the results are not an end in themselves, Scouting is all about the process that leads to them.

Scouts will learn some useful skills but these are not the whole story. What they really take away from the experience is confident self knowledge and the ability to work well with other people.

Focus on creating and preserving an atmosphere where the Scouts can have these experiences.

Pretend for a moment that there re no badges, no awards, no recognitions and concentrate on the experience that Scouts are having, the process they are going through. You will fear, as I did, that the Scouts will not do a very good job of things. The Scouts will probably do some things poorly. This will lead to a sense that you are somehow letting the other Scouts down if you don’t step in and do it better. This sense of responsibility may cause some real frustration, but your sense of responsibility is misplaced.

I have watched troop meetings that, in my humble opinion, were very poorly planned and presented; ones that the adults could have done much better.

I have worried that the Scouts have not prepared themselves properly for outings and wondered if we should step in. Even if Scouts have conducted what I may see as lackluster troop meetings and planned what I may consider ill-conceived outings what is truly important is that they have done this under their own leadership . They are doing and learning things that that their peers outside of Scouting do not. The Scoutmaster’s direct responsibility is not the quality of the program, not the number of advancements or the number of Scouts but to inspire his youth leadership towards achieving these things. That’s what really matters. A lesson from the Pinewood Derby There are three basic types of Pinewood Derby cars. The first is the type that a Cub builds completely on his own; the blotchy paint, the uneven wheels, the decals. The second shows a lot of his own work but also has some refinements that indicate he had some help. The third is one he watched someone else make for him. Your Troop will be some combination of the first two types.

Scout-made and Scout-run with an appropriate level of assistance.

Maybe not the slickest one on the track but one that inspires admiration for the Scouts that created it. This is one in a series of posts about Transitioning From Adult to Youth Leadership: Introduction Starting the Transition The Patrol Leader’s Council Asking Questions