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Frank Maynard’s excellent blog ” Bobwhite Blather ” addresses one of the most common problems in Scouting: wearing too many hats!
“An hour a week,” we were told, and soon found that it’s not always an accurate estimate, “but who’s counting?” we reason, because it’s for our sons and those of our friends and neighbors.
… we realize that there are almost always more things to do than there are people to do them. Sometimes this is due to a lack of volunteers, but too often it’s because we don’t feel comfortable handing over an important or critical task to someone else. That fun that we were having can soon get blown away as we find ourselves swaying in the breeze from the top branches of that tree we’ve been climbing, and if we go any higher we feel like the branch we’re clinging to will snap.
… letting go and giving others a chance to shine is more difficult than adding another hat to the stack that’s already towering on your head. If you are still trying to do everything, do one thing instead: find someone else to do some of that everything. Let them share in the success of your unit and enjoy personal growth through helping out. You’ll be glad you did!
Be sure to read the full post here (unless you are wearing so many hats and can’t spare the time!)
Control freaks are OK as long as they “play by the rules of the organization”. Twice, I have come across Units with Control Freaks; when said individual insisted I sign a MB Blue Card for Scouts who failed to complete or meets the badge requirements as written, I refused to comply since it confounded my ethics and values of the Scouting program. I handed the stack of Blue Cards for Communications MB to the Committee Chair who told me “my time on this merit badge was finished, we have to start the next Eagle required badge next week!” Was this Program flawed, YES; an Eagle Factory plain ‘n simple. My experience dictated I leave, politely resign and never look back their way again.
But how do you convince the control freaks their problem isn’t a lack of time, or that no-one else will help them, when they refuse to see they have a problem in the first place?
In my experience, it’s when the program falls apart around the “control freak” and either a.) someone higher up the chain (the COR or CC) steps in and changes things or b.) the unit fails.
Never do anything a boy can do!