Step Back

Here are some excerpts from a reply to a letter from a frustrated Scoutmaster over at Ask Andy

Usually, the single most important thing adult leaders can do to improve delivery of the Boy Scout program is to step back. Just like someone can’t be “a little bit pregnant,” a troop can’t be using “a little bit of the patrol method” or being “a little bit boy-led.” It’s yes, or no, and there’s no middle ground. There’s certainly no satisfactory middle ground! Baden-Powell still said it best: “The Patrol Method isn’t a way of delivering the Boy Scout program; it’s the only way.”

Now we adults are supposed to be “role models,” right? So then, what’s wrong with having the boys observe how hard we work and how creative we try to be in putting together a program of activities that we hope they’re gonna like? Well, the answer to that is two-fold. In the first place, when it comes to being role models, our job is to demonstrate calmness in adversity, the absence of panic in crisis, cheerfulness in the face of weighty tasks and responsibilities, and so on, all reflecting the values incorporated into the Scout Oath and Scout Law. But, in the second place, it’s absolutely not to loll around watching us while we bust our little picks doing for them what they should be doing for themselves.

With these thoughts as your underlying principles from now on, here are some specifics you can start doing immediately:

- Only the Scoutmaster has direct contact with the Scouts, and 90% of that is with the Senior Patrol Leader exclusively. (The remaining 10% is the Scoutmaster’s Minute at the end of every troop meeting.)

- All other adults are non-uniform-wearing committee members; not ASMs. This troop won’t need an ASM until its size has doubled, at the very least.

- The SPL calls for a PLC, and the best time to do this is in the half-hour immediately before the troop meeting, followed by a quick, ten-minute de-brief after the troop meeting’s over.

- At the PLC, the members decide—with minimal to no influence by you—where they’re going to take their next hike.

- Following this decision, the “patrol meetings” portion of the troop meeting is devoted to each patrol developing its menu (including which Scout or Scouts will buy the food), what “patrol gear” will be needed (and who’s going to get it and bring it), and patrol transportation (whose parents will do the driving to and from the trailhead).

- Get yourselves to training, fast as you can.

Bottom line: Boys will show up when there’s something going on for them. If it’s not their program, that they built and they own, then who cares? You absolutely, positively cannot legislate enthusiasm.

I'll add that the difference between a high functioning and low functioning Troop is the attitude of the adults. I like Andy's description of the ideal unflappable Scoutmaster "calmness in adversity, the absence of panic in crisis". It took me a long time to modify my reactions from fault-finding and recrimination to empathy.

For example if our SPL shows up at a meeting with no plan (or better yet one of those last minute hail Mary plays he thought up in the car on the way over) my reflexive reaction is anger and disappointment. Over time I have learned to empathize with him. There have been plenty of times that I have arrived unprepared and I know how it feels, so I let him know that I know. I will probably ask him what he will do to avoid this situation in the future and leave it at that.