Scoutmaster

Real Leading

From Leading Blog :

I would hope by now you have had a chance to read through Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb. He has compiled 52 practical and wise fundamentals of life well lived and work well done.

Rule #41: If you want to be a real leader, first get real about leadership. Getting real about leadership involves four things: how leaders are, what leaders do, how leaders act, and what leaders leave behind them.

How Leaders Are. Leaders are both confident and modest, they’re authentic and they are good listeners. He quotes Ron Heifetz, “Too many leaders die with their mouths open.” He adds, “Leaders who need to talk all the time create companies where people simply stop listening.”

What Leaders Do. Leaders are coaches. They attract and grow talent. They lead by example. Maintaining high standards themselves, they challenge people to do their best work. “After a real leader has moved on, the people who worked for him or her always say, ‘I learned more and did more than I ever thought I could.’”

How Leaders Act. Real leaders guide. They don’t dictate. “Real leaders create an agenda, offer criteria, and describe a strategy to take the company ahead.” And they learn from their mistakes.

What Leaders Leave Behind. Leaders leave behind “a passion for the business, a love of the company, and the commitment to leave it healthier and stronger than he or she found it.” They leave a team of great leaders. They articulate sound values and instill them into the culture of the business. And perhaps most importantly, they make more leaders. “The real leader is the one who makes more leaders at all levels of the organization. Leaders practice leadership to cultivate more leaders.”

I am cautious about translating the skills required of leaders in the workplace to those effective in Scouting. Scoutmasters are not employers and Scouts are not employees. Webber's view of leadership does translate well. He concentrates on listening, coaching, guiding over dictating and cultivating leadership in others - all marks of a good Scoutmaster.

Behavior, Discipline, Consequences

How does one control a group of Scout-aged boys?

Boys are known as experts in mischief, subterfuge and misdirection. Physically they lack the gray matter required to make mature decisions. Rationality often looses out to the influence of hormones.  They cannot calculate or analyze risk reliably.

They will foolishly sacrifice a lot to gain a little approval from their peers. Admirers of conformity and worshipers of non-conformity they struggle to learn just who they really are by trying all kinds of things. Their sometimes coarse behavior is punctuated by moments of extraordinary sensitivity. 

Is the only answer iron handed constant vigilance? Why would anyone risk their tranquility on so high a probability of misbehavior and mayhem?

Because, given the instability of those things that influence their behavior, they are very predictable. Scout aged boys are fiercely loyal and possess a strong sense of fairness. Inwardly they appreciate boundaries even if they complain and resist outwardly. They respect consistency, deplore lecturers, have a lawyerly approach to rules and regulations and value honesty.

Scoutmasters who put themselves in the role of controlling and policing the behavior of his Scouts directly they have already lost the battle. This responsibility one for the Scouts. I am not suggesting that we should be indifferent or permissive. We must familiarize the Scouts responsible for leading their Troop with prescribing and maintaining standards of discipline and behavior. 

Scouting has given us these standards in the Scout Oath and Law. Scouts understand these standards. They will need help in understanding how to enforce them if we are to avoid cruelty reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies. They need an example of compassion, empathy and understanding. They need to be shown that discipline and authority is not a club to beat people with but an opportunity to be helpful; to minimize shortcomings and celebrate achievements.

This sort of discipline does not rely on punishment but on positive reinforcement. Although Scouts will do some truly outrageous things they must be understood in the context of their age. We have to understand that difficult behavior is not directed at us personally and respond with fairness and kindness.

Once established this kind of positive peer pressure tends to perpetuate itself. New Scouts will understand the way things work very quickly and will go on to become leaders within the same system.

Transition from Adult to Youth Leadership - Asking Questions

Now that you are an observer rather than a participant, a listener rather than a talker,  a coach rather than a player your observations will reveal strengths and weaknesses in the way things are done and those that are doing them.

The way you share this information is vitally important.

Most of us default to telling others what we think. This  economical, direct and effective way to communicate ideas or directions is important but it is not always the most beneficial method for Scoutmasters.

Our job is to encourage critical thinking, to sharpen the skills of our Scouts and to encourage them to lead. Often we can best accomplish this by asking questions that allow them to discover things on their own.

Let's say you have observed a chaotic and, to you at least, poorly run game during a Troop meeting. After the meeting you speak to the SPL:

SM - So what was going on with the game this evening?

SPL - We were trying to play this new game but nobody was cooperating.

SM - Why do you think that was?

SPL - Well it was new and Mark was trying to run it and it just didn't seem to work.

SM - What did you do to fix it?

SPL - Nothing really, we just kind of let it go.

SM - Was Mark prepared to conduct the game - had he tried it out before?

SPL - Oh no, he just kind of invented it on the spot.

SM - Do you think that approach worked well?

SPL - It was kind of a mess but it was actually kind of fun too - Mark took it well.

SM - Would you want to do that every week?

SPL - Not really. It was so disorganized.

SM - So how do you prevent that happening in the future?

Where before I would have stepped in and tried to fix the game as soon as I saw it, or more likely would have been running it myself, I did not interfere. If the Scouts had been pummeling each other with sticks I would have stopped it immediately, but they weren't. 

Through questioning the SPL has the opportunity to think about the problem and invent a solution. The Scoutmaster has the opportunity to listen and learn - the game was chaotic but the Scouts kind of enjoyed it anyway.
 
Does this type of thing drive me crazy? Sure it does but the Troop meeting and its various elements are not mine to control. I have to maintain my focus on mentoring and coaching my Scouts towards discovering and applying their skills, not taking their responsibilities away.

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Transition from Adult to Youth Leadership - The Patrol Leader's Council

A healthy Patrol Leader's Council (PLC) is the heart of a youth led Troop. It should gather often to discuss and plan the Troop's program. The Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) chairs the PLC, the Scribe keeps minutes and the meeting is open to Patrol Leaders (PL) and any other youth leaders.

I'd suggest that the PLC meet before and after every Troop Meeting for a few minutes and once a month for an hour or so. In lieu of our regular Monday Troop meeting the PLC meets on the Monday after our monthly outing. Monthly meetings are a bit more formal than those held weekly, this is were the PLC will do the bulk of its planning, discussion and decision making. It should follow an agenda, maintain minutes and use salient elements of the rules of order. The PLC also meets every night when we are camping.

As a rule the Scoutmaster is the only adult who actively participates in meetings of the PLC, and only at the invitation of the SPL. Other adult leaders may observe but must not speak unless they are spoken to. Scoutmasters and their Assistants tend to have all the answers and/or a great deal to say about planning and presenting the Troop's program. However helpful or informative they may feel they are being their input tends to diminish the process of Scouts finding some important things out for themselves. The role of adult  leadership when the PLC is meeting should be clearly understood and strictly followed.

Weekly meetings are much less formal - ten minutes before the Troop meets, ten minutes after. Before meetings the PLC reviews plans and checks to see that all is in readiness, after meetings they discuss that evening's meeting, address any concerns that arose and review plans for the next week.

A Scoutmaster who listens carefully at these meetings will see many opportunities to interject a bit of coaching and mentoring into the proceedings. He may want to ask some questions that will hel focus the efforts of the PLC.  In forming a new Troop, or in a PLC that has significantly changed due to leadership elections, or in the case of a Troop transitioning to youth leadership the Scoutmaster may have a somewhat more active role in the PLC but it must be a measured and disciplined role.

At the end of each meeting of the PLC the Scoutmaster should have the opportunity to make some brief remarks. When a PLC is running smoothly these remarks should be something along the lines of "You seem to have a handle on things, you're doing a good job, unless you have any questions for me I'm finished."

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.

Starting the Transition from Adult to Youth Leadership

We've understood what a Scout led Troop promises and are ready to get underway - so what next?

Start Listening
Your role is about to change drastically.  From now on you are permitted a minute or two at the close of a Troop meeting to share a story or to say something encouraging. For the rest of the time you are quietly observing, gathering information, seeing how the Scouts work (we'll talk about what to do with this information later). It should go without saying that you reserve the right to step in if the rules of safety or propriety are breached, but that should be a rare occurrence. Youth leaders will not step up so long as you are running the show, so you have to stop. Stop telling, sharing, instructing, shouting, interjecting: just stop.

Start Mentoring and Coaching
Leadership development is the result of continuous coaching and mentoring. You and your youth leadership will be learning things together, collaborating, discovering, inventing, trying things out; an exciting and rewarding process.

Coaching and mentoring mostly takes place away from the action - don't interfere with the Scouts when they are working.

Start Letting Scouts Lead
If you let go a little your Scouts  will lead a little, if you let go of a lot they will lead a lot, if you stop leading altogether they will do it all. I may be a much better leader than my best Senior Patrol Leader, I my be a better instructor than any of my Scouts but this does not mean that I should do any of the leading or instructing.  My real job is coaching Scouts to discover and develop their abilities to lead or instruct.

Transition from Adult to Youth Leadership

Placing the leadership of a Scout Troop squarely in the hands of the Scouts themselves and keeping it there is the single greatest service a Scoutmaster can offer his Troop.

Before this can happen the adult leadership must understand exactly what they are trying to accomplish, define their relationship to the Scouts and overcome the reservations that they have with investing the Scouts with leadership.

Perhaps the single most important concept to grasp is that a Scout Troop belongs to the Scouts, not the adults who are there to help. Scouting is not a program we prepare and present for Scouts, it is something that they do for themselves. Scouting is not merely useful skills, object lessons or curriculum it is an experience for Scouts in self motivation, self government and self realization. Adult leaders are not the chief executive officers of the enterprise but coaches and mentors to the real leaders - the Scouts. Coaches and mentors help develop skills and provide motivation but can only observe the game being played from the sidelines.

Two common fears keep many of us from a Scout led Troop:

Wrong Decisions
We fear that given such latitude Scouts will make bad decisions. They will. When they do it is our job to encourage them to find a better approach, to learn from their mistakes and to get back on track. We will always review decisions effecting safety and propriety so Scouts are not put in harm's way.

Wrong Emphasis
Why would Scouts choose to do the difficult or challenging things the program demands if they could just decide not to do them? Why go camping if they could just have pizza parties and go to amusement parks?
Scouting works because it appeals to boys, they are in a Scout Troop because it is what they want to do. They will not significantly change things even if given the latitude to do so. Some of us fear that if we allow Scouts to own and administer their Troop they will choose activities and practices that don't achieve the goals of Scouting. Our job is to give them some broad guidelines that direct them toward the right goals. These guidelines are best expressed in the promises contained in the first few pages of the Scout Handbook.

Once we have overcome these fears, or simply accept that they will always bother us, we can move ahead towards a Scout-led program. In the next post we'll discuss the first few steps that begin the process.

Evaluating Leadership Tenure Towards Advancement

Star, Life and Eagle rank all require tenure in a leadership position. For each rank the requirement states:

"serve actively (x) months in one or more positions of responsibility "

The word 'actively' can be a pinhead on which many angels dance. In my experience Scoutmasters often read this word and start instituting metrics to evaluate the term. But the official interpretation of "active" is much simpler than that:

A Scout is considered to be active in his unit if:

1. He is registered in his unit (registration fees are current).
2. He has not been dismissed from his unit for disciplinary reasons.
3. He is engaged by his unit leadership on a regular basis (Scoutmaster conference, informs the Scout of upcoming unit activities, through personal contact, and so on).

This is not an interpretation, this is official BSA policy of what active means towards membership and, by extension, leadership. So not only are metrics a bad idea but they are prohibited by policy.

Does this mean that a Scout can be elected to a leadership position, do little else than wear a patch, not show up to any meetings or outings and still fulfill the leadership requirement? In a word yes.

Before you fire off a scathing comment consider this - if Scouts are active enough to be elected to a leadership position and then do nothing it is not the Scout who has failed, it is the Scoutmaster. If we engage the Scout on a regular basis through conferences, information and personal contact and cannot get them to participate then it is likely not the Scout's fault but the way we present the program.

The Scout who shirks all responsibility, never shows up and then appears a month before his eighteenth birthday and wants to finish his Eagle may actually exist here and there but he is largely a straw man. That being said I'd accommodate this Scout without hesitation - he is at least showing some interest and he became a Life Scout somehow.

But what about the quality and integrity of the advancement program? We have to maintain standards don't we?  What needs the most maintenance is our clear conception of the success of the Scout realized in giving his own best effort.

Here is how I evaluate leadership at a Scoutmasters Conference. It takes a few simple questions.

"How have you fulfilled the leadership requirement for this rank?"
"How do you evaluate the job you did?"
"According to your own evaluation do you think I should sign off on your leadership requirement?"

During this exchange I can support or challenge the conclusions that the Scout reaches, encourage him to do better or congratulate him for a job well done. It is not within my power to withhold my signature if he has fulfilled the basic active requirements as interpreted above.

What if the Scout has done a really awful job? How can it be responsible or fair to him to sign off on a poor job? Discuss the positives and the negatives, work with the Scout to improve his performance, instill him with confidence and watch him grow.

How is this fair to the other Scouts?  The Scouts choose their leaders, they get what they vote for good bad or indifferent. They have the power to change their leaders when enough of them want to.

Won't they all just shirk their responsibilities when the realize that I'm going to sign off no matter what they do? Scouts aren't that stupid and irresponsible, they want to excel, to do a good job of things.

Somehow Scoutmasters get into their head that they are the ones who control things, that they are guardians of quality and standards. I'll reiterate that the Scoutmasters position is purposefully designed to be powerless in these matters. They cannot appoint or remove youth leaders, they cannot withhold their signature based on their personal evaluation of a Scout's performance in a leadership role.

That being said Scoutmasters wield the tremendous power of their personal example, the 'bully pulpit' of encouragement, exhortation and mentoring.

When Youth Leadership Doesn't Lead

A predictable frustration for Scoutmasters is the Scout who takes on a leadership position and doesn't meet expectations. We may respond using employee-employer or soldier-officer thinking and tactics because these are familiar models.

Scouts are not employees, Scoutmasters are not employers.
Scouts are not Enlisted Men, Scoutmasters are not Officers.
Scouts don't sign contracts, they volunteer.

I have attempted to write job descriptions and contracts for leadership positions in an attempt to lawyer my Scouts towards responsibility. It does not work. I have attempted orders and brow-beating discipline like an officer talking to the enlisted men. It does not work. Both of these approaches will bring limited successes but they will ultimately fall short of the goal.

Every Youth leadership position in Scouting is controlled by the Scouts themselves. They choose their leaders by election (Quartermasters , Scribes and similar positions are usually appointed by the SPL but he is elected by the Scouts). I should pause to say that if you are appointing leaders in your Troop or setting requirements for candidacy you are doing your Troop a disservice by not adhering to the Scouting program. If a leader is doing a substandard job the Scouts themselves will be the first to know and if the situation demands they can elect a new leader.

The Scoutmaster's single goal is that all of his Scouts succeed. Success is defined individually, not by a static standard of performance. When a youth leader is preforming poorly, or not at all, it is the Scoutmaster's responsibility to mentor, cajole, exhort and encourage the Scout to succeed. The Scoutmaster can't fire them, demote them or threaten to withhold approving their advancement because none of these things are within his power. Even if these things were within our power we would never use them because positive reinforcement is so much more effective.

I have had some sharp conversations with my youth leaders but more often I prefer to quietly push them towards success by helping them discover their  leadership skills, however nascent, and building them up.

If all of these efforts fail and the Scouts are still complaining about an under performing youth leader I ask them;

"How did he get a leadership position in the first place?"

The answer: "We elected him."

My next question is:

"So, then, when is the next election?"

Neutralizing "Bad Apple" Behavior

Almost all of us have either had the personal experience of working with someone
who displayed bad apple behaviors ... When this process starts to unfold at work, it consumes inordinate amounts of time, psychological resources, and emotional energy. ... such  circumstances underlie many people’s reluctance to fully commit to teams...  they offend us, reduce our enthusiasm, change our mood and may ultimately lead us to personally de-identify or leave the group, with a high likelihood that the group itself will perform poorly, fail, or disband.

Will Felps - How, when, and why bad apples spoil the barrel: Negative group members and dysfunctional groups. PDF LINK

Professor Will Felps was interviewed on a the December 19, 2008  episode of 'This American Life' (Ruining It for the Rest of Us). He relates the results of a study in group dynamics where an actor put into a group of unwitting students and told to model one of three 'bad apple' behaviors: the slacker, the depressive pessimist and the jerk.

After dozens of trials Felps conculded that the bad apple did 'spoil the barrel' significantly reducing the performance of the group with one remarkable exception. One member inthis exceptional group was a 'particularly good leader' who would 'ask questions, engage all the team members and diffuse conflicts'.

Now Felps is studying the technique of asking questions and engaging everyone's opinion as a way of strengthening groups.

Any reasonably attentive student of human nature understands how very difficult it is to moderate or overcome the 'bad apple' effect. The discovery that engaging people in a group setting with questions may significantly neutralize bad apple behaviors is encouraging.

Questions are an especially effective tool for Scoutmnasters. They engage youth leadership in discovery and development, diffuse difficulties and, now apparently, help balance the efforts of a group working towards a goal.