Information, Observation, and Inspiration for Scouters
Beyond agendas, meetings and paperwork, the committee chair’s job includes supporting, inspiring and helping your committee members succeed in the jobs you have recruited and selected them for.
Continuing in our series aimed at the new committee chair, this article will go into the many ways you can encourage your committee members and help them enjoy their roles supporting the troop and its Scouts.
You’ve heard the sayings.
Order is Heaven’s first law. (Alexander Pope)
Good order is the foundation of all things. (Edmund Burke)
Order is power. (Henri Frederic Amiel)
Henry Miller also had something to say about order:
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Clarke Green recently posted an article on his blog ScoutmasterCG titled The Jedi Scoutmaster in which he discusses the issue of boy behavior, our perception of it, and how to handle it in our troops. Continue reading “Order in the troop! Order in the troop!”
Many observations from management training can be adapted in several ways so we can use them within Scouting. Perhaps this is why Wood Badge is so successful on both fronts: it’s an excellent training program for Scouters but it also helps us in our work and home lives.
Recently, Dan Rockwell wrote in his blog Leadership Freak about a new book by Bob Hancox and Russell Hunter, Coaching for Engagement, and pointed out ways that managers can become coaches and move from managing the process to managing the people Continue reading “Engagement”
A lot of us work for fairly large companies where our coworkers number from a few dozen to a few thousand, and every now and then the top management holds an “all hands” meeting to pass along information that is of importance to everyone in the organization. A recent article in Harvard Business Review touches on the responsibility of a company’s top leaders to communicate essential (and sometimes not so essential, but nonetheless interesting) knowledge. Many use it as a reinforcement of the organization’s mission. Some even treat it as a social happening. The article focuses on the how, what, who and when of communicating with staff. Continue reading “Lines of communication”
You may know that I went to Michigan State and am a big Spartan fan, so I’m delighted at the success of the football team this year. Up until last Saturday’s road loss to Iowa, the Green and White were undefeated, 8-0, and ranked fifth in the nation. Â This despite having both off-season and recent difficulties with some of the players, having to play archrivals the University of Michigan at their stadium, and head coach Mark Dantonio suffering a heart attack shortly after the heroic win against Notre Dame. (If you weren’t following the story, don’t worry – he is OK, and has since returned to coaching.) Continue reading “Get out of the way!”