Re: [Philmont]: Crew Leader Selection

Seems to me you could do a lot worse than picking your "obvious choice",
and (much more importantly) sending a complete explanation of who and
why to all the Scouts and leaders. Detail out your reasoning, and also
explain that you presented the various alternatives (including the
Crew-Leader-for-a-Day option) to this List Server, and so your decision
has the input from many Philmont experienced Advisors. In essence, you
do not have the luxury of "doing it right", and you need an established
command and control stucture NOW, not on Day 8 1/2 of your trek - that's
pinning a "Kick Me Hard Here" poster on your butt.

IMHO, Scouts in this sort of situation do NOT mind having a Crew Leader
picked for them - what they mind is favoritism and/or capriciousness in
the selection process (for example, an Advisor picking his son when
everyone involved knows that the selected boy is a terrible candidate).
  You also need to sensitize your selectee to the inherent differences
between appointments and elections - that is, he has to work harder to
make it all work. There is a huge difference between being a leader and
being a boss (something a lot of Scouts - and also Advisors - never
"get"), and the fate of your trek may well ride on your selectee's
ability to discern the differences and properly practice the former.

As far as other leadership "opportunities" go, you have had several
suggestions here to rotate the Naviguesser position day-by-day. Good
idea. Your Naviguesser can also be your Asst. Crew Chief for that day,
which will give him some of the experience you are looking for (in fact,
if your Crew Chief is smart, he will try to publically defer as many
decisions as reasonable to the Naviguesser while still quietly
maintaining overall authority; this is done by having the Crew Chief
discuss things in advance and then having the Asst. Crew Chief implement
the decisions). You can also establish your duty roster and rotate the
"Team Leader" for each sub-group every day. My duty roster (such as it
is) rotates one person per day out of each sub-group, so by Day III we
have one 2-day veteran, one 1-day veteran, and one novice, within each
group. This makes all your duty-roster jobs run a lot smoother versus
having everyone new each day. If you do this, then your 2-day veterans
automatically become your "Team Leaders". A little more pre-planning
and pre-organization work by you and your Crew Chief, but worthwhile.

Good luck to you.

- Dr. Bob

White, Billy Wayne (GECP, MABG, 037370) wrote:
>
> Wow, good timing for this topic as I have been pondering doing exactly
> that, having a rotating crew leader. I thought with my situation that
> was the way to go but after reading these posts I can see the majority
> opinion differs. Please offer some solutions or suggestions to my situation.
>
> We have a provisional crew of 8 boys, (& 3 advisors) that come from all
> over the country, literally. 1 from Wisconsin, 1 from Texas, the other 6
> are from Alabama, my home state, but cover the entire northern part of
> the state. These six scouts come from 3 other troops, or 2 scouts from
> each troop. 2 of these scouts are from my troop (and one of the other
> advisors as well) and are the only ones I know or possibly will meet
> before we meet at Philmont.
>
> Because we are from different areas of the state, scheduling any weekend
> training activity that we all could attend has been difficult, if not
> impossible. That and a whole host of other conflicts will prevent us
> from doing much training as a group, if any at all. In fact the only
> time there is a good chance of all the "in state" scouts / advisors
> getting together is our last pack shakedown held on Tuesday night two
> weeks before we leave for Philmont.
>
> I am the only one of our crew who has been to Philmont; twice as an
> advisor. Both times we were a crew made up of scouts from 2 different
> troops, but troops in the same district who already knew each other.
> Both times it was obvious to all who the crew leader should be and in
> fact wound up being. This time I don't have that luxury. I have a
> scout in mind who would make an excellent crew leader, IMHO, but I will
> not push that opinion on the crew. Or at least don't want to. I believe
> without a doubt that if the rest of the crew knew him that they would
> feel the same way. He is an Eagle Scout and actually is the oldest
> scout in the crew. But that's the problem, they don't and won't until we
> hit base camp on June 16th.
>
> I've had another leader, a Philmont veteran, advise me to rotate the
> crew leader and then after day 8(since we have 8 boys), let the crew
> select the one who has done the best job for the remainder of the trek.
> I know this plan has it's problems but seemed like a solution to me.
> That way when we return home, each scout can truthfully say, "I was a
> crew leader of 616G2." Of course there may be some of the guys who
> don't want the responsibility and that's OK. I have mailed each scout a
> copy of the Crew Leader Orientation sheet that came with our package so
> they would know what the job required.
>
> My idea was to start with "my choice" as crew leader and use the other
> scout from my troop as assistant crew leader. In other words, I start
> with a "known quality". The assistant crew leader would rotate to crew
> leader the next day and have a rotation worked out on the duty roster so
> that another scout would rotate to assistant crew leader. This way each
> scout who wanted to do so, had an opportunity to be both crew leader and
> assistant crew leader. The last day of rotation the first crew leader
> would be the assistant crew leader. Then hold an election to see who
> will lead us on to base camp the remaining part of our trek. It will
> take some planning. It may take more advisor involvement up front or
> behind the scenes than normal but after we got to Philmont, the scouts
> would take over and adjust the plan as needed.
>
> So, please let me hear what you would do in my situation or about my plan.
>
> Thanks for your time, sorry for the long post!
>
> Wayne White

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Received on Wed Apr 9 05:18:48 2003