25 MAY 2023 WorldWide Drilling Resource® The Un-Comfort Zone II by Robert Evans Wilson, Jr. What I Learned about Leadership as an Adult in Cub Scouts I was excited when my son became old enough to join Cub Scouts because I had enjoyed my experience so much. I signed him up with the pack affiliated with our church and his school. There were 18 boys in the pack, ten were in the Tiger Cub den, the beginning level at the time. The other eight boys filled out the four den levels above it. Within a couple of months, us Tiger Cub parents realized we did not belong to an active Cub Scout pack; it was a dying pack. To the contrary, the Tiger den was quite busy because the den leader, who was an active-duty military man, had us follow the recommendations of the official Tiger Cub guidebook. I served as his assistant den leader. The main pack, however, was doing little of the recommended activities. There were no pack meetings or award ceremonies. Also missing were most of the games, contests, training courses, and other fun events associated with Cub Scouting. The problem was a lack of leaders in the pack. There was only one: the pack Cubmaster. It was easy to see he was overwhelmed. His intentions were good, but the responsibilities were simply too many for one person, plus his job had him frequently traveling out of town. He needed an Assistant Cubmaster, who would take over as Cubmaster the following year when his son moved up to the Boy Scout troop. If no one replaced him, it could mean the end of the pack, which had been chartered for more than 50 years. Several parents were complaining, but no one was stepping up to help. I wasn’t happy either. The easiest thing would be to move to a more active pack, but I wanted to commit to this one because its home was our church. So I volunteered to be Assistant Cubmaster. The overwhelm shifted immediately to me. The Cubmaster dumped nearly all the responsibility on me, and remained active mostly in an advisory role. I had no intention of doing all the work, nor was I going to get stuck as Cubmaster with no successor. I needed more parents; to get more, I had to recruit more boys into the pack. I consulted the Area Council and learned about a very successful recruitment film. It showed Cub Scouts at camp doing many fun activities, but two stood out as the ones that would easily attract boys - shooting archery and BB guns. I got permission from all the nearby elementary schools to hold an assembly and show the recruitment video. Each boy who was interested was given a flyer with the date and location of the sign-up night. The video was magic; every single boy took home a flyer. On sign-up night, several parents came up to me saying their son had emphatically told them to bring him that night to sign up for Cub Scouts. We signed up 40 new boys. Most parents were thinking they could just drop off their kid on Scout night, then pick him up two hours later. I had to change that thinking at our orientation meeting the next week. I needed at least one parent from each family to volunteer, but I didn’t want to frighten any of them off. I opened the meeting by outlining my vision and mission. I had been speaking professionally for four years, but was only beginning to give motivational talks. My goal was to paint a picture of all the fun activities and skills their sons would enjoy and learn over the next year. Then I explained we needed every parent to participate, but I had a plan to minimize everyone’s involvement. My mission was to spread out the responsibilities so thin it would not take much time. In doing so, I was rewriting the official rules of Cub Scouts. I created a committee for each activity they would participate in through the year, including the toy car and sailboat races, quarterly family camping trips (with one committee for each camping trip), and fundraising popcorn sales. I recruited two chairpersons for each committee, and gave them the responsibility to recruit the parents they would need to fulfill their activity. I also initiated a monthly weekend day-hike with one parent volunteer per hike to plan the location. So future Cubmasters would not get stuck in the position, I planned a line of succession encompassing three years: Assistant Cubmaster the first year to learn the ropes; Cubmaster the second year to recruit new scouts and committee chairs, follow-up on committees, and run the monthly pack meeting; and year three, in a new position I created, Cubmaster Emeritus, which came with the responsibility of advising the Cubmaster and Committee Chairs as needed. It took me two years as Cubmaster before this program took hold. I got people to volunteer by meeting with them privately and asking what they hoped Cub Scouting would mean for their child. I then described the various jobs for which the Cubs needed a leader, and finally I asked them to choose and commit to one of them. I found that because I had minimized the responsibilities so well, no one ever declined to help. As the year went on, it was fascinating to see how many parents rose as leaders, and willingly increased their responsibilities. I closed out my fifth year as Cubmaster Emeritus and moved up to Boy Scouts with my two sons. When I left, there were 68 boys in the pack. Wilson Cont’d on page 28.
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