Essential Tips to Mentor Your Senior Patrol Leader

One of the critical roles of a Scoutmaster is their relationship with the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL). The Senior Patrol Leader is the leader of the youth unit. The Scoutmaster and their assistants need to develop a mentoring & coaching system with their SPL. The constant development of youth leadership programs to match the desired events is critical to a successful meeting. Using meeting plans and mentoring the SPL will go a long way to keeping all Scouts involved in the meeting. No one ever joined Scouting for the meetings. The meetings make adventure possible by planning out the activities and skills needed. The adult Scout leadership only steps in if safety becomes an issue. The success of the unit meeting is completely left in the youth's hands. Scoutmasters need to work with their Senior Patrol Leaders to make sure that they are ready to take on this responsibility.

LINKS:
🌐 Troop Meeting Agenda: https://troopleader.scouting.org/troo...
📄 Meeting Planner PDF: https://troopleader.scouting.org/wp-c...
🎬 Senior Patrol Leader Orientation:    • Senior Patrol Leader Orientation  
🎬 Introduction to Leadership Skills for Troops video:    • What is a ILST? - Introduction To Lea...  
🎬 Patrol method video:    • The Patrol Method? - The Patrol Metho...  
🥇 Members Edition to this Video:    • How to Mentor the Senior Patrol Leade...  
🩳 Mentoring the Senior Patrol Leader Short:    • How to Mentor the Senior Patrol Leade...  
❎ Survey Question:    • Запись  
🌟 Monthly Live Meeting:    • November 2022 Live Meeting with Scout...  
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🔑 Show Notes:
No one ever joined Scouting to go to a weekly meeting. But almost everyone that has quit Scouting left because of a boring confusing or pointless meeting.
• The Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) is the troop leader. The Scoutmasters (adult leaders and assistants) are there to support mentor and coach the youth leadership.
• The only time the adult leadership should intervene in a youth meeting is on behalf of a safety issue.
• If a meeting fails that's on the youth leadership. I'm not implying that adult leadership should intentionally set up the youth to fail. But should allow for natural failures to occur.
• Many of today's leaders “safely failed” in the past. This learning experience is critical for leaders to become better prepared.
• Training the youth leadership of the Troop is the responsibility of the Scoutmasters.
• Sometimes after training Scoutmasters need to mentor and coach new SPLs.
• Many youths believe they can “just wing it” or do what the last SPL did.
• Planning your meeting is critical to successful meetings. Incorporating a schedule of meetings will only set up the unit to succeed. “Plan your meeting or plan to fail.”
• The Scoutmasters need to set aside time for the SPL before the meeting and after.
• The SPL should have well-defined goals to reach each week. Delegating tasks and asking experienced scouts to help.
• The only time the Scoutmasters talks at the meeting is briefly at the end of the meeting (Scoutmasters Moment).
• Only the SPL can end their youth meeting and dismiss the youth.
• Sometimes it becomes necessary to replace the SPL. This can be from multiple factors such as attendance, leave of absence, or abandoning the responsibilities of SPL. This is a decision that is made by the adult Unit Leader and the Committee Chair. This is a necessary action and should be extremely rare. If the Troop has by-laws the process should also be spelled out there.

📊 Poll (11/2/22): Who is the person that the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) reports to? (141 Votes)
7% Patrol Leader Council (PLC)
91% Scoutmaster (SM)
0% Troop Committee Chairperson (CC)
1% Charter Organization Representative (COR)

⏱ Time Stamp & Video Jump List:
0:00 Mentoring the Senior Patrol Leader
1:34 SPL and the Youth Meeting
2:36 Adult Leaders Takeover
4:00 Mentoring the SPL
5:40 Meeting Plans
7:56 SPL & Scoutmaster Meetings
10:08 Scoutmaster in the Youth Meeting
11:33 Replacement of an SPL

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