Course - Troop 26

You must acquire and have on your person at every Leadership Challenge event (classroom, test, Field Exercise) a reliable pen or pencil, your Leadership Challenge manual (which will be given to you at the beginning of class) and a pocket notepad that can fit in your Scout uniform shirt pocket, and a complete Class A duty uniform.

Overview:

    * 7 Classrooms will teach the course material in a lecture-discussion format. The Spring course classrooms are taught in a condensed format over a single weekend. The Fall course is taught over eight weeks for an hour before regular troop meetings.
    * A final exam given on the Monday night following completion of the classroom sessions for 1 hour prior to the regular Troop meeting.
    * Field Exercise, an overnight structured campout designed to test, practice, and evaluate skills taught during the course. Scouts will rotate command duties and practice learned skills.
    * An Evaluation of the Scouts’ strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to the course material will be discussed and/or distributed to the Scouts for their own use.
    * The Leadership Challenge Medal will be awarded at the Court of Honour following the Field Exercise.

Dates:

The Spring 1999 Basic Leadership Challenge Course will be held on 20-21 February 1999. On each day, half of the course material will be taught. An exam will be given the Monday night following. There will not be an opportunity to make up a missed classroom day or the field exercise. There is one day scheduled for a makeup test in the event that one or more Trainees do not pass the exam on the first try. The Spring Field Exercise is 05-06 March 1999 and will be at Camp Keystone on scenic Lake Keystone.

The Fall 1999 Basic Leadership Challenge Course begins on 23 August 1999. The Fall Field Exercise is on 29 - 30 October 1999 and will be at Camp Keystone on scenic Lake Keystone.

CONTINUING EDUCATION…

ADVANCED Leadership Challenge

Course will be run once per year in late Spring/Early Summer!

Prerequisites:

You must be at least First Class rank to enroll.

You must have attended and passed the Basic Leadership Challenge Course.

You must be able to attend all of the Classrooms, Field Exercise, and the Final Exam.

You must pass the Final Exam in order to pass the course.

    * 8 Classrooms, each an hour before regular troop meetings will teach the course material in a lecture-discussion format.
    * A Field Exercise to be held on a regular troop campout designed to test, practice, and evaluate skills taught during the course. Scouts will plan and execute a Troop-wide event. There is no possible way to make up the Field Exercise.
    * An Evaluation of the Scouts’ strengths and weaknesses as they pertain to the course material will be discussed with the Scouts for their own use.
    * Scouts passing the course will be decorated at the Court of Honour following the Final Exam.

The Summer 1999 Advanced Leadership Challenge Course begins on 05 April 1999. The Field Exercise will be on the 21-23 May 1999 troop campout at Camp McClintock. The Final Exam will be on 05 June 1999 at a location to be named later.

ALL NEW.......

Staff Skills

If you are a: Patrol Leader, Assistant Patrol Leader, Senior Patrol Leader, Assistant Senior Patrol Leader, Head Quartermaster, Quartermaster, Scribe, Librarian, Chaplain, Historian, Bugler, Leadership Corps Chairman, Leadership Corps Member, or Den Chief, you MUST attend the Staff Skills course for your term whether you have attended Staff Skills in the past or not.

* One Tuesday night session immediately following the Patrol Leader Elections from 7pm to 9:30pm. If you cannot make this meeting, you will need to obtain special permission from the Scoutmaster or NEW Senior Patrol Leader in advance.
* Staff Skills will accomplish three major goals: 1) To present an opportunity for the Scoutmaster and SPL to address the new staff as a whole and for staff members to familiarize themselves with each other. 2) To instruct specific job titles, job skills, and job descriptions. 3) To learn how to properly function as a unit.

The Staff Skills Course is scheduled twice a year, the day after Patrol Leader elections. More information will be posted as it becomes available. Look for this!

Course Descriptions

Basic Leadership Challenge

Basic Leadership Challenge is designed to teach Scouts how to lead and manage people. Subjects covered: Types of Leadership, Communicating to Individuals and Groups via speaking and writing, Organization, Tasks, Time Management, Chains of Command, Delegating Authority, Notetaking, Decision Making, Determining Options, Developing Solutions, Dealing with Problems, Crises, Challenges to Authority, Counseling, Influencing People, Management Techniques, Personal Charisma, Public and Private Image, Followership, Teamwork, Developing Work Relationships, Caring for Your Command, and Training.

All in 7 hours!

Cost per Scout is about $12, most of which is for food on the Field Exercise.

Advanced Leadership Challenge

Advanced Leadership Challenge is designed to take Scouts already familiar with lower level command, such as Patrol Leaders and Assistants, and teach them how to be higher level managers, such as Senior Patrol Leader. Scouts must have already completed the Basic Leadership Challenge Course in order to take this course and since class size will be limited, preferential treatment will be given to enroll older Scouts and Scouts who have experience in lower level command. While the Basic Course teaches hands-on individual leadership, the Advanced Course teaches multi-level delegation, orders to large numbers of people, and operational planning. Subjects covered: Review of Basic Course Subjects, Operations vs. Tasks, Detailed Planning, Extensive Planning, Multi-Level Planning, Warning Orders, To-Do Lists, Inventorying Assets/Information Gathering, Operations Orders, Delegation, Professionalism, Self-Discipline and Image, Public Speaking, Time Management, Degree of Detail, Briefings, Staff Skills, Chains of Command, and Making Your Staff Work.

All in 6 hours!

Note: Unlike the Basic Leadership Challenge Course, there will be occasional graded homework which you must complete and pass in order to pass the Course. Scouts must make a 70% grade on all homework and the Final Exam and pass the Field Exercise in order to pass the course. It will be as fun as the Basic Course but you will learn even more!

Cost per Scout will be about $12, most of which is for food on the Final Exam day.

Staff Skills Course

Staff Skills is designed to teach Scouts how to perform mid-level and administrative-level management. While the Basic Leadership Challenge Course is not currently a prerequisite, it is very strongly recommended and may in the future be a prerequisite. Staff Skills will teach the specific job requirements of the various troop staff positions, but it goes further to show the purpose and importance of staff officers and how and why they fit in to an organization. Staff positions in any given organization are frequently looked upon with disdain, or even overlooked as being unimportant. This course will break that mold. It is the only manditory Leadership Challenge Program. Staff Skills also allows the SPL and Scoutmaster to assemble the entire staff for the first time.

FROM THE COURSE DIRECTOR.......

The purpose of this entire Leadership Challenge program is to give kids some tools to be able to interact with others on a more professional and more rational basis as they grow up. In essence, I teach personal responsibility. I credit Troop 26 with making me the adult that I am today. I can date, almost to the month, the turning point in my life when I went from being a child to when I became aware of more than my own perspective and began the transition into adulthood. This is when I became a Patrol Leader and suddenly became responsible for the welfare of 8 other guys. It is this evolution of thought that I try to inspire through my courses.

Additionally, taken at face value, they are excellent management courses designed to teach all levels of management. These kids may suddenly be thrust into leadership positions and need training in how to lead. I learned by trial-and-error and made plenty of mistakes. While that is an effective way to learn, it is not necessarily the best. These training courses give the Scout some idea of how he is supposed to go about getting his people to do things, how and when it is appropriate to discipline them, when and why it is important to take notes, and how people react to him as a leader. It arms the Scout with knowledge of how and why people act and react the way they do so that he can deal with them most effectively over time. While oriented towards Scouting, these are skills that will be used throughout life.

HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM

It all started with my fascination about command and leadership. I was, and still am, intrigued by the question: Why do people follow other peoples’ orders? As a Patrol Leader, I had only my young, developing judgment and luck to rely upon to make command decisions. I became frustrated easily stumbling around blindly, untrained and as I have said, made plenty of mistakes. Thus began my personal quest to learn how to lead people properly. I have four years of military experience both in the Army and Navy and have researched numerous sources to satiate my interest. In 1991, I came back as an adult to visit my old Troop. I quickly discovered that my hobby was in desperate need of teaching to the young kids in the Troop in whom, I saw reflections of myself at that age. Thus was born the pilot program of what exists today as the Basic Leadership Challenge Course. In 1992 I submitted a proposal to the Troop Committee and Scoutmaster to run a four-part classroom instruction program to be taught during regular meetings, followed by an overnight campout to review practical applications of the classroom material. The proposal was tacitly accepted with the proviso that it would be mandatory for all scouts in any kind of leadership position in the Troop. I personally ran this course in Fall of 1992 and it was more or less successful. As I was in college at the time I found it necessary to focus more on my schoolwork so I handed the course off to Gerry Haynes who ran the course again in 1993. Then, for one reason or another, the course died.

In the back of my mind was always the course. There were some changes that I would like to have seen made to it and so in my spare time, I overhauled and revised the course to what it is today. I had finished up school and got a job with Arby’s as a Co-Manager which allowed me zero time for myself much less my wife and friends, so Scouting was not an option. Enter MPSI. Around Thanksgiving 1995 I got my current job with MPSI putting my college education to work with regular hours and for a very progressive and friendly company. With more time available once more, I was back in business. I presented my revised program to the Committee and the Scoutmaster who accepted it and started it back up with a Spring 1996 class. Now that we were back on schedule with two Basic Leadership Challenge Courses per year, one in the Spring, one in the Fall, with more or less the format and content of the course set, I was able to turn my attention to the full scope of my vision - a training program to teach Scouts every aspect of leadership and management to make them more responsible and successful in life.

My next project was the Advanced Leadership Challenge Course which was unveiled in the summer of 1997. My current project is the Staff Skills Course. The final phase of my project will be leadership micro-clinics to reinforce skills taught in the courses and to teach finer points that we are not able to cover in the courses due to time constraints. In the next millennia, I will be looking to make the course self-supporting so that I personally do not necessarily have to run it each time for it to be a continuing program. I do not want the program to depend solely on any one individual or it will certainly follow the fate of the pilot program. It is my intention to make this phoenix fly in Troop 26’s skies forever.

- T. C. Nulf

Leadership Challenge

Course Director

Eagle Scout T26 1984

If you would like more information on the Leadership Challenge Program please write your name and phone number so I can contact you:

T.C. Nulf

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