What a Cub Scout needs from their Leader

 

A friend of mine is about to change roles in Scouting from working with Beavers (6-8 year olds) to working with Cubs (8-10 year olds).   

She’s nervous about making the shift and asked for some advice.  

This is what I wrote to her:

What would you want from your Leader if you were a Cub?    I know what I’d want.  And what I’d need. 

• Someone who will be completely fair and consistent in insisting that games and activities are run completely to the agreed rules.
• Someone who cares about me and my friends, has no favourites and has the highest expectations of me.
• Someone who isn’t afraid to say “I don’t know” – but who’s prepared to find out new things and help me to do the same.
• Someone who has integrity, with whom I know I will be safe, who won’t try to be something they’re not.
• Someone who encourages and makes use of my friends’ and my ideas, but also has ideas of their own – that help to stretch my experience and encourage me to grow – physically, intellectually, spiritually and socially.
• Someone who sets boundaries, explains why they’re setting them and then rigorously insists on those boundaries being respected.
• Someone who isn’t afraid to tell me and others off when we’re naughty – and when we inevitably transgress those boundaries, but who always strives to praise and encourage us.
• Someone who relishes life’s adventures, recognises that everyone gets nervous and uses their personality to help the loudest and the most nervous to recognise each other’s qualities.
• Someone who lives by their Promise – whatever version they choose.
• Someone who wants to leave this world a little better than when they found it.
• “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”