2 trips during the December Holidays

This holidays have been a fulfilling one. Went on 2 trips and the rest of the holidays were spent mostly on scouting, something that i am passionate about. Let's leave the scouting issue to another day. Shall share about the 2 overseas trip that I went.

Mount Kinabalu (05-091207)

 

It was trip just after my exams. It was really a good transition into the holidays as I was disappointed with my last physics paper. The trip had indeed lifted my spirit; it started off my holidays on a high note. As I was one of the leaders tagging along for the trip, I had the responsibility to take care of the junior scouts. My primary aim for this trip was to foster closer ties with the ventures ( 16-18 yrs old) and I believed that I had achieved that.

Something that left me pondering on how I should manage my expectations for these young people. I used to think that as ventures, they should be as garang as how we used to be when we were ventures. We tend to neglect the fact that they were brought up in a different environment as we were before and thus the way they perceived things are different. Disappointment, the feeling I initially felt, in their performance during the trip. This was due to the fact that not all of them made it up to the summit whereas the rest of the group consists of just scouts, who are younger, made it up. This is because I believe that ventures are the crème of the crop and their performance should exceed those of the scouts. Nevertheless, there was the other side that I am pleased about. They took the extra effort in taking care of the boys and the only female venture who went along motivated the boys during the trek up to the summit. It was commendable as this was her maiden trip with us and mount K is not an easy mountain to conquer. It takes more than strength to motivate the people when you are tired yourself. It takes leadership and a positive attitude to do it.

After the trip, we had supper at the coffee shop opposite my place. We were talking about rovering (scouts between 19-26). It was brought up during the last Scout AGM that we will like to bring back the rover unit back to GESS. During the AGM itself I talked about why rover unit should be set up to ensure the continual survival of dragon scouts and how the rover unit is going to benefit the young adults. Little did I consider the inputs from the young leaders, who are going to be rovers. They then turned to HL about their discontentment on why they should be the ones to start the rover unit and why not the junior batch. From this episode, I derived a few lessons. First, communication is a two way process and we should hear what both sides got to say. Next, according to John Maxwell, in his book - the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership – Law of timing, the right action at the wrong timing will bring about resistance. The AGM may not be a right time to introduce the rover unit as there were insufficient time to discuss the details and allow 2 way communications from both sides. It was just me and IM talking about the rover unit without their inputs as I have said earlier on.