At the weekend, firefly.rainbows.adventure asked Instagram:
What questions did you ask your mentor? What did they help you with? What have you learned since, that you wished you’d known at the beginning of the qualification? What are your top tips for anyone new?
And so… oh, boy. I have some inside information on the Adult Leadership Qualification that I can’t share – and the reason for that is that I am a leadership mentor and in today’s essay I’m going to tell you everything you need to know as a new. Strap in, this is a long post!
Also, please don’t let this put you off! This is the good, the bad and the ugly and because it’s all the stuff I wish I’d known or I wish I could tell new leaders, it’s mostly the bad and the ugly.
First, if you have your own mentor, lucky you! My county doesn’t have enough so you have to go to leadership surgeries throughout your qualification and just see whoever’s there. It means you get less support in between and no one person you can message when you’re in a flap. If you need someone like that, you should have the details of your county leadership coordinator or adult support or the county office, who can direct you, or your district/division commissioner who likewise can. If you don’t, if you feel truly alone and out of your depth, I will be your virtual mentor/cheerleader. Seriously, I want to support new leaders and I’m at theinternetsbrownowl at gmail.com if you want me.
Second, cultivate relationships in your district/division! You need someone you can ask stupid questions or wail that tonight was a disaster! Ideally it would be your own other leader but I know that sometimes they seem set in their ways, and not hugely receptive to new blood and new ideas. I hope yours isn’t like that. In fact, I hope you have another leader at all! I’ve run four different units so far and I’ve never come in as second to an existing leader, ever.
When you take over a unit because the previous leader has gone (or in the case of my Rangers, they’ve never actually had a leader), there’s just so much you don’t know! It’s the worst situation and you are so brave to take it on. I didn’t realise for six months that Rangers even had a programme, let alone what it was or how it worked. No one to help with anything. No one around who knew anything. I was lucky, even so, because I’d already been a Young Leader with the Guides who met next door so I wasn’t completely isolated but the previous Brown Owl at my current unit, who was a parent who stepped up, would have been flying absolutely blind.
So, if you don’t have a friendly experienced leader right there in your unit, try to cultivate friendships with other leaders in your district. Cling to your district commissioner, or whoever got you started. You’ll feel less isolated if you’ve got a mate for advice, help and wailings. Because it can feel isolated. I’ve worked in two districts and we barely had any contact between district meetings. Everyone’s very friendly when you’re face-to-face but they all have lives and their own units to run and they often forget everyone else exists when they’re not physically there.
That mate can also stand up for you. My district liked to give new leaders large events to plan “because they need it for their qualification”. This is partly to blame for my Tawny quitting. Don’t do this to your new leaders! They’re brand new, they have no idea where to start, there’s often a lot of money involved in whatever they’ve been volunteered to arrange, and the entire district depending on them figuring it out. If you must volunteer them (and this is bordering on hazing), pair them with someone experienced, at the very least! There’s nothing more offputting to a new leader than being forced out of their depth in front of everyone. If you’re in this position and you have no one to turn to, email me! Let me see if I can help! And don’t let it happen to new leaders later on.
Invite other units to do activities with you, especially the ones feeding you and the ones you feed. Our Brownies know about “Tuesday Brownies” because their friends go there, or people leave us to go to them or leave them to come to us but you don’t get the community feeling. So we try to do things with the Guides every now and then. When I did Rangers, I tried to appear semi-regularly at Guides so the older girls didn’t feel like they were going up to a stranger. Of course, doing joint activities means someone else to share the organising with, theoretically.
Next and possibly most importantly, pressure your mentor to teach you about accounts. It’s the bane of my Guiding life. You’re expected to keep the accounts accurate and up to date with no training at all, and if you lose the thread early on, it’s a pig to pick up later. It’s not actually too difficult – I have a spreadsheet with two tabs. One for the bank account and one for the cash tin. Write a date and description on a new line every time money goes in or out, write how much is in there on Sept 1st at the top and keep a column showing the current balance ie every time money goes out, reduce your current balance and every time it comes in, increase it. Then I keep lots of extra columns where I copy the amounts into groups – badges, trips out, craft materials, subs, annual subscription etc so you can summarise it all at the end of the year. Yes, it’s really intimidating and the current training scheme really glosses over it. Girlguiding have an Excel accounts pack here that you might find useful.
You’ll set out with good intentions but sometimes you’ll have to improvise. The leader who planned the meeting will be ill, a miscommunication will mean everyone thought someone else was in charge, you won’t have the materials you need, and so on. Improvising is a valuable skill. If you’ve got some craft materials in the cupboard or a few games in your head (or the programme cards – such a luxury!), you can keep your unit busy and happy on a moment’s notice. And remember, there’s a good chance they’ll have no idea something’s gone wrong. Don’t worry.
Risk assessments are another pig that you’re expected to do with little to no training. Girlguiding has templates on the website but broadly:
- What can go wrong?
- Who does it affect (girls, leaders, public, everyone etc)?
- Is it likely to happen?
- Is it serious if it does?
- What can you do to stop it happening?
Then you write that out, a row per risk, until you can’t think of anything else. Something else will happen. Didn’t think about cuts from uncooked spaghetti while building edible bridges, did I? Cows encountered on a hike that’s always been cow-free. Crazy stupidity of eight-year-olds. Don’t worry too much about it. Just add it for next time.
You’ll need to learn to do your own research. No matter how friendly your district, there will be things it doesn’t occur to them to tell new folks. That ranges from Intops (international opportunities) all the way down to tea etiquette at district meetings, to where the wreath appears from for Remembrance Parade, to that once-a-year-community-service-thing. The Girlguiding website is a mine of information but you’ll need someone friendly in your district for the local stuff.
Go to large scale events if you can. Girlguiding has four training and activity centres and lots of second-tier more local ones. There are national events like Wellies and Wristbands held at two or three simultaneously, there are regional or local events maybe only held at one and it’s always good to take your unit somewhere they can see that they’re part of a bigger Guiding family than they’d realised.
Don’t be afraid to sing campfire songs with enthusiasm. I’m my district’s resident singing leader because I enjoy it and I’ve learned not to care if I look stupid. Hell, I once started a repeat-after-me song in the wrong key with my Guides and it got ugly by the first chorus. And I laughed and that made it uglier and the girls laughed and I really enjoyed that song that evening (it was I Am A Pizza, if anyone’s interested. Listen to how it gets higher with literally every line and don’t start too high like I did!). Learn to look stupid occasionally. Teach your girls that sometimes enthusiasm is more important than skill.
Oh – my personal most important. Teach them that it’s ok to not know everything. Don’t lie to them or make something up because “you don’t want to look stupid”. It’s ok to not know. It’s ok to look it up when you get home and tell them next week. It’s ok to say “I don’t know but I know X about this semi-related thing and so my guess would be Y, if you held a gun to my head and made me answer but it’s only a guess and I don’t know the answer right now”. No one can know everything about everything and it’s good to make sure they understand that from a young age.
Similarly, explain things to them. Don’t order them to do this! or don’t do that! They’ll react better to it if you tell them why. If they understand why they’re not allowed in the kitchen or why we’re filling time playing catch or whatever. Why they’re not allowed on the swings when you go to the park. Don’t treat them like ignorant little drones. They’re just as capable of understanding as the adult leaders, if you put it in the right words for them. You can even mock the risk assessment with the older ones – “No, you can’t do that. Not on the risk assessment. You know what is on the risk assessment? Yeah, how ridiculous is that one? Yeah, look at the stuff we’ve had to risk assess just for this meeting. Admin, huh?”
If you’re going to get angry and yell, fine. Sometimes they need a good yelling. But if it’s actually only a few who’ve enraged you, apologise to the others and make sure they know it’s not directed at them. Similarly, thank them if they do something good, especially if it’s unprompted (see my horrible troublesome Guide who I yelled at most weeks but who also stopped and refilled the cupboard of her own volition when the whole thing had a sudden landslide).
Shy girls often blossom when given responsibility. I did. And Zoe did, my shy Brownie who wouldn’t go anywhere or do anything without her one best friend, who introduced herself as “hello, my brother has autism” rather than “hello, my name is Zoe”. We made her a Sixer when she was nine and suddenly she was the mother of the unit and just took to the shy new girls. She must be twenty by now and that transformation still astounds me. Oh god, she’s 20, at uni and engaged! My shy silent Brownie!
Girlguiding will sometimes make you feel very old.
Coaches are so much more expensive than you’ve imagined.
Marshmallows are tastier if you don’t let them catch fire.
Young Leaders are worth their weight in gold. So many adults don’t get them and that’s because they’re not making proper use of them. Treat them like any adult member of the unit team, but keep in mind that they may have coursework or exams and don’t give them too much to do during those busy times. Yes, YLs can run games and do the tidying-up but you’ll get so much more out of them if you give them adult stuff. Divide a unit meeting between everyone – for Thinking Day 2020, we used the WAGGGS pack and did three activities. One for Brown Owl, one for Fluffy Owl and one for Little Owl. Get them to run an entire meeting if they feel ready for it. I don’t think I’ve ever had a YL I wouldn’t have trusted to hold the fort if I couldn’t make it (but they’re underage so they’re not allowed to!). They can do lots of the trainings adult leaders can do – send them on those if they’re interested. Encourage them, make them feel valued and apart from anything else, they might decide to stay on and do their ALQ at eighteen (they can actually work on it from 16, but they can’t make their Promise as an adult and get the whole thing signed off until they turn 18).
They’re also an essential link between you and the children. Case in point: we had one thirteen-year-old Guide preparing to go on camp with seven ten-year-olds. She didn’t want to get changed in the tent in front of them but that’s not the sort of question kids want to ask their leader! So she asked the YL, who was able to help. Had the problem been something different, perhaps she could have brought it to us without the Guide having to be embarrassed.
And make sure you give them the opportunity to do their Young Leader Qualification. It’s just a cut-down version of what you’re doing and it doesn’t need a mentor to sign it off, although your DC will have a chat at the end to check she’s satisfied it was all actually done. Look through the book together, include her YLQ stuff in your programme and keep encouraging her. Look, at that age they’ve all got the same pretty blank CV. If you’ve got a teenager who turns up every week and pulls her weight, she deserves to have that recognised in the form of a national qualification that puts her ahead of her peers. Commitment, teamwork, leadership, decision-making, it’s all good stuff.
Speaking of the youngsters, I’m a big fan of the Peer Education system. Basically, the Ranger age group, and possibly up to 26 still, are trained to deliver sessions on various issues which sometimes come better from someone nearer their own age than they might from an adult leader who is, after all, really old. If you’ve got Peer Educators reasonably locally, I do recommend you invite them to run a session for your girls and if you have a Young Leader or Rangers, make sure they know it’s open to them – another great thing to have on their CV.
And emphasise your own ALQ on your own CV! Girlguiding volunteers are better than other people. Sorry, they are. I got my first job, age 22 with a degree, a year of Ranger leadership and pretty much nothing else. Oh, and because the boss’s dog liked me, but the Girlguiding thing is really what swung it. One line on your CV, “ALQ, Brownies” actually means:
- Volunteer
- Teacher
- Art
- Singing
- Science
- PE
- Cook
- Team leader
- Team player
- Youth work
- Safeguarding qualification
- DBS (police check)
- Event planner
- Camp chief
- Fire marshall
- Accountant
- Writer of risk assessments
- First aid qualified
- Improvisational skills
- Administrator
- Diplomat
- Public speaker
And half a dozen others. You’ll need to spell some of that out, by the way, because outsiders won’t realise how much is actually involved. Don’t underestimate what you’re getting out of this. You are learning so many life skills and transferable career skills. I had a panic last year when my boss gave me someone to manage – I’m not a manager! I can’t manage people! Then I realised I am a manager at Brownies and the girl I had to manage was his nineteen-year-old niece, or in my terms, a Young Leader! Ok, I do have experience in managing staff, it turns out.
And finally…
Make sure you’re enjoying it! There’s no point doing this if you hate it! For me, I get to do the fun things, sometimes act like a seven-year-old, do fun activities, teach fun activities (through Girlguiding, I’ve become an archery instructor and a fencing coach and I’m on the county list to be called to anything from the county training day to a particular Brownie unit that would like a fencing lesson at their meeting), go to camp, go to adult events and collect badges.
Yes, adults can and do collect badges. It’s very easy to get very into. I recommend getting badges whenever you can and putting them on a blanket for camp. It’s a wonderful souvenir and it’s also a really useful recruiting tool for the local fete. It catches eyes, especially of mums who were in the Movement themselves. I’ll do a whole ‘nother post on badges for adults sometime.
Leave a comment if there’s anything else you want me to cover and please do feel free to email me if there’s anything I can help with, even if it’s just reassurance that the world isn’t coming to an end because the marshmallows went missing tonight. the internetsbrownowl at gmail.com. Wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want you to take me up on it. I’m all over adult support and new leaders. Call me the internet’s Brown Owl.
The Internet's Brown Owl 
Leave a comment