I had a group of older scouts who were part of the PLC meetings but were dominating the meetings and not listening to the others. They complained the younger scouts were not participating like they wanted them to. So I pulled them aside prior to one PLC meeting and
said, you can ONLY ask questions at this meeting. Anything you say has to be phrased as a question.
Do you think this would work..?
How will we do this?
Who will do what?
After the meeting, I asked them, how did that go, and they said it was hard but interesting. They said it came across as much different to the younger scouts. I asked why, they were more involved in the meeting. I asked if they listened better, and they said yes. We talked about teamwork and making the dream work.
The moral of the story, a good leader gets others to lead, this lesson taught these scouts to be better listeners and to empower others to be leaders and to be less dictator-like. This was practiced several times after this, and always net good results. I just discussed with a scout who is now a Scouter with his son and suggested the same approach, no one likes to be told what to do, they like to be part of what gets done. I often prescribed these ideals as Scoutmaster as well and credited them to my success.
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