CAS Reflection: Leadership Growth 10/3/17

One of my CAS activities is service based and is with the Boy Scouts of America. I am the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) of Troop 8 and have been for 2 years now. Since I joined the troop I have been the SPL which is the youth troop leader. One of the things that this activity has helped me to improve is my leadership skills. Since I have joined the troop I have become a much better leader. Through the help of my scoutmaster, I have gained a much higher tolerance for loud, noisy children and have worked heavily on my ability to stay calm under pressure. I found it frustrating at first when we would go to a campout or a service project and every 15 minutes the other members of my troop would need redirection. We would be cleaning up a beach or trying to build a fire and each person would slowly get off task and eventually, everyone would be playing a game or goofing off. Even though the exact same thing happens now, I have a much more calm and collected and constructive response to the other kids than I used to. My scoutmaster and I would do reflective sessions after campouts and activities with us to try to think about what we did that worked well and what we did that didn’t work at all. For me personally, he would take time to discuss leadership strategies and methods that could work better. This, over time, really helped me to improve my leadership skills tremendously.