Google the words "Eagle Scout Project" and you'll get about 1.4 million references.

Avoid drama by reading only the 966 words in the workbook. If you think this is adequate advice stop reading now and move on. Otherwise you can continue reading as I, unfortunately, add to the vast commentaries on the Eagle project out of necessity in the hopes that it will help someone avoid some drama.

If your Council Advancement Committee has amended the workbook (as mine has) get a clean copy of the current workbook from the link above. Check the National Eagle Scout Association site to be sure you have the correct iteration of the workbook (this is important). If, along the way, someone like your District Advancement Chairman insists on something outside of these 966 words insist (politely) that they show you in black and white the language from the BSA (not the Council Advancement Committee) upon which their instruction is based.

If it is not in the workbook it is not part of the requirement. I am writing principally on the administrative aspects of the project because the candidate themselves take care of the execution of the project and, ideally, no adult leaders from their Troop are involved in that phase of the project.
 
Here's the things that usually cause problems;

Originality
A perennial observation of Scoutmasters and other leaders is that Scouts seem to be doing similar projects over and over again. This must be a very common concern because the BSA has chosen to address it specifically.

Does the leadership service project for Eagle have to be original, perhaps something you dream up that has never been done before? The answer: No, but it certainly could be. You may pick a project that has been done before, but you must accept responsibility for planning, directing, and following through to its successful completion.

There is a clear answer to the question of originality - NO. Anyone who insists on originality is adding to the requirement which, we all know, is a big no-no. Remember that you may have seen a dozen Eagle projects that were very similar or exactly alike - but it is all new to the Eagle candidate.

No minimum number of hours is required
A simple statement - need I explain it? No 'target number of hours', 'average number of hours'. If stating these were important or helpful don't you think that the folks at the BSA who have seen two million Eagle Scouts would have included them?

Size
There are no specific requirements. Nada, none, no, not any.

How big a project is required? There are no specific requirements, as long as the project is helpful to a religious institution, school, or community. The amount of time spent by you in planning your project and the actual working time spent in carrying out the project should be as much as is necessary for you to demonstrate your leadership of others.

It is up to the Eagle candidate to design his project to adequately demonstrate his abilities.

The Scoutmaster's Role
Scoutmasters approve the project plan and may have a role in helping advise and coach the Scout as through the planning process. Sometimes Troops have an adult leader who is detailed to do this.
An Eagle Candidate is conducting his project to demonstrate his leadership of others. Who will ultimately pass judgment on whether or not he has done so? Not his Scoutmaster. The Scoutmaster signs off to certify the project "was planned, developed, and carried out by the candidate", not on the quality of the project or the leadership, this is not the Scoutmaster's concern. The Board of Review, and they alone, will evaluate this aspect of the project. 

Eagle projects may be simple, complex require thousands of dollars or not one cent. They may take months or days to complete and require tens or hundreds of hours on the part of a few people or a veritable army of helpers. They may have a tremendous impact or simply make a difference. Every project in this broad spectrum is valuable, laudable and important. There are few, if any, universal standards to the size, scope and originality of the project so every Scout, regardless of where he lives, his talents abilities or resources has the opportunity to become an Eagle Scout.

I readily guide Scouts to explore what others have done for projects and encourage them to be imaginative and expansive when planning their projects.  But I  guard that my encouragements did not become so coercive to be thought of as a requirement.

It would be interesting to hear your reflections on Scouts putting off Eagle til they're 17.5 years old and then trying to get their project and missing merit badges done in the small amount of time left. ... in a perfect world, the SM has been counseling boys not to let it get to this point, but as you say, Scout aged boys do a lot of things they shouldn't. Any reflections on this particular situation would be of value.

I hope this helps:

As you note Scout aged boys are still growing, even at 17 and a half. I have to laugh because I have two last-minute last minute lulus working hard on their projects right now. I do find this peculiarly provoking because I am a bit of a last minute lulu myself. I get a lot less upset about this now than I used to.

Over the years I have developed what I think is an effective way helping Scouts conceptualize what it is going to take for them to become Eagles, especially the element of time. We diagram a time line that begins with their Life Scoutmasters conference and ends with their eighteenth birthday. We factor in involvement in school, church, sport, merit badges,  and the average time to conceive, lead and complete a project. When they see the time line they have (at least for a while) a pretty good concept about what they need to do. I always tell them that they will complicate things tenfold if they wait, that they should have a plan and get things moving right away.

Very few of them have ever taken my advice.

I really don't think this will ever really change or that it is a new trend - I'll bet the first Eagle Scout was almost late getting a signature or something.

After two or three late season Eagle Scouts most Scoutmasters set out to fix the 'problem'. They dream up rules and regulations, policies and procedures designed to make the Scoutmaster's life easier. Despite all this some Scouts will still get a late start.

I figure that this is not a problem that can be fixed or regulated any more than the hundred other excesses and deficits that mark the life of any developing human being or ourselves as adults. When we sign on as Scoutmasters we accept that we are working with what Plato called "the most unmanageable of all the animals".  We can't protect them from the consequences of their actions, nor do we want to.

Part of the intensive learning process in achieving Eagle is developing an appreciation for planning and timing. I haven't ever done anything extraordinary to help my last minute lulus, they have to figure things out just like any other Eagle Candidate (only faster).

Whether a Scout starts working on Eagle in earnest with two years or two months left to go the most important thing is that they actually started.

Floyd Starr (founder of Starr Commonwealth, the first residential treatment center for 'juvenile delinquents') is famous for saying "There is no such thing as a bad boy". I agree but, from time to time, some of them can be a real pain in the butt.

As a rule of thumb if there is no numerical metric applied to a requirement it is improper and against policy to create one.

So how in the world can a Scoutmaster evaluate Scouts fairly? If Scouts challenged themselves against an internalized standard then it is our task to learn how each Scout evaluates their individual performance. That's why we have Scoutmaster's conferences rather than Scoutmaster reviews. Conferring is an exchange of information, a discussion, a series of questions designed to establish a common understanding.

During conferences for ranks that require leadership tenure I ask plenty of questions about the Scouts experience with the leadership position:

• What was your most and least successful moment as a leader?
• What would you change about the way you did the job?
• How do you evaluate your performance, did you fulfill this requirement?

If I have an issue with the Scout's performance and I haven't discussed this with him before the Scoutmaster's conference I consider that I am not doing my job. If I have had an ongoing discussion and the Scout hasn't made any effort to address the issue we'll discuss it further and try to find out what the real problem is.

Responsible Scoutmasters have an ongoing dialog with their Scouts that is marked by encouragement rather than fault finding. They address and resolve concerns and don't let become major problems.

Adolescence can be one long infuriating power struggle. Our work demands that we try to understand the process and not react out of anger. We especially do not want to turn a Scoutmaster's conference into a passive-aggressive, sanctimonious exercise of supposed power.

Scout aged boys do a lot of things they shouldn't and don't do a lot of things they should. Our role is to work with them, not against them, to recognize achievement and effort and downplay failure. We accomplish this by helping our Scouts develop personal goals, overcome difficulty, deal with disappointment and meet the challenges they define for themselves.

Avoiding Eagle Scout Drama
Avoiding Eagle Scout Drama part 2

Scouting's founder Baden-Powell envisioned a movement that would give everyone the opportunity to challenge and achievement based not on a single standard of performance but on a highly individualized, internalized standard. (Read Baden-Powell's thoughts on this here).

If we can encourage Scouts to define, internalize and follow an internal standard of acheivement we will have given them an set of skills that will immeasurably enrich their lives and communities.

Like many Scoutmasters I was initially frustrated by the lack of measurable metrics in Scouting. Just what is Scout Spirit? What percentage of meetings or camp outs must a Scout attend to be considered active? How does one measure the effectiveness of someone's leadership?

Metrics are missing for a good reason; every Scout and every Scout's circumstances in life are different. Scouts who are academically talented and Scouts who are poor students, from affluent families, from poor families all become Eagle Scouts. There are no class-a or class-b Eagle Scouts.

So one particularly common source of Eagle Scout drama is eliminated when Scoutmasters understand and embrace the concept of individual effort evaluated by an individualized standard. Can't you use this individualized standard to justify bad behavior, poor performance and indifference? How does a Scoutmaster hold Scouts accountable if everyone is going to advance anyway?

The answer is actually very simple, it should be part of every Scoutmaster conference and I'll write about it in my next post.

See also:

Avoiding Eagle Scout Drama

All too often this drama is caused  by the Scoutmaster.

Somehow there are a number of Scoutmasters who act like that they are the gatekeepers for the advancement system (especially the rank of Eagle) when they are supposed to be coaches, guides and mentors. Some Scoutmasters develop the idea that their personal standard of acheivement is all important.They wield the Scoutmaster's conference like a weapon making it a pronouncement of their often capricious judgment.

Now this all sounds pretty dramatic because it really is dramatic. Scouts and families take a huge emotional hit whose shock waves extend to other Scouts and their families.

Narratives of these dramas unfold as if they had been scripted; a Scout, having completed their Eagle project, six months of leadership tenure, 21 merit badges and six previous Scoutmaster Conferences sits down with his Scoutmaster who ambushes him with one of two (and often both) pronouncements that he has not met the 'active' requirement or has failed to show Scout Spirit. Sometimes the Scoutmaster may set the Scout a task to appease the Scoutmaster, sometimes the Scoutmaster just slams the gate closed.

Why does this happen over and over again? (Trust me, it does, I get emails.) Usually because the Scoutmaster either lacks an understanding of the advancement system and/or is just generally frustrated with is Scouts.

What do I mean 'just generally frustrated with his Scouts'?. The best explanation I have is drawn from personal experience. Most of us Scoutmasters develop an idealized concept of what an Eagle Scout should be and it becomes a standard by which we judge our Scouts. This idealized standard supplants the advancement process and results in a great deal of frustration.

It took me some years to understand that no Scout would measure up to the idealized standard I had developed. Upholding my idealized yet non-existent Eagle Scout was doing a lot more harm than good. The antidote to this dilemma was an understanding of what Scouting really is all about and what makes it different from every other field of endeavor - something that I'll explore further in tomorrow's post.

I would hope by now you have had a chance to read through Fast Company co-founder Alan Webber’s Rules of Thumb. He has compiled 52 practical and wise fundamentals of life well lived and work well done.

Rule #41: If you want to be a real leader, first get real about leadership. Getting real about leadership involves four things: how leaders are, what leaders do, how leaders act, and what leaders leave behind them.

How Leaders Are. Leaders are both confident and modest, they’re authentic and they are good listeners. He quotes Ron Heifetz, “Too many leaders die with their mouths open.” He adds, “Leaders who need to talk all the time create companies where people simply stop listening.”

What Leaders Do. Leaders are coaches. They attract and grow talent. They lead by example. Maintaining high standards themselves, they challenge people to do their best work. “After a real leader has moved on, the people who worked for him or her always say, ‘I learned more and did more than I ever thought I could.’”

How Leaders Act. Real leaders guide. They don’t dictate. “Real leaders create an agenda, offer criteria, and describe a strategy to take the company ahead.” And they learn from their mistakes.

What Leaders Leave Behind. Leaders leave behind “a passion for the business, a love of the company, and the commitment to leave it healthier and stronger than he or she found it.” They leave a team of great leaders. They articulate sound values and instill them into the culture of the business. And perhaps most importantly, they make more leaders. “The real leader is the one who makes more leaders at all levels of the organization. Leaders practice leadership to cultivate more leaders.”

I am cautious about translating the skills required of leaders in the workplace to those effective in Scouting. Scoutmasters are not employers and Scouts are not employees. Webber's view of leadership does translate well. He concentrates on listening, coaching, guiding over dictating and cultivating leadership in others - all marks of a good Scoutmaster.

I usually use the no wash method of cleaning up but sometimes I end up with a frying pan or dishes to wash.    I never use soap because it takes a lot of water to rinse the soap off.    Instead I use baking soda.

One time I ran out of baking soda for awhile so I used wood ash instead–it worked.     To make soap you need grease and lye.  Lye is made from wood ash.  So,  mix the grease from the pan with wood ash and you have essentially  made soap.

Baking soda works under the same principal but it is safer on your skin.  Wood ash in water releases lye so you don’t want it getting in your eyes or sitting on your skin.

I had never made the connection that ashes would degrease pans, but it makes sense doesn't it? Carrying a couple of tablespoons of  baking soda  in your camping kit is always a good idea. In addition to washing dishes baking soda can be used as

Antacid - 1/2 teaspoon in water to settle an acid stomach.

Mouthwash - Gargle with a bit of baking soda to freshen breath.

Toothpaste - Not too tasty but effective

Deodorant -Deodorize just about anything that smells; sprinkle in boots, sleeping bags and on yourself.

Topical ointment - Make a paste to relive itching or insect bites or a solution for rashes

Shampoo - Comb a solution of baking soda through your hair to degrease and freshen.