I used to think that I needed to do things by myself in order for it to be done well...

by Ben Stamp

I am a Boy Scout. As a Boy Scout you can achieve different levels of leadership. The highest level is to be the Senior Patrol Leader.

As SPL you run the weekly meetings and support your Patrol Leaders who then lead their patrol members.

Part of the weekly meeting includes presenting something called “Skill Instruction”.

These are lessons to help the younger scouts learn skills such as first aid, fire starting, orienteering, knots, lashings, and responsibility with knives. Along with all my other responsibilities, I would lead skill instructions every week thinking that in order for it to be done well I had to do it myself. However, it didn’t always get taught well because I was paying attention to everything else.

I came to realize that other scouts had the ability to teach skill instruction, better than I by focusing on that one responsibility. The scout who took over the responsibility did a great job to everyone’s benefit.

I used to think that I needed to do things by myself in order for it to be done well,

but now I know that sharing responsibilities gets the job done much better.