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In high school, when I was preparing my college entrance applications, my college advisor told me to answer the essay with examples of my Girl Scout patrol leader and camp counselor experiences.
In college, when I was applying for graduate school and financial aid, my counselor told me to use examples of my Girl Scout and athletic teams leadership experiences.
During my job interview with IBM, the recruiter perused my resume and commented on my various Girl Scout experiences. Fifteen minutes into our one-hour interview, the recruiter mentioned that his son was a Boy Scout and asked me questions about what I did and learned from Girl Scouts. We spent the next forty minutes talking about scouting! I will not guarantee that my job offer two weeks later was one-hundred percent because of that scouting conversation. I am nevertheless convinced that my twenty-year IBM career began because that recruiter saw my potential to do great things based on our scouting exchange.
Throughout my life, I have repeatedly witnessed a correlation between experiences in youth organizations and positive leadership skills in youth and adults. I encounter chiefs of organizations – businesses, large corporations, non-profits, associations, education, faith-based – you name the type of organization, who were Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, or some other organized youth identity. The women in leadership positions with whom I do business comment on their Girl Scout pasts when they learn of my life membership and active Girl Scout volunteerism.
I conduct programs for organizations that want more-effective leaders and for decision-makers who want better outcomes. I study theories and processes from leadership gurus past and present. As I prepared one of my workshops one day, I sought stories from my own life that related to the points I wanted participants to get, as any good speaker and teacher is supposed to do. I realized how many of my personal stories related to my Girl Scout experiences from childhood.
From the time I was a Brownie Girl Scout I have aligned myself with groups of people, learning the tangible and intangible lessons that shaped me for the interpersonal interactions unavoidable in the adult world. My precociousness, that most friends and colleagues today will tell you I’ve not grown out of, seemed to place me constantly in leadership positions in my troops, at camp, and in special events my entire childhood and adolescent life. I draw on those lessons and experiences every day as I lead committees and teams, Boards of Directors, national organizations, and run my own business.
Prior to formal Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) leadership initiatives (other than the integrated Girl Scout program itself), I’ve wanted to compare notes with and learn from teen, young adult, and seasoned adult women who have been or still are Girl Scouts whether they have the same perspectives on what shaped their leadership skills. This book is my vehicle for gathering such stories and sharing them with you.
It occurred to me that, while reading other people’s stories is interesting, you should ask what is the point in the end? Why should you buy this book and invest your well-earned dollars just to read people’s stories? Therefore, I added a learning component to the project. Each person’s story leads to the lessons they learned through Girl Scouting and their advice and guidance to you based on their experiences.
This book is about leadership, primarily. Its focus is on girls and women because there are still, sadly in this early twenty-first century, few women in prominent leadership positions who serve as public role models for girls. Girl Scouting happens to be the unifying experience set because it is the one organization about which I have been passionate my entire life. My blood is green.
The lessons in these pages can apply to anyone – regardless of gender or organizational affiliation. You can be, or are, a leader whether you have a formal title that designates you as such or not. You can lead in big ways, prominently, or in small ways, personally. Leadership occurs at home within your identified family structure as well as outside the home.
I hope someone’s story resonates with you. I could have just written another book on leadership to satisfy my ego and reveal my expertise. However, you learn from other people and the more, the merrier. Hearing from and about many people resonates with and reaches many more. Enjoy everyone’s stories. Learn from them. Take pieces from these role models and shape them for yourself to apply to your own life and your own leadership situations. Avoid, and go beyond seeking a systematic blueprint of what to do and how to lead. Seek, instead, how to shape yourself – and those you influence – to be leaders.
Yours in leadership…and Girl Scouting,
Sylvia
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