The Patrol & The Troop

You might think, just from your experience thus far in Scouting, that the basic unit of Scouting is the troop. After all, it's extremely rare for a patrol to exist completely without a troop. The fact is, the patrol - your patrol - is the basic unit of Scouting. Everything in Scouting starts with the patrol.

It's important for a Patrol Leader, or any other member of the patrol, to understand that your patrol must not be just a list of names on a slip of paper. Without real, functioning patrols, the troop does not function as it should - which means Scouting does not work the way it's supposed to.

The relationship between the patrol and the troop, however, is a two-way street. The patrol does not exist without a troop, and the troop does not exist without patrols. How well the patrols function as patrols determines how well the troop functions as a whole. As Patrol Leader, one of the most important parts of your job is helping make sure the troop works.

You see, we don't divide troops into patrols; we bring patrols together to form a troop. It's the same whether your troop is brand new, or it's 75 years old. That's an important distinction. If Scouting was like a lot of other youth organizations and divided troops into patrols, then there wouldn't be much to being a patrol. Whoever does the dividing could move people around, and throw everyone into a big pile and divide them up again. That doesn't lend much weight to a patrol. You might still find yourself with the job of Patrol Leader, but what would you be a leader of? Not much more than a group of names on a piece of paper.

As we've already discussed, for you to be able to do your job right, every member of the patrol has to have a feeling of ownership in the patrol. If you join a patrol, chances are you're going to feel like you're part of the patrol. If you're put into a patrol, chances are you won't feel like you're part of the patrol, and you might even find the patrol doesn't feel like you're part of it either.

That's why, in Scouting, we start with the patrol as the basic unit of Scouting. We work hard to teach you, the Patrol Leader, how to do your job so you can help make that patrol a real patrol, and that helps us make the troop a better troop. So you see, as a leader of your patrol, you're also a leader in the troop. Just like you're a member of your patrol team, you're also a member of a team of Scouts and Scouters who run the troop, and that means you have to do your best to work together with the other troop leaders to help the troop be the best it can be.