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Are You Speaking Their Language?

Jacqueline tells the story of how Unicef spent a fortune creating posters to promote the idea of child vaccination to the mothers of Rwanda. “The posters were gorgeous—photographs with women and children with simple messages written in Kinyarwandan (the local language), about the importance of vaccinating every child. They were perfect, except for the fact with a female illiteracy rate exceeding 70 percent, words written in perfect Kinyarwandan made little difference.” Jacqueline noticed that the way messages spread in Rwanda was by song. One group of women would sing a song for other women, both as a way of spreading ideas and as a gift. No song, no message. Your tribe communicates. They probably don’t do it the way you would; they don’t do it as efficiently as you might like, but they communicate. The challenge for the leader is to help your tribe sing, whatever form that song takes.

Godin, Seth. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us (p. 124). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

So how do we speak “their” language?

Learn to use the right tools

We have all been working on a project with the wrong tool:  the kitchen knife to remove the battery compartment, the really, small flat head screwdriver to take out the philips head screw, or the wrench handle to drive a nail.  It’s clunky, slow and usually results in frustration.

Times do change and with those changes comes new technology, but fortunately human nature doesn’t change and what kept boys interest in the 50’s still keeps boys interest today.  Hands on, visual and graphic, and structured.  For example, if your teaching lashing, get your patrol leaders involved early, download some short 2-3 minute demonstration videos, and have plenty of materials on hand to make it very interactive.

Remember on key component of the Ranger program is to be boy lead.  You can glean a lot from your patrol leaders.  How they communicate and what tools they use.

Be Prepared

We know it’s not about entertaining the boys, it’s about equipping.  Something I have learned first hand is that lack of preparation will make the best of materials seem boring and difficult to understand.  Bring a ball of yard, pass out sheets of notebook paper and start paging through the curriculum and lashing will seem more like getting a filling than leaning some invaluable life skills.

It takes 2-3 hours days before your weekly meetings to get ready to teach a merit, and that’s a merit your already competent with.  If it is new to you, they your going to need to get your skill up so that your can accomplish easily in front of the class.  Even better, give your patrol leaders some advanced materials and have them practice before class too.

Equip

Remember, boys love to learn new skill that they know will help them be more competent.  Royal Rangers merits are designed to do two things:  equip boys with practical life skills, create a relationship building environment for commanders to mentor boys to be great Christ followers.