Leadership Practices in the Girl Scouts

“Leadership Practices in The Girl Scouts”

Tristine Morris

MGT 380: Leadership for Organizations

Eddie Balderas

July1, 2013

“Leadership Practices in the Girl Scouts”

What constitutes effective leadership? If you ask ten people you will likely get a variety of answers. In fact, a great deal of time is spent defining what leadership means to the individuals within any organization and in the end it often becomes individual preference of what characteristics a follower thinks should be present in good leadership because different people respond to different things. The Girl Scouts, a widely known organization that I was fortunate enough to be a part of, exemplifies sound leadership characteristics and strives to impart these characteristics to young girls. This paper will endeavor to share some of the key points that the Girl Scouts embody with regards to leadership, and outline why those characteristics are important in everyday life as well as in the professional work place.

Leadership is a word frequently used in the Girl Scouts. I had the opportunity to be a Girl Scout Leader for several years when my daughter was growing up. One key point to being a leader in the Girl Scouts is taking on the responsibility of developing the young girls into leaders themselves. The organization itself plans and carries out operations under the direction of a board and staff leaders, and a lot of emphasis is placed on recruiting volunteer leaders as well.

In the Girl Scouts, the girls are taught from a young age what it means to be a leader and what characteristics and actions are important to being a positive and effective leader. From an early age, the girls are taught that a leader is someone who helps others do and become more than they ever thought possible. They are also taught that leadership is about unlocking potential, whether individual potential or that of a group, community, company or organization. Girl Scouts teaches that...