Page 38 - 2022 AMA Summer

CADETS
EXPEDITIONS AND ADVENTUROUS
TRAINING IN THE ARMY CADETS
By Lt Col Cath Davies, Army Cadets National Adviser for Adventurous Training
In the last journal, I reported on the HQ Regional Command Cadet Branch AT team’s efforts to inform and educate
Army Cadet personnel about the new syllabus, new assurance system and the requirement for more low level AT instructors. The feedback we got was that those who had shown enough interest to turn up(!) were keen to upskill either themselves or their personnel and wanted regionally provided low level NGB training and assessment. So far so good. Then it occurred to me that we were preaching to the converted and what we needed to work on was changing the mindset of the volunteer leadership of the organisation, in order that they can understand the benefits of AT to our cadets and Cadet Force Adult Volunteers (CFAVs) and support the changes necessary to make this happen.
We very much take this for granted, having personal experience of what we have gained through our participation in AT and for those of us who are instructors, having watched the personal development of the young people we instructed or lead on expeditions. But imagine if you had never experienced this? How can we convince such a person of the benefits of something they may never have experienced?
To add to this conundrum, normally we lead by example, we communicate by inspiring people with stories. I am always
reminded of Field Marshal Viscount Slim’s quote, talking about the 14th Army in Burma (Slim considered that as a senior commander, he spent one third of his time talking to his men); ‘Every one of the half million in the army – and it was many more later – had to be made to see where his task fitted into the whole, to realise what depended on it, and to feel pride and satisfaction in doing it well.’ But did he have to do this on Zoom or MS Teams?! Can you foster relationships by electronic means, can you convince people to do things differently at the other end of a computer? I know we are moving back to face-to-face training, but people have found the ease of meetings and conferences via computer beguiling and the system welcomes the savings of time and costs in these cash strapped days.
The big question is how to lead change in these changing times. I look to the model proposed by Peter Scholtes’ in his paper ‘Progress and Pitfalls on the Road to Quality’. His premise is that when change is attempted in an organisation, peoples’ attitude to that change are distributed in a classic bell curve (Figure 1). We have the few, the Enthusiasts, who get it, leading the way. The majority are Wait and See (or maybe ‘Here we go again.’!), and bringing up the tail end are another minority, the Active Resistors (‘Over my dead body.’ or ‘We are a shooting Battalion.’!).
The mistake most leaders make is well illustrated Figure 2. They expend the majority of their effort in trying to win over the active resistors and in doing so, drain their energies and lose sight of their goals. They also neglect to acknowledge and support the enthusiasts. What they should do is shown in Figure 3. They should focus their efforts on the enthusiasts, demonstrating by their attention that those in the organisation who want to get noticed need to join the movement. Thus, leaders can make the majority see the value of the change and encourage them to get involved in it.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
What remains to be seen is how easily this can be done in the New Normal, but we must engage with the task as the prize is too precious not to be won! If 73% of cadets state that AT is the ‘thing’ they most enjoy about the cadet experience (results of a recent survey) even when much of it is currently no more than a mul- ti-activity day at Annual Camp, imagine how much they will enjoy and benefit from the opportunity to participate in progressive, meaningful AT. Our task is to convince the volunteer leadership of our organisationtojoinusonthisjourneyand support their willing workforce in gaining the necessary skills and qualifications to make this a happening thing.
As always, I do ask that if any AMA member has qualifications, be they NGB or JSAT, and would like to help young people, many of whom will not have the opportunity otherwise, to participate in AT, please type your postcode into the search function on www.armycadets.com to find your nearest ACF detachment and get involved!
38 / ARMY MOUNTAINEER
The author climbing with cadets on a ten-pitch climb, Takakkaw Falls, Yoho River, in Canada’s Yoho National Park