Cadet Bonding?

[arajca]

I think we've established duct taping cadets is verboten. I would imagine that would apply to Velcro, Super Glue and all other commercial adhesives.

Once others started I could not resist 

Spoil Sport.

[LCG8928]

Thirdgencapgirl paints a picture that many of us have seen in the Cadet Program. A few individuals who are goal driven, and progress, and the rest stagnant. In a way, her ideas about activities are poignant, but miss the mark by a hair. In any organization, people coalesce into a team typically in one of to ways; 1) One, they find a common enemy, and work together under the lash to find freedom. This would not be a good model. The second, is that they find a common goal, such as defeating another squadron in a competition. Your lack of bonding stems from the fact that you are not training and fighting (metaphorically) as a single group, and remain a cluster of individuals, instead of a team, burnished with each others sweat and blood in the fight against mediocrity. Fundamentally, this is a failure of leadership. I suggest asking your deputy commander for a private conference and seeing if he/she can kick your Cadet Officer's into high gear. You will build a team by finding  challenges and attacking them head on, it cannot be done passively.

Major Lord

p.s. Eclipse, I suggest "Lt Col, Lower half", and "Lt. Col. Upper half"!

I think a lot of the time ignorance is the reason for cadets being stagnant. You have to make sure they know what they should do for promotion and that they visit CAP websites often. Something my squadron does is have our Cadet Chief send us emails as soon as we join that includes guides and links to everything we need to know about CAP.

[AngelWings]

My squadron never had bonding issues until about, a year ago next month. I've been in Civil Air Patrol for almost four years. I'm a third generation cadet, third female. As a little girl I grew up listening to CAP stories about how they had soo much fun in the cadet program with their friends. I understood everything they used to talk about after about a year of participating in the cadet program. I'm a C/CMSgt, working towards my C/CMSgt Sustained, and my squadron seems to be having issues. For about 70 percent of my time in CAP I was the only female in my squadron, and we always practiced the trickle-in method for recruiting. Being where we are located and the speed of the city we are located in it is the most ideal scenario.

Now that you have a little background, on with the questions.

My squadron is having trouble with retention, I feel this is because we are not bonding like we used to/my family's stories. What are some activities we can do in civi's other than:

• Lasertag
• Air Museums
• Bowling

I don't really understand how the other squadrons in my area can be so tight knit, while we're falling apart. We're getting to the point three of the senior cadets are thinking about leaving us behind and transferring. What can I plan to help this?

You have to motivate them! Cheer them on, make them belong to their flight and just not on paper! To explain a few helpful things that quite frankly turned my flight into a true motivated and dedicated team:

Make them have a flight motto: This is oddly one of the best ways to make them loud and proud to be in a flight. Make the other flights "enemies", as in paint them as competitors. Give them an "attaboy" for when they are louded and fire them up with some practice when they aren't louder.

Make them compete with the other flights in general: There is no need for us to put people in flights if they are not going to function as a flight. That term flight is the make or break for making people a team. You should make your flight or flights (depending on what position you have) compete, even if it is over stupid things. Like one PT meeting that got rained out, we had all of the cadets compete, and then we had the flights compete and the loser (which sadly was me) had to do so many pushups in cadence counting off as (one, whatever flight, two, whatever flight, etc.)

Make the flights think the other flights just flat out suck compared to theirs: Pride and even ignorance can boost morale, 'nuff said.

Reward your flight or the best flight (you need to tell me your position, or if I missed it than I feel dumb): Give them things periodically. Like if you have cool military recruiting materials, food, drink, t-shirts, some form of a record success, first on o-flights (which can be tricky, so make sure you make the point that cadets who have not had o-flights still get their o-flights first, then do the flight system).

Make the standards more challenging without going overboard: With my flight, I've made a system where cadets who showed up with poor uniforms got bad marks and were not only challenged about it in a review board for when they went for promotions, but also when they applied for positions. Needless to say, my flights uniform standards have risen and we are getting better.

If you have a higher position than flight sgt., tell your flight sgts. to do these things. If it doesn't work, which I'd be surprised if it didn't, than no harm no foul, you at least tried something. If you are a flight commander, than you can still do anything I said a flight sgt. could do. If you are a first shirt, than make your flight commanders or sgts. do these things. If you hold any higher position, than address both the flight commanders or sgts., and then address all of the flights. Showing some "from the front" leadership is crucial if you want respect and followership from your lowest airman to the person just below you.

Lastly, make a cadet competition that is either quarterly, monthly, on going, annually, or whatever interval you feel is right. Do things like PT, map courses, drill competions, color guard competions, best uniforms, who is louder/more motivated competions, and whatever is available to you to use. My squadron meets on an Air Guard/Army Guard/Coast Guard base rolled into one, so we have many available resources that we can and have used for training and fun, like the LRC, obstacle course, numerous fields, etc.