[karomata]

The form in which you select leaders is somewhat based on how your team is structured.

On my team (I will not say which team is mine), we usually do applications for most applicable positions. We have applications for Drive team, Pit Crew, student leadership, etc. However, in addition to having applications, we also have other forms of selection, like interviews. For example, for Drive team, there is both an application to be filled out, an interview to occur, and additionally, we have a skills analysis for driver, coach, and human player skill when we select drive team. But when selecting Chairman's Presenters, there is only an interview.

The people who decide how they want to select students for positions are the same people who will end up working with them in the according role. So our strategy mentors work with our drive team, our robot design and build mentors work with our pit crew, our NEMO/Awards mentors work with the awards students.

The only way any of this is possible is through our team structure. With 40+ students, our team had to get a bit creative with how we would organize ourselves. We have subteams, specifically 3 main ones: Mechanical, Eletricalm, and Programming. Additionally we have other subteams, like awards, strategy, marketing, leadership, but all of our students have 1 main subteam, like the 3 mentioned above, and the others listed are optional, and students may join as many as they wish. All of our mentors also have main subteams.

In terms of selecting specifically leaders, we have a 3 step process. Students must fill out an application, do an interview with our student leadership mentors, and give a speech to the whole team. The whole team then elects their leaders, however they do not have the final say. The mentors largley take into accout the results of the voting from the team, and usually the results from the vote are identical to the mentor's preferences.

Our leadership subteam is composed of 7-9 students. We each have our own individual role, aka FLL Coordinator, Team Captian, Communications, Public Relations, Subteam Coordinator, etc. We elect around 8 students in the spring after CMPs, then we also elect a New Student leader the following winter after school starts.

Another large part of how we run our application process is being anonymous. When we have applications, they are numbered and we cannot put our names on them. It helps filter out bias within the system, even though most of our mentors can probably guess whose application their reading based on the handwriting or what is written.

This is how my team chose to do it, and it has been very successful, our student leadership and engaging structure has produced us 4 Dean's List Finalists, and the structure also helps our mentors mentor us, this can be demonstrated by our 2 WFA Finalists. Additionally, our unique student leadership aspect has helped all of our students organize community service events, fundraisers, and demonstrations, which has contributed to our team winning Chairman's 4 times in 9 years.

Many aspects of structure, organization, and leadership revolve around the natural features of the team, like size, composition, resources, etc. Teams that want to have successful organization and structure need to find what is best for their own individual team.