Quote:
Originally Posted by Martian86
Before I say anything further, I'd like to point out that I am very grateful that our team has mentors that are willing to spend so much time with the team. That being said...
This year our team had a serious problem with some of the mentors taking over operations from students, being somewhat condescending/patronizing toward us, and not reading the manual. The mentors in question have been with the team the same amount of time as the senior members of the team, give or take a year or two. We (the students) are capable of most of the design, build, wiring, controls, programming, etc, aspects of the robot; at the very least, we're just as capable as the mentors since many of the parts are specialized for FRC, especially the control system. I'll go over a few of the highlights of the problem for this season.
1. In general, our mentors take it as a personal offense if we do not use their designs, and they push for their own designs on the robot even after we've proven that they either don't work at all or don't work as well as another design.
2. At one point during the build season, I had a thirty minute argument with a mentor over height restrictions. I read the manual and he did not. I showed/read him G22 and G23 several times, as did other members of the team, but it still took half an hour to convince him of what was printed in the manual.
3. At another point, two mentors were arguing over something in the design (specifics aren't important) and leaving students out of the discussion completely. I ended up telling them, in the most respectful way I could, that they needed to explain to the students what they were discussing and then take a break from the robot for a couple of hours. I'll admit this must have been entertaining to watch, a 17 year old girl telling two grown men to go on a time out, but it should not have been necessary.
4. Finally, the last weekend before Stop Build Day: We had mentors speaking to us as if we did not know what we were doing, changing things on the robot without telling us, and insisting that we needed a catching mechanism when senior members of the team had already decided that it would be impractical for our team to try to do everything. We would try to explain why we did things a certain way, how something worked, or what we had already tried (while troubleshooting), and mentors would interrupt and talk over us. I had multiple team members tell me that they were ready to go home early and just let the mentors fix the robot themselves.
Has anyone else ever had similar problems with mentors? Any advice for dealing with this in the future that I can use at competition and/or pass on to next year's captain?
Once again, I really do appreciate all the time and energy the mentors put into the team. I just wish they would direct more of this time and energy toward collaboration instead of domination.
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Mentoring is not an easy thing.
From a long term mentors perspective, I'll try and give some insight to each bullet.
#1 -- This is ego, and all engineers have it to some degree. Engineers are taught that they must be able to defend their design. Critical thinking and challenges to a design are a standard part of engineering, but at some point the engineer must be able to see that other designs are viable. I've found that prototyping multiple designs and 'letting the best one win' tends to work well, but this approach must be agreed upon before the season.
#2 -- The rules are the rules. If you don't meet a rule, you don't play until you do meet that rule. The rules need to be viewed as a government contract where every rule needs to be adhered to. How you fulfill the requirements of the rule is up to you, but each rule must be followed. This must be made clear before build season.
#3 -- If the argument is over the design, I have no issue with this. If the argument becomes personal then there is a problem. Understanding the difference is most important. Leaving the students out of the discussion may, or may not, be a good thing depending on what aspect of the design they were "loudly discussing". Once a compromise has been found, then the students should be brought into the discussion and shown what the 'issue' was.
#4 -- This is a tough one. FIRST is about inspiration, not the robot. Sometimes difficult decisions must be made. Is it more inspiring to let them struggle on the last weekend, hoping to get a device to work, or is it more inspiring to jump in and "fix it" so that it's working at the competition. Sometimes the pressure of trying to get something to work means you don't have the time to fully explain what you are doing at that time.
I'm not at all saying that everything your mentors do is right ... It's probably far from it (Lord knows I've made a few mistakes along the way
), but they are trying to help. Now that the build season is over and the pressure is less, I'd suggest a meeting to review of all the things that happened during the build season, good and bad (sometimes this is called a "post mortem"). If you have this meeting then make in explicit that there will be no 'personal' bashing and that everyone (including the mentors) leaves their egos at the door.