Well said.
When we started our team I had a lot to say. By golly, we were going to do things
right. I had read a bunch of threads on Chief Delphi, got a lot of good advice, threw in a bunch of personal experience - boy, I knew
exactly how we were going to run this team.
Well, it turns out, so did a bunch of other mentors. We have folks representing past experiences on probably 8 different FRC teams. Everyone's used to doing it one way, and everyone's used to that being the correct way. Everyone came in with different ideas and
everyone's idea was different.
And you can see that as either extremely frustrating or see that as a beautiful thing. The latter does take some conscious choice.
There is not only one way to do this. My way is
not the only way. The flipside to this is convincing mentor Bob that Bob's way is
not the only way, telling senior student Joe that Joe's way is
not the only way, getting folks to understand that Other_Amazing_Team's way is
not the only way.
I will go on the record as saying that understanding this is a hugely important life lesson. (I will not, officially, go on the record as saying that I know some adults that still need to learn this lesson...
)
The way will also change over time. The right path for my team this year might not be the right path for us next year. How will we know? I have no idea yet
But I'll re-quote the questions above, because I think they're the most important: