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Re: What to do when mentors are leading the team in the wrong direction?
The Doctor: There are a lot of good thoughts in this thread. Heed them.
A couple other things:
A team cannot be completely student-led and expect to compete. The beauty of FIRST is that it creates partnerships between students and professionals where students get to fully participate in the design process of something well more complex than what they could do on their own, with professional engineers as mentors. Mentors must be a part of the leadership of a team. At the same time, it is correct that students need to have a huge role as well.
How this is balanced necessarily changes from team to team. Are there teams that go too far in one direction or the other? Sure. Of course, that might just be my opinion.... Even on our team, the balance changes a little each year. Two years ago, our team was full of talented seniors, so we let them lead the way - and let them ignore the advice of mentors as they pushed hard and really needed to learn from mistakes. Last year, our leadership team was much younger and needed more guidance. This year we are balanced somewhere between the two. The point is, every team is different every year - and there will always be somebody who disagrees with the balance that your team finds. To a degree, you will have to trust your mentors on this.
At the same time, it does sound like you are unclear as to the team's decision-making process. I do believe that being clear on this is one of the most important things about running any organization.. What do you do when different folks have different opinions? After all, if you put 100 brilliant engineers in a room to solve a problem, you are likely to end up with 150 different opinions.... I do believe voting is poor... We tend to have lots of inexperienced kids each year. Should kids who have never built or designed a robot have a strong voice in the engineering and design decisions?
I would start by talking to your head mentor. Express your concerns, but use it as a time to better understand how s/he is leading the team and what his/her vision for the year is....
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