[mathking]

This happens in other areas than FIRST, but it is certainly a problem that FIRST teams are particularly prone to have. I view my most important job as the leader of my team as setting the right team culture. This is pretty much the same as my most important job as a track & field and cross country coach. Those are both sports where it is clear that my mandate as a coach is in fact that the students get better and have a good a experience. Creating a good culture is not hard, but it does require constant work. We strive to win at every competition, and I am certainly by nature a competitive person. But it is more important that I make sure that the students have the best possible experience.

I have a simple test I try to apply to myself when I start to deviate from what I should be doing. Usually this is when something breaks in an important match, or a call goes against us on the field or some other adverse circumstance. For most of us our first reaction is somewhere between anger and irritation. I try to remember that my students are going to take a lot of their cues on how to handle the situation from me. I don't want to be that mentor who is off fuming in the stands when I should be either consoling students or helping to devise a fix. Because it is very easy for me to unintentionally set a bad example that can lead to a bad culture.

We strive to give the students as much freedom as we can. We encourage them to take initiative and be leaders. But our mentors have to also recognize that there are times when we need to step in and lead. This is often, but not always, because of conflicts or tension with the students. Sometimes it is tension between students and mentors. We have had mentors that didn't really fit our team culture. Not bad mentors, just not good fits for us. And many of them adapted to our culture after a season or two. We encourage students to feel safe in coming to their mentors to talk about issues they are having, with other students and with adults.

We also try to encourage them to learn to argue for their positions without making the arguments personal, and to learn to accept when the team goes a different way than they wanted. This last bit is often the most difficult for new team members to do. It is absolutely essential, however. Being able to have civil, productive discussions about disagreements not only leads to a better team atmosphere, it leads to better robots and a happier team.

As a lead mentor, I also know that a big part of my job is to make sure the adults involved with the team understand and support our team culture. We talk regularly, and try to be self critical when we look at the decisions we make. This is particularly true with parent volunteers. I find that with parents it is best to set expectations right away and make sure they understand their role if they want to be a mentor.

One of the hardest things for me to learn is that as our team has grown, both in terms of number of students and number of mentors, I have been personally less directly connected to the building of the robot. I still guide, and I still make sure we are following our design criteria (or that if we decide to deviate it is a team decision) but I have to rely on the other mentors and the student leaders to do a lot of the robot-centric stuff I used to do. In some ways this makes my position less fun. But also more rewarding.