[548swimmer]

Originally Posted by davidthefat

What would you say are the traits of a good or great leader? I first think that the person should be a demagogue, they should be able to unite and convince people that they can reach the goal. Secondly, they should be able to plan out and execute the plan for success. Thirdly, I believe the leader should be good at their position. Honestly if you can't even program, why do you even bother being the programming leader? That is different for team leaders, I believe that they should be able to coordinate and have a great personality while having wisdom. The leader should know when to take the risk or be more conservative. They should have the ability to synchronize the team's process and put more emphasis on the lacking divisions. Lastly I believe the leader needs to be very respectful and never cocky, but always confident about the team.

Now being said that, do I really qualify to be in a leadership position? This year, even though this was my first year, ended up hogging the computer and the code. I wrote at least 90% of the years code, the other 10% being the team leader's code for autonomous. I do feel that I did not put 100% of my effort onto the coding this year, my mentor had to clean up the code during competition because it was spaghetti code. I usually do not do that with my coding, that showed that I did not care for robotics as much as I should. I am very OCD about people touching my code, so I am not sure if it is wise for me to run for the programming leader, me being only a 2nd year and my OCD, I would probably end up hogging the code again.

Now if I do run for it and win the position, what kind of advice do you have for me regarding the leadership position. I got things done, when people asked for me to do something, I got it done. But should I take charge again and end up programming the whole robot my self or should I just step back and let the others work on it first and just fix up the code after wards? Now I feel like the second option, I am very OCD about coding, if they don't put the spaces or indent correctly I freak out and fix it. Thats a personal flaw. Also to me, it seems lazy or bossy to have the other programmers code the robot.

I would delegate the work. I'm almost definitely CAD leader for next year, and I'm about to start training my CAD team now so that during the season all I need to do is tell them what I need made. This isn't out of laziness. I'm doing this so that all of the kids get experience and learn what they're best at. Also, this way the whole CAD team will be forced to work together and rely on each other, even if two people don't get along, which will be an excellent life skill to learn, and as we all know FIRST loves teaching life lessons .