FAHA: Tissue-Thin

[Phalanx]

In both cases, there appears to be a lack of "delegation" of responsibility.

No single teacher or mentor can "do it all" it's simply not possible. These "single point of control individuals" need learn and understand that fact. Until they do, nothing can change.

In the first case, this overextended teacher/mentor needs to be made aware, that he will eventually burnout, breakdown, get sick, etc... One of my favorite quotes that I have found to be very true. "If you don't take care of yourself you can't take care of anyone else".

My advice would be to have the other adult mentors on the team have a serious, polite and civil conversation with the "single point of control" individual and help them to understand that their methods, there actions are holding the team back, slowing down the process and creating some hardships.

In ALL cases, there should be no single teacher or mentor that can become a limiting step or bottleneck. Ideally, you should have one leader, but you also must have other teachers/mentors that can do everything this single leader does. This allows others to "share" the load which makes it easier on everyone.

FIRST is a "collaboration" of educators and business professionals. Take a lesson from the large business world and delegate responsibility and accountability.

A common business example...
The "Lead" mentor/teacher is the CEO. They state the direction, they approve the budgets, they delegate they work. They resolve conflicts between sub-teams. They perform administrative and supervisory functions that others cannot do. Even they have a backup or alternate should they be unavailable for some reason.

The mechanical team designs, builds the components as required. They also have their own budget, suppliers and resources. They obtain their own materials within their budgets, set their own fabrication schedules, use what resources they have to do what they need to do.

The software team, writes to code, works with the mechanical team to make sure the necessary feedback controls are included in the design. They too have their own budgets, suppliers, resources and schedules.

all sub-teams operate somewhat independently and only need to report status and conflicts back to the CEO.