What constitutes Mentoring another team?

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Wendy Holladay

Many times teams are asked who or how many teams they mentor. We always struggle to answer this. We hold many workshops, training, etc. During build season we get a steady stream of phone calls and visits from other teams. So are we "mentoring" all those teams? Does the other team have to realize it as mentoring?

What is your team's definition of "mentoring'? And please be specific.

Why does it have to be complicated? Can't you just call up all the teams that come to your trainings/workshops/etc. and ask "Did we mentor you?" Seems to me like that solves a lot of potential sticking points, as I'm sure the number of teams mentored plays a reasonably big role in judging awards. I know this leaves a lot of grey area, but it also offloads the responsibility from your team, and FIRSTers in general seem like people who give credit where it is due.

On the other hand, even if there was a lot of knowledge transfer going on people often have fragile egos. However, I'd much rather they learn something and miss out on the credit than cheese them off.