Coaching, Managing

[MysterE]

Ok all,

A simple question for the day: At what point should a coach step in and ask members to leave. Obvious points exist..such as grade level problems and the like but I am dealing with a situation that I am a bit more torn over. I have one student who has been a member for two years who has done little to add to the club. Unfortunately, this same member has volunteered for tasks that they have not followed through with. Most recently, this student has volunteered to code our website. A due date was aligned by the organization and it seems as if the member is refusing (procrastinating) to do the work. If this were a company, we'd be reaching the point of dismissal. What says th CD community?

[KelliV]

Personally, I would talk to the student one on one and let them know that they are on grounds for termination. If this were the company I work for you would be required to give them a warning prior to termination. Let them know that there is a problem and spell out what it is. There might be something else going wrong that you do not know about. FIRST might seem pretty important to all of us but we need to realize that these are in fact high school students who also have to worry about grades.
This is a learning environment, take this moment to teach responsibility.

[Brandon_L]

Originally Posted by MysterE

Ok all,

A simple question for the day: At what point should a coach step in and ask members to leave. Obvious points exist..such as grade level problems and the like but I am dealing with a situation that I am a bit more torn over. I have one student who has been a member for two years who has done little to add to the club. Unfortunately, this same member has volunteered for tasks that they have not followed through with. Most recently, this student has volunteered to code our website. A due date was aligned by the organization and it seems as if the member is refusing (procrastinating) to do the work. If this were a company, we'd be reaching the point of dismissal. What says th CD community?

As much as everyone likes to think of FRC as a simulation for the real world work environment, sometimes you have to remember it isn't. The big difference: Its okay to make mistakes. These are high school kids, thats what high school kids tend to do. It's a learning process. If my team was a company I would have been fired years ago.

If the student volunteers for specific things, he/she is obviously interested in it but may be just lacking some motivation, free time, or countless other things. "Termination" based on this I think would be pretty harsh. Sometimes you have to grab them and take them through the process to get them going. Maybe even bring up the website award (or the new media award?). What worked for our team specifically, we said that we wanted a website specifically to put sponsors on to get more funding (we barely reach registration each year). Someone then stepped up and helped.

I'm under the assumption that you are assigning this as "homework", not to be done during meetings. Try giving him/her time during meetings to get this done, and perhaps some help from other members/mentors. Websites involve more than just code, you need graphics and someone to write content. Maybe he/she is good at the coding but not so much at the other two areas.

Just my 2*(1/100 )

[Lil' Lavery]

If his work was repeatedly been late/sub-standard/uncompleted, why do you continue to allow him to take on important tasks alone?

[Adrian Clark]

I wouldn't terminate a member for anything other than a school related reason or on the back of some sort of terrible action they committed.

If a team member is consistently unreliable and has poor performance then don't assign that person any important task, it's as simple as that. I don't know about the size of your team, but from my experience there's always menial "grunt-work" tasks to be done and such tasks are usually done by the less experienced/reliable members who don't have anything better to do.

[MysterE]

::grins:: I continue to hope? It's an amusing balance. One way or another (and forgive me, students, if this seems odd) every member is my kid. I am with them for four years of their lives. I watch them move from shy freshmen to leaders and college students. I am always torn between running a family and running a team. in a family, I give chances and chances and chances. When other teachers talk crap about them or they find themselves grounded from Homecoming, I get to walk them through it. So, I continue to hope and to watch and to believe. I guess the difficulty is in supporting the team as a whole before the individual...or alongside the individual.

There is no correct way to run a FIRST team, but most teams lean towards either the side of a "team", or towards the side of a "club". The team is more focused on accomplishing things, and the club more towards having fun. This doesn't mean that as a "team", you can't have fun, or as a "club", you won't accomplish anything, but how you categorize your team will affect how things are done. To compare with what you're saying, think of it like this - Running a "team" is like running a company, and running a "club" is like running a family. You can be equally both, but that can cause problems (see point of this thread).

On the "team" side of things, this person isn't doing the work they're signing up for. If left in charge of a serious and important task, they wouldn't get it done. That's a huge no no right there, and should lead to a serious talk and potential termination if they don't get their act together.

On the "club" side of things, failure is acceptable. We are only humans, and we can't do everything right. This person just needs careful guidance. Make sure you confront them and tell them what they've been doing wrong, but also tell them you'll work with them to work things out.

It all comes down to this: If you had 100 units of robotics, and you could split it between two categories, either 'Relaxed and fun' or 'Serious and hardworking', how many units of both would you end up having? Rule: No 50-50.

Basically, what is your priority. You're posting here because there is a problem, a problem you don't find acceptable. My guess is that you'd be more on the 'Serious and hardworking' side, but still have a lot of fun. Just more focused on that one side. But the decision is up to you.

[ttldomination]

IMHO, straight up termination of a student should come under the grounds of when he/she is consistently causing damage to either the team's mental or physical health (disrespect of materials/tools/machines etc.).

In the situation you have described, I would recognize that the student failed to follow through, make a mental note, and be more hesitant to give him/her a leadership role in the future. I don't see this as grounds for termination.

- Sunny G.

[CalTran]

Sunny, I don't think it's so much the one failure to follow through as it is the history of not doing so. Coach Eiland correct me if I'm wrong. What Andrew said is right either way. You're going to have to decide whether you want to be driven by results or by the learning experience. I've had the same thoughts, though thankfully applied to hypothetical situations. If you want results then simply inform the student that they've been relieved of their task and reassigned or terminated. If you want to, heaven forbid, have the student learn something then perhaps recommend another student, possibly someone interested in learning website as well to work together on the project? This way the student hopefully won't feel affronted and you'll have one less empty space when the student graduates, since they trained their replacement.

[DampRobot]

Originally Posted by SuperNerd256

On the "team" side of things, this person isn't doing the work they're signing up for. If left in charge of a serious and important task, they wouldn't get it done. That's a huge no no right there, and should lead to a serious talk and potential termination if they don't get their act together.

Termination is a very serious action, and should be treated as such. At least in my school district, you can't kick someone off a "club" (like robotics) without some sort of legal precedent (I suppose violating a contract associated with joining might qualify, but possibly not). Yes, sports teams can cut you, but it's a poor analogy for even the most competitive teams. Removal from drive team, or even from the traveling team are feasible possibilities for punitive exclusion. But what does being "off the team" really mean? One of the above? If so, OK. I just don't think you can ban them from ever coming to meetings. This might be legally possible and morally correct if they violated a school rule or something similar, but not for simply not completing their work.

My advice: have a serious talk about work ethic and their action's consequences. If you believe their actions truly warrant it, don't allow them to travel. I just can't recommend permanently expelling from the wonderful opportunities in FRC someone who probably just "never got around" to completing tasks they volunteered for. In the future, don't trust them to complete the task on their own. Assign someone else to it, or personally make sure that they are on track to completion.

[maddoctor90]

It is my belief that robots is more about teaching responsibility, leadership, and building character than building robots. Sometimes, it is the kids on them team like the one you are talking about that need to learn these things the most. Kicking the student off the team with out prior known consequences for breaking rules will teach that kid nothing. You need to have a talk with the student and lay down the groundwork for what is expected of him. Then encourage him and make him believe that what he is doing is important to the team and that he is important to the team, because he/she is. I have a student on my team that sounds almost identical to the student you are dealing with. My way of dealing with the problem is exactly as described. Plus, you never know what the student may be dealing with and it may give you an opportunity to really change their life if you take the time to work with them.

[sanddrag]

The student needs a serious one on one talk with mentors that basically addresses the question of "Do you want to be here?"

Consider this:
I recently had a student (not on the team) tag a workbench in our shop. I was amazed (and glad) that he came forward and admitted he did it. School administration was going to suspend him from school for a day. Rather than that, I'm going to have him refinish the workbench and make other improvements to our lab over 35 minutes on each of 3 days during school. I think it's no question which will have the more lasting and positive outcome.

I can't tell you how to run your team or what to do with this individual student, but I'm reminded of a quote I saw years ago from another team mentor on here. It was something to the effect of "Sometimes we need to not worry so much about what can a particular student do for the team, but what can the team do for that particular student?" If I'd never seen that quote, I may have a team half the size.

[Jon Stratis]

Removing a student from the team should be a very last resort. In this situation, it sounds like you don't really need to remove him from the team, just remove him from direct responsibility for deliverables. He can still help the team and participate at meetings, but under the direction of other students/mentors. Given our drive to inspire young minds, it can be difficult to remember that some people just aren't cut out for leadership or engineering. We can push them as much as we want, but some people just won't be able to step up to the challenge.

A related question for everyone here... At what point do you consider it appropriate to ask a student to leave? Does it involve shop safety practices? Does it involve team morale? Does it involve team productivity? What factors can lead to you asking a student to either leave the team, or leave a portion of the team (like leaving the build team, but still able to participate on non-build aspects)?

[CalTran]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

A related question for everyone here... At what point do you consider it appropriate to ask a student to leave? Does it involve shop safety practices? Does it involve team morale? Does it involve team productivity? What factors can lead to you asking a student to either leave the team, or leave a portion of the team (like leaving the build team, but still able to participate on non-build aspects)?

I believe that the point of no return is the productivity. As much as I love this program and believe that everyone who is participating is a valuable asset to the team and have something to bring to the table, I have to draw the line at the point where they are not doing something productive to the team. It saddens me when, during season, I can pass through our computer lab and for every one person on CAD, there'll be like 2 or 3 people just playing a computer game. Granted last year we managed to repurpose their bordem into creating a bunch of competition posters (Which won us Team Spirit in OKC), but I believe that the fact they spent a full 3 weeks just creating posters was somewhat of a waste of potential.

I also agree that when a student violates safety practices should be immediate grounds for being asked to leave.

The thing about asking a student to leave a specific part of the team and reassigning them is that the student will not feel any particular drive for what they are reassigned to. Personally, if I were to join a team to participate in, say, build team but then got reassigned to programming (regardless of reason for reassignment) I would not feel any attachment to programming.

[BrendanB]

Take this student aside one on one. Maybe there are other things going on in life that are taking his time away. Maybe he volunteers but doesn't have the skill level to complete the task hoping to learn the skills on the way. Maybe the student isn't capable of leading a project on his own but is a great when working with/under someone.

Sending the student away from the team is the worst way to deal with this situation. He could be the next Einstein or team leader given the time.