UNgracious UNprofessionalism

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

If you can't find a way to "inspire" your kids other than denigrating others' good work, I am sad for your team. Why isn't it inspiring to see what the students on those other teams were able to do by partnering with their mentors? Why don't you encourage your kids to go talk with those other teams to get an idea of what really makes them great, instead of feeding them the fiction that they're only great because the robots were built by professionals?
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You don't have to be ashamed about "smashing" another robot, but it is definitely not something to be proud of.

Alan, I would argue that you SHOULD be ashamed of "smashing" another robot. Senseless destruction of material is not something we should tolerate. You can play effective defense without damaging the other robots. (Arguably, you can play MORE effective defense without damaging them). As someone who has had our robot banged around a fair bit this year I can say that teams that make dirty hits with the intent of doing damage just irk me.


Regarding the other part I quoted. I'm going to channel my inner IKE for a bit and recommend that the poster read a book called Tribal Leadership. There's an interesting bit in it about about the language used by groups in various stages. Sounds like the person you quoted is in the "I'm great (and you're not)" stage. I suggest they observe other teams and how they operate. Emulate them and see if we can realize that we can all be great.