How should leaders be selected?

[dcarr]

Originally Posted by fuzzwaz

Basically how does one decide between the person who deserves to have a leadership role vs the person who would best fit the position. Or maybe, in your opinion, these are the same thing?

To me, the person who would best fit the position is, by definition, the one who deserves it the most

In situations when you have more than one very strong leader, it's worth considering a structure in which they both play a major role in leading the team.

We try to fine-tune our team structure each year to fix things that didn't work as well as expected, but it can also be to better-utilize the talent of a given group of students.

[Aidan S.]

Having a written application for a team also has a very beneficial side effect: It helps students prepare for writing university applications, and other such applications in the future.

Answering questions such as "Why do you want this position?" or "How do you see yourself as a leader?" on something such as a robotics team application does wonders to help students write their personal statements on university applications. The types of questions that could be asked on a FRC team leadership application are analogous to many of the questions asked on a typical Engineering school application. I found my experiences writing team applications gave me a lot of practice, and my university personal statements were less of a challenge for me.

[Sam390250]

Our team (our largest size in the last 6 years has been ~25 students, ranging down to 11 students) has gone with a cover letter/resume/interview process all reviewed/run by the mentors for the last 5 years. Initially these were reserved just for those applying for leadership positions, but now all students are invited/encouraged to participate each year to give them practice for future interviews within our team for leadership positions and beyond. It is conducted very much like a job interview (professional attire, multiple interviews with different mentors, etc).

With such a small team, most of the leadership positions (Electrical Lead, Firmware Lead, Electro-Mechanical Lead, Chassis Lead, Media Lead, Scouting Lead, etc) are already known ahead of time because only one person is interested, but there have been several cases of two students competing for a role. This system has seemed to work fairly well at preparing students for future interviews as well as keeping order with the leads.

I will note that our drive team is not chosen in this way. Though it is also a decision by the mentors, it is done during the build season and weighs skill, driver/field experience, rule knowledge, judgment calls, etc. Only members who pass our team's game rules test with a certain score on the first try (I believe it is a 90%) are allowed to try out for any drive team positions (including human player). There is no application for this process and any interviews with the candidates are not formal.

[Alan Anderson]

The TechnoKats restructured a few years ago to have a student technical lead and a student business lead. Both positions are selected by team vote. Students apply for the roles and mentors decide which of the applicants are eligible candidates.

Various subgroup leaders -- software, mechanical, electrical, fundraising, outreach, scouting, spirit, etc. -- are appointed by the corresponding mentors for each group. The appropriate choice is usually obvious, so it's usually more a case of approving than of appointing.

[saikiranra]

"Elections will be held for the positions of president, vice-president, treasurers- and secretaries-in-training, and the Safety Czar, except in cases of only one interested person. The positions of senior treasurers and secretaries will be "carry-over" positions: At the appropriate time (after the season has ended) the treasurers- and secretaries-in-training will step into the vacated senior positions as needed. This is to create a body of leadership which has been trained during the previous season to perform the specific leadership and record-keeping roles required."

Quoted directly from our constitution.

This means that anyone, excluding incoming members, can run for any position. At one meeting after the end of build season, all the nominees give a speech on why they should be elected. We then immediately have everyone write down their votes and reveal the winners within the hour. Mentors are allowed to weigh in, but do not have a vote.

This system has worked really well in the past and makes is so people cannot say "I could do a better job." It makes every student accountable and satisfied with their leadership the next season.

[karomata]

The form in which you select leaders is somewhat based on how your team is structured.

On my team (I will not say which team is mine), we usually do applications for most applicable positions. We have applications for Drive team, Pit Crew, student leadership, etc. However, in addition to having applications, we also have other forms of selection, like interviews. For example, for Drive team, there is both an application to be filled out, an interview to occur, and additionally, we have a skills analysis for driver, coach, and human player skill when we select drive team. But when selecting Chairman's Presenters, there is only an interview.

The people who decide how they want to select students for positions are the same people who will end up working with them in the according role. So our strategy mentors work with our drive team, our robot design and build mentors work with our pit crew, our NEMO/Awards mentors work with the awards students.

The only way any of this is possible is through our team structure. With 40+ students, our team had to get a bit creative with how we would organize ourselves. We have subteams, specifically 3 main ones: Mechanical, Eletricalm, and Programming. Additionally we have other subteams, like awards, strategy, marketing, leadership, but all of our students have 1 main subteam, like the 3 mentioned above, and the others listed are optional, and students may join as many as they wish. All of our mentors also have main subteams.

In terms of selecting specifically leaders, we have a 3 step process. Students must fill out an application, do an interview with our student leadership mentors, and give a speech to the whole team. The whole team then elects their leaders, however they do not have the final say. The mentors largley take into accout the results of the voting from the team, and usually the results from the vote are identical to the mentor's preferences.

Our leadership subteam is composed of 7-9 students. We each have our own individual role, aka FLL Coordinator, Team Captian, Communications, Public Relations, Subteam Coordinator, etc. We elect around 8 students in the spring after CMPs, then we also elect a New Student leader the following winter after school starts.

Another large part of how we run our application process is being anonymous. When we have applications, they are numbered and we cannot put our names on them. It helps filter out bias within the system, even though most of our mentors can probably guess whose application their reading based on the handwriting or what is written.

This is how my team chose to do it, and it has been very successful, our student leadership and engaging structure has produced us 4 Dean's List Finalists, and the structure also helps our mentors mentor us, this can be demonstrated by our 2 WFA Finalists. Additionally, our unique student leadership aspect has helped all of our students organize community service events, fundraisers, and demonstrations, which has contributed to our team winning Chairman's 4 times in 9 years.

Many aspects of structure, organization, and leadership revolve around the natural features of the team, like size, composition, resources, etc. Teams that want to have successful organization and structure need to find what is best for their own individual team.