Chairman's feedback form: Gracious Professionalism

[safiq10]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Steve, this is a debate that is much better had in person but I don't hear people bring this side of the argument up enough and I think it's something the entire community might need. Our team doesn't do any of the things we do for other teams because of the award, if the award didn't exist we would happily give away parts & advice like I always do. We would invite teams over and help them build their robots, we would still post in our build blog every night and share our designs. However we also do a lot to win the award. We spend weeks writing an essay and making sure that we have pictures and documentation from all of our events. We work hard on our presentation and our materials for the judges and a bunch more. It is nice to be recognized and FIRST makes the Chairman's Award the highest honor for a reason they want teams to try to win it. Hundreds of students work really hard each year to try to win these awards and every time someone says we shouldn't do things to win the award it diminishes their efforts just a bit. I'm sick of the we shouldn't do it for the award argument, if a team feels that way fine don't submit for the award that is every team's right but I sure hope more teams do try to win the awards, we are a much better program because we celebrate these things and elevate the teams that win them to such high regard in our community and because teams try to win them. The entire chairman's award process is about documenting how you have helped the community and why you should be a role model team and this is a piece of that. I assume that every single hall of fame team wanted to win the award and did a huge amount over a ridiculously long time to win the award, was that their only motivation absolutely not but it is always part of it.

This is inspirational! I completely agree with Allen! The Chairmans award was our motivation to start going out and presenting to our community! But as we grew, it became our second reason because we began to enjoy presenting.

[mrnoble]

Originally Posted by AllenGregoryIV

Steve, this is a debate that is much better had in person but I don't hear people bring this side of the argument up enough and I think it's something the entire community might need. Our team doesn't do any of the things we do for other teams because of the award, if the award didn't exist we would happily give away parts & advice like I always do. We would invite teams over and help them build their robots, we would still post in our build blog every night and share our designs.

As head coach I struggled with this one. We have not submitted for Chairman's for years and generally it was because we were simply too busy. Last year and this year we had more students, more time and energy, and ample things that we could say to demonstrate we met the requirements, but again decided not to. Right now, we're striving to be the best examples we can be of what FIRST can do for students and the community because it's true and it's the right thing to do. We felt like Chairman's might lead us away from that mindset into doing things so we could win an award. That didn't feel right. Notice that I am only speaking for myself and my team; I am not saying that other teams have the same issues or should reach the same conclusion. But this winter, we had just come off a successful run in a different competition (unnamed here) in which we took the opposite tack and we ended up feeling a little icky, and we definitely knew we were angling our efforts in community service to win an equivalent award.

[cadandcookies]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

As head coach I struggled with this one. We have not submitted for Chairman's for years and generally it was because we were simply too busy. Last year and this year we had more students, more time and energy, and ample things that we could say to demonstrate we met the requirements, but again decided not to. Right now, we're striving to be the best examples we can be of what FIRST can do for students and the community because it's true and it's the right thing to do. We felt like Chairman's might lead us away from that mindset into doing things so we could win an award. That didn't feel right. Notice that I am only speaking for myself and my team; I am not saying that other teams have the same issues or should reach the same conclusion. But this winter, we had just come off a successful run in a different competition (unnamed here) in which we took the opposite tack and we ended up feeling a little icky, and we definitely knew we were angling our efforts in community service to win an equivalent award.

I can see where that's coming from. Part of it definitely is self restraint-- I know on 2220 we have a general policy about Chairman's-- specifically that our Chairman's submission documents what our team is and has done. We don't treat it like a "we have to do x, y, or z for Chairman's," we treat it like an opportunity to tell the judges about all the cool stuff we did over the last 5 years. For my team, at least, that encompasses a lot of outreach and working with/helping out other FIRST teams, which are, for the most part, things we would do anyways because it strengthens our area and our program.

I think I remember Karthik talking about a culture shift in Simbotics around 2010 when the team decided, as a whole, to stop doing things to win Chairman's, but instead focus on doing things they enjoyed doing.

Part of it is definitely catching yourself, but I think the process of submitting in itself is a good way of checking your team's state and goals against those of FIRST.

[Mr.Smoky15]

Well as far as activity at the event goes:

Teams began skipping pit admin to come to us. We gave out flyers for LabView help, and while judges were at our pit, NYACK came straight to us for help. This was mentioned when we won the GP award at regional.

Afterwards, we got our feedback form, only to find we were given a low rating for GP. Left us with a lot of question marks.

Good job though on winning the regional guys!

[PayneTrain]

Originally Posted by mrnoble

As head coach I struggled with this one. We have not submitted for Chairman's for years and generally it was because we were simply too busy. Last year and this year we had more students, more time and energy, and ample things that we could say to demonstrate we met the requirements, but again decided not to. Right now, we're striving to be the best examples we can be of what FIRST can do for students and the community because it's true and it's the right thing to do. We felt like Chairman's might lead us away from that mindset into doing things so we could win an award. That didn't feel right. Notice that I am only speaking for myself and my team; I am not saying that other teams have the same issues or should reach the same conclusion. But this winter, we had just come off a successful run in a different competition (unnamed here) in which we took the opposite tack and we ended up feeling a little icky, and we definitely knew we were angling our efforts in community service to win an equivalent award.

I said this in an earlier thread on why 422 submits for Chairman's every year.

"Our goals aren't just finishing the robot on time or maybe getting kinda close to winning a blue banner once every Martian year, but it's to change people. It's to see it in the eyes of kids who thought they had no future, it's in the eyes of a politician looking to build a legacy, it's in the eyes of a parent who realizes this program can send her kid to college, and as cheesy as it sounds, it's in our hearts. When you sign on to submit a Chairman's Award, it's important to think about not only how you yourself affect the team, but how it affects you, your family and friends, your colleagues and teammates, and people you may not remember meeting even if they sure as sunshine remember you.

But we come together to build a robot, an object brought to life and made greater than the sum of its parts. Our brains, our hearts, and our lungs come together to give us life that not one of them could sustain on its own. People come together to form a team that is greater than the sum of the individuals that comprise it. The team then acts like a boulder falling from the highest mountain and crashing into the deepest ravine, making a powerful, awesome impact that cannot be questioned, cannot be diminished, and cannot be defined by check-boxes on a list or trophies in a case.

Working on Chairman's in a meaningful way is hard. You have to constantly evaluate not only what you're doing to change the culture but how and why you do it. It's not to take home the hardware, it's not to gloat or show off, it's to make an unmistakable and historic impact on the community and world around you. Doing what everyone else does is easy. Doing what comes easy to you is easy. It's about finding who you are by challenging yourselves to do nothing short of creating the best culture. It's not about swimming around the lakeshore and waving to your friends, it's about diving down to the bottom of the inky deep and coming back up with diamonds in the rough.

When you sign up to submit for a Chairman's Award, you commit yourself to the mission that is bigger than you. The banners you win will fade and the trophies will go ignored, but you will always remember when you sat down with your team and decided to become something greater than yourselves."

When it comes to the "Gracious Professionalism" on and off the field, for 422 it is nothing more than paying it forward. When the team was trying to find its way again in 2010 and 2011 I remember teams who went out of their way to help us. That's why, no matter what state we're in, someone on 422 is always helping someone at competition. It inspired us to help others and we hope it does the same for them. We don't stumble on the award; a lot of time goes into the documentation of what is done on the team. A very smart, talented, and inspiring group of students put a lot of time in this year to make a submission they are very proud of. Our pursuit of the award is not something we embark on to take home the hardware, but we make this journey to reach our ultimate goal of becoming the best team we can be. The Chairman's Award is FIRST's highest honor, earned by, without question, the best teams ever. We strive to become one of them by seeing what they do right and wrong and adjusting it to our own experience, situations, and needs. Submitting for the Chairman's Award is just a part of that.

[Sondra]

1501, has built lasting programs for our community that we improve and grow across the years, We have worked hand in hand with our sponsors, we mentor other teams through out the year and have for a long time. We offer a pit medic service to teams who need a helping hand with anything from code to mechanical assistance. We open our pit and tools to others. We share our practice field... we provide parts and hardware from our reserves to other teams... We have a laundry list of things that we do. We do so because it is the right thing to do for our program and our community and the FIRST community. it is not just for the award.

We present in our essay and in our interview, all of those things we do to assist other teams, and we still fall flat on the GP point of the rubric.

Do we have to spell it out as gracious professionalism? It seems counter productive to being gracious but is that the key?

[Chris_Elston]

Originally Posted by Mr.Smoky15

Afterwards, we got our feedback form, only to find we were given a low rating for GP. Left us with a lot of question marks.

And I noticed that your team as well, won the 2014 St. Louis GP Award for the event, congrats bty, yet you also report a low rating of GP on your chairman's feedback. Don't you find that odd? That's the main question I was asking others is obviously we are missing a communication link to what the chairman's judges of a GP is, rather than an event judge of what GP is....your team just proved it can happen twice.

(thanks bty for the kudos, we had a great time in St. Louis)

[kgalea]

I have found this thread very inspiring and helpful. This is our team's first year submitting for Chairman's. We actually decided to apply for slightly different reasons. We do not have a large school (280 total students) or a large team (22 if you count the very part timers + one coach/teacher and three part time mentors).

We decided to put together a submission to help our team focus on the bigger picture and (hopefully) place less emphasis on the actual robot (although this is clearly still very important). It was our hope that by looking at our team from a different angle, we would be able to learn more about each other and our purpose for being a part of FIRST, and perhaps be able to build a better robot as a result of this knowledge. We have historically been very disorganized and scrambling to get the robot working and all loose ends tied up during our first district event

Submitting for chairman's has helped us learn to work together as a team more efficiently and has helped many team members begin to understand that their role on the team is just as important as the captains and drivers. We have a long way to go, and hope to gather the necessary resources to make our long term goals become reality. We started an FTC team at our middle school, and hope to extend the program to start an FLL team soon.

Thank you all for sharing your inspiring words - I hope that someday we will find a way to reach and impact many young lives (with or without a Chairman's Award )

[Red2486]

We always mention GP as one of our role model characteristics in the Executive Summaries, but we don't mention GP specifically after that. I think, or I hope, that the rest of a Chairman's Essay will convey the attitude of GP. We talk about mentoring and sharing ideas and things of that nature. Things that convey the culture of Gracious Professionalism within our team rather than saying we are GP becuase x, y, and z. I think it has a better impact in that respect and it better reflects our team's culture of Gracious Professionalism rather than just conveying times in which we were Gracious Professionals.

On another note, our team is big on trying to convince teams to apply for the Chairman's Award. Yes, in the begining some of these teams only have the award in sight, but even the results that come from that mindset are astounding. Simply going through the Chairman's Award process can have an impact on students, team, and communities. Like in kgaela's post: applying for the award can change the focus of a team. Kids are competitive. A lot of the time, after only applying once, a team will come back with a stronger program and with a desire to do more. FIRST would not have created these awards if they thought it would have a negative impact. FIRST created the Chairman's Award to maintain "the central focus of FIRST" and that is what the award does. It pushes teams, all teams, to work harder in their communities and to do more. I think at some point even a team who only applies for Chairman's "to win" will forget that they are trying to win, and at that point they will probably become a very successful Chairman's Team. Regradless of how they get to the award, the team that wins it will have made a significant impact in thier community that merits the award and contributes to the central focus of FIRST.

At least that is what I have seen in the teams we have encouraged to apply for the award.