Mentor/Student Involvement Philosophies

[MrForbes]

Originally Posted by Madison

I was writing a post very similar to Adam's just now because I think it addresses a topic that often goes ignored in these debates.

Some engineers are better than others.

That's true. But I think it is not nearly the whole story.

I've spent some time reading and watching mentors on elite teams describing their process, and their analyses of various things about games and robots, and I don't really learn much new. What I haven't seen from them, is a frank discussion about how to motivate a team. I don't even know if it's possible, because I think some people are just natural leaders, and they don't really know how they do it.

I've had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time hanging out with Fredi of 842. He seems to be one of those natural leaders, who can motivate a team to do things that no one thought possible. He's told me he doesn't really know how he does it. As food for thought....they didn't have an engineer mentor on their team until my son joined them in 2011.

I know we've had several coaches/faculty advisers over the years, but the same couple of mentors. Our robots and game playing have varied drastically from year to year, depending on who was coach, and which students were on the team. Our best performance was with a team heavy in seniors, who had been coached by a very enthusiastic coach their freshman and sophomore years. When they graduated, the team seemed to fall apart.

I talked about "magic" on the Einstein thread, and got no response. I still believe there is magic on some teams. I don't know what it is, and I doubt the folks on the teams know what it is, either.