How to choose team captain

[superswerve]

Hey everyone just wondering how different teams elect their team captain and why you chose that way. Thanks

[Whippet]

Ours is usually done based on how much experience a candidate has, and then a vote takes place. This doesn't always work, though. I would recommend looking for leadership capabilities over technical experience.

[Alex2614]

Originally Posted by superswerve

Hey everyone just wondering how different teams elect their team captain and why you chose that way. Thanks

Went to Team 1511's conference on student leadership at the championship. They have a really unique and successful leadership structure, all the way down to how they are chosen. Really cool, and a model I would love to see my team emulate in the near future. Check it out here.

[Boe]

For our team the captains must meet the our teams lettering requirements, and then there is a poll of the student body to nominate candidates. The top candidates all interview with our executive board and then the board discuses the candidates and chooses who will be the captains for the following season.

[Pretzel]

Team 1619 chooses its President, Vice President, Secretary, and Safety Officer by elections in the fall. Each prospective candidate prepares a speech that is given to the rest of the students, who then vote based on the speeches given. It's great fun and usually ends up with bribery in the form of candy being passed out by all the candidates. When everyone does it, however, it becomes a level playing ground for all and it still won't make up for an exceptionally poor speech.

[pabeekm]

Sorry if this derails from the main topic, I just want to put out there that having a president/ captain isn’t exactly obligatory.

Some teams have leadership boards made out of department heads, which may be independent or headed by mentors. Some have several co-captains. Every team has little nuances depending on where they’re based/ their mentor: student ratio/ or their size that may affect what works best for their own dynamic. For example, our team gets most of our students out of a two year school, so our high turnover (in combination with our larger size and unfortunately low mentor: student ratio) means a student board works better for introducing/ cultivating new leadership. Remember to evaluate your team’s personnel and existing structure to determine what’s the best fit.

From the board perspective (sorry I can’t speak from the single captain perspective), we get the luxury of leadership sort of “falling into place”. For our team, weekly leadership meetings are an hour before Saturday meetings start and are open to all students to attend/ provide perspective. The new leadership becomes pretty apparent from their attendance at these meetings and their involvement/ownership of tasks in their departments. We “assign” titles at the end of the season, but that’s really just a formality. It’s nice that, as a board, we get to reward those who put in the effort and allow for more targeted training of successors for vacating positions.

I apologize if this isn't relevant to what you're looking for; I just thought it was an interesting case study of how different factors can affect leadership structure.

[cmrnpizzo14]

We have (based off memory, I didn't get to really work with 3173 this year) 3 "captains" that are elected every year. They are usually just called team leads instead of captain. Traditionally, at least 1 has been an underclassmen to ensure someone with leadership experience has been in the position the next year.

It is strictly a vote with a select mentor panel that have the power to veto on the off chance that who the students choose in their opinion wouldn't be a good representative for the team.

[The other Gabe]

popular election: every team member gets a vote. the Executive board from the previous year (President, vice president, secretary and the 2 lead mentors) interviews candidates beforehand to make sure they're ready for the workload.. . or at least I think they do... it's a good idea anyways

[planetbrilliant]

Unless its unanimous (in the case of our team captain this year), we ask who wants to run. Then whoever wants to run gives a short speech and we vote. For smaller positions like our main administrative role (attendance, etc) we may not do speeches. For safety captain we choose a group of people who work together on safety during build season and they usually end up naturally choosing a leader.

[AJCaliciuri]

Our team elects a Captain by popular vote.

In Early May, any Grade 11/12 Students (Juniors & Seniors for our American Friends) can be nominaed by other members.

Once all of the candidates have been nominated, we hold a vote at our next meeting. Each of the candidates gets 5 minutes to speak about why they would make the best Captain. Everyone present (and those who couldn't attend vote via a proxy) then get to vote.

In our 15 years, the majority of Captains have been in 12th grade, with maybe one or two being in 11th.

[Jon Stratis]

First off, one of our captain's is always a junior - assuming they do well, they then serve again as a senior. This helps to ensure continuity for the team from one year to the next, and make sure nothing gets dropped in the transition.

The junior captain goes around and talks with anyone eligible to be captain the next year. You could consider this an interview, but it's really a two way street - we want to know who will make the best captain's, but we also want those captain's to have an infra of what they are getting themselves into. Being a captain on our team requires a lot of time and effort, much more than being a captain on any of the sports teams at the school.

The junior captain then feeds information to the mentors - who has ideas to grow the team, who has dedication, who has potential scheduling conflicts. They also tell us their personal opinions - who they think they can work the best with moving forward.

After all of that, the team votes via ballot at the end of the year banquet. The mentors get together to evaluate the vote totals, discuss the situation, and then choose the captains.

All of this is designed around a simple statement in the team handbook: captain's are chosen by the team mentors, utilizing student input. In other words, the student vote and returning captain's opinions are usually enough to make the decision, but sometimes the mentors need to step in to choose between two close candidates or (not used yet, but possible) to veto a popular choice. We don't want to go with just a student vote system - the popular student on the team won't always make the best leader, and while our team has always done a really good job ignoring popularity in the vote, we don't want to risk that situation.

[Sperkowsky]

We changed the way we do it this year.

Basically in the beginning on the year we would do voted elections. It got out of hand this year a bit with people bringing their friends, people who have never showed up running for positions, and people who have never came voting.

We are going to do a vote but the voters have to be real members and the people running have to had spent a large amount of time at the club

[Conor Ryan]

I've said this before and I'll say it again.
Rookies are some of the best examples on how to identify leadership talent.

I've worked with at least 3 rookie teams now, and some of the best student leaders I have seen come from rookies.

What is different about rookies? They don't care how old or experienced you are. They don't care how senior you are. All they care about is that you are committed and will do whatever it takes to make your team better. Having 3 years of experience means you know what to expect, but that is no indication of future performance.

If you or somebody on your team is expecting to be captain next year because of their tenure, you may want to take a queue from the business world here and rethink that. Sometimes companies promote from within, sometimes they take a bold move and hire an outside candidate. Make sure that you have quorum and a vote of confidence if a team goes that route.

A smart captain will recognize their own personal limits, and be able to ask for help as needed. Communication is fundamental, mass communication and day to day communication are a must. A brilliant captain will know to work on the items nobody else is working on.

Here is an awesome thread on the role of the team captain. I'll make a few updates on my opinion and underline them.

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

In my time in FRC (this is my 11th year of involvement), the best team captains on any team should have one assigned job. Make sure everyone else on the team is busy at all times. Other than that they should delegate everything they do. But here are some other thoughts on qualifications great team captains should have:
-ability to delegate
-ability to come up with ideas and jobs for others to do (anybody ever look about how many people sit around and become disengaged?)
-ability to make quick decisions
-ability to say they were wrong quickly
-ability to motivate
-ability to build confidence in other team members
-a work ethic to model after
-an idea of what FIRST is all about (heres a hint, its not all about the robot)
-no interest in personally building the robot (there are so many other things for a captain to do, they'll have no time for the actual robot, unless your team is smaller than 8 people (in which case you might want to try Vex, FTC).
-the idea of what a deadline is
-social skills to talk to Mentors/judges/other teams/VIPs
-ability to say screw it, nothing is ever perfect and relax at the end of the day
-ability to build a culture of continuous improvement

Being on the drive team, being the person who gets to pick the final design, all of those *perks* are not in the best interest of the team. The best leaders let those who are the best at what they do, do what they do (and then give them credit for it).

Also on a note, being a senior/oldest member on the team/most experienced should have nothing to do with being team captain. Rookie teams have team captains any 9 times out of 10, nobody has any experience. Actually, some of the best team captains I've seen have been from rookie teams.

I'd love to see a thread in the future about the pros/cons of picking 2 captains. I've often pondered if it is better or worse. I've got evidence of both, but its all about the size of your team.

[Conor Ryan]

Originally Posted by Pretzel

by elections in the fall.

Originally Posted by The other Gabe

popular election

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

we would do voted elections

Its like every other team uses elections!

Here is what happens if you force your group to elect a leader: Narcissistic Personalities Tend to Emerge as Leaders. That is a good and a bad thing, you just need to make sure the right qualities emerge, and make sure you have the right support organization in place.

The Harvard Business Review points out that there are two types of Narcissists, Productive ones, and Unproductive ones. Embrace the strengths by quickly developing the following upon the election of your leader.

1) A Team Vision (there are plenty of docs in the CD-Media library to surf through, HBR has some great tips too. What you want is a macro-strategy document to say this is what we are going to do and your short term action plan for how to do it ("Create the best STEM team ever", something like that). Make it a powerpoint! Or find an innovative way to do this.

2) Make your team loud. Narcissistic leaders are often skillful orators, and this is one of the talents that makes them so charismatic. Do fun things to grow your team, and grow your resources, let your leaders sell the vision you just created. If you want to do well you need the 5 M's. Money, Machinery, Materials, Mentors and Masses. Start small, recruit more students, then build up to mentors, then materials, then machinery, then money.

HBR highlighted there are downsides to this, so the rest of the teamneeds to make sure the team ensures success
3) Develop a leadership council early to make sure you outline the path to success for the team. You want major stakeholders in the team to advise your team captain on future endeavors.

4) Read the rest of this https://hbr.org/2004/01/narcissistic...nevitable-cons
To make sure you minimize the inevitable cons.

[GeeTwo]

Our team captain (or co-captains in some years) is selected by the head coach, usually in consultation with the regular mentors. Selection is based on leadership ability and dedication far more than on technical merit. Selection of co-captains is very much picking alliance partners - select people whose skills and talents complement each other. The amount of responsibility delegated to the captain(s) begins at a modest level and builds as they grow into the role.