How to choose team captain

[alopex_rex]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

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.

I don't think this is necessarily true in this kind of situation. My main experience with elected student leadership is my Boy Scout troop, and our last couple senior patrol leaders (most important non-adult leader) were pretty much the opposite of narcissistic: humble and relatively introverted. (Of course I will make no public commentary on whether the opposing candidates were "narcissistic.")

The reason I use that as an example is that our robotics team doesn't use elections to determine leadership at all. We have a group of student leaders (~2 per subteam), who are essentially self-selected: the people who are most interested in taking a part in decision-making and putting in lots of time, naturally become leaders. In principle I think it's up to the mentors to select leaders and to make sure they're meeting standards, but as far as I know there's never been any drama about who gets to be a leader. In our case I think elections and a hierarchical student leadership would just create conflict--right now conflict between the leaders, when it pops up, is smoothed over by the fact that we have distinct areas of responsibility, and aren't telling each other what to do. I can easily imagine how elections might work well for another team, as long as everyone voting is familiar with the candidates as leaders and workers. In practice high school students are surprisingly good at separating real strong leaders from kids who can spin a good speech but aren't serious about leading.

[Riverdance]

Our team also elects student leaders to a five-person student management team consisting of a president, vice president of internal affairs, vice president of public relations, secretary, and treasurer. We go through the entire process from nomination (self-nomination is allowed, but people rarely actually do it) to platform speeches to debate to voting. This all occurs during the spring offseason, and the new officers are announced at the team banquet usually held in June. The new management spends the summer getting used to their new roles and adapting to their responsibilities.

This has worked pretty well for us, though on the downside it does tend to be a bit of a popularity contest. Something that we really like about the system, though, is attendance requirements. In order to run, a candidate must have an attendance of 85%, or else be excused by current management. This weeds out the kids that just want the title and don't want to do the work. We also don't usually have kids with attendance below 60% vote in the elections, as we figure they don't really have a full understanding of our system and what's going on during meetings.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by Conor Ryan

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.

When 3946 has two captains, it's because neither of them has all of the tools to be captain. In particular, our third year, our two most viable candidates both had gaps. For example, one was too likely to not delegate or micromanage, the other to "fire and forget" when delegating. By the end of the year, both had improved markedly - with a bit of head coaching, they had each learned a lot from the other.

[DarkRune]

We hold "elections" a few weeks after build season for 4 positions: President, VP of Public Relations, VP of Outreach, and VP of Organization. The new board takes power one week after the conclusion of our FRC season (either our last regional, or if we make it to champs it is after champs) however they are expected to work under the current board to learn everything they can.

The board is actually selected by a committee of mentors who interview each candidate, and the elections have no actual decision making power as they are simply a recommendation to a committee of mentors. For example if two people are running for president and one gets more votes than the other (student 1), but the board views the candidate with the lower amount of votes (student 2) as better suited for the position, student 2 would be selected.

[GeeTwo]

Originally Posted by DarkRune

The board is actually selected by a committee of mentors who interview each candidate, and the elections have no actual decision making power as they are simply a recommendation to a committee of mentors. For example if two people are running for president and one gets more votes than the other (student 1), but the board views the candidate with the lower amount of votes (student 2) as better suited for the position, student 2 would be selected.

I certainly hope that you keep the "poplular vote count" secret, and I would recommend destroying the ballots and any records of it after the decision is made. With a setup like this, it would make more sense to me to simply encourage nominations by team members (perhaps by petition, where multiple students may "sign" the same nomination), as the selection will be made by a board of mentors in any case.

[CADerer_Matt]

Our team has 3 Captains; Marketing Captain, Engineering Captain, and Team Captain. Our mentors and teachers decide if they allowed to run based on experience and capability. Once all the candidates have been selected, at a Spring meeting allow everyone to give a speech. From their all team members are allowed to vote, however they are allowed not to vote if they choose. During our team's short existence, we have always had the higher grade, 2014 all tenth graders and 2015 all eleventh graders as the captains. (Side note our school is only in it's third year. we started with 7th-9th graders and having been adding a grade each year). We are however expecting a variety in grades of leadership this year, as the popular candidates are a 12th grader for team captain, an 11th grader for marketing captain, and a 10th grader for engineering captain.

[DarkRune]

Originally Posted by GeeTwo

I certainly hope that you keep the "poplular vote count" secret, and I would recommend destroying the ballots and any records of it after the decision is made. With a setup like this, it would make more sense to me to simply encourage nominations by team members (perhaps by petition, where multiple students may "sign" the same nomination), as the selection will be made by a board of mentors in any case.

The votes are sent via e-mail to the head mentor. Voting is also mandatory, and since we have a list of everyone's email we can easily verify who voted.

[Jacob Bendicksen]

We start the process of choosing our co-presidents by having each candidate give a 3-5 minute speech about why they'd be a good co-president. The entire team then fills out a survey, rating each candidate as 'excellent/good/fair/poor as a co-president' or something along those lines. Some years we'll break it down further into leadership skills, commitment to the team, etc.

The graduating co-presidents then meet with the mentors and use the survey as input as to where the team's leaning. The survey numbers are (of course) kept confidential, so the group is able to use their judgement along with the team's input to choose the next set of co-presidents.

The only strict requirement is that the candidates be rising juniors or seniors. Experience as a student manager makes you a more attractive candidate, as does more experience on the team, but neither of those has been the case for all of our co-presidents. Public speaking skills count for a lot, so that's something that the outgoing presidents and mentors take into account, but we don't have a requirement that one technical and one non-technical student be co-presidents. (It often ends up that way, but it's not required.)

We also use this process for other decisions - for example, our drive coach this year was decided in this manner, and we'll probably use this to choose our driver for this year.