The institutionalization of FRC teams, and the toxicity it creates

[ajdoming]

Originally Posted by WorldOfRobots

To answer some of your points, I do understand that family ties have no place in a drive team. This wasn't a decision by a parent, which at least would have made sense, but rather a choice made FOR political reasons, by mentors with no students of their own, because they didn't want to offend parent who were helping to fund/sponsor the team.

Speaking generally, (as I have no specific insight on your situation) I have been a part of leadership/position decisions (not necessarily in FIRST) that have been perceived by some as 'political' for one reason or another and it honestly hurts a little to get that feedback when so much effort was put into making the best decision based on the criteria.

The best solution I've found, from the organizational perspective, is to have well defined and well communicated criteria (as quantitative as possible, which isn't always easy) for any role that is decided by team leaders.

What I have learned, specific to FIRST and to my team, is that singling out individual students for roles becomes very difficult when you have so many incredibly capable individuals. This is a problem I am more than happy to have.

[Michael Corsetto]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

As odd as it sounds, a focus on the team can be a powerful tool for improving individual outcomes. A winning team is one that can gather more members, more interest, and more dedication, if winning is handled by the team leadership properly. Challenging your students to make an impact on the team, to leave it better off than when they joined, or to start something that will continue on past their time with the team does two things - it helps to continuously drive the team forward, and it helps the students develop their creativity and leadership skills in whichever way they want.

This paragraph effectively summarizes why I believe FRC is such a powerful platform.

Well put.

-Mike

[IKE]

Originally Posted by unpopularideas

...snip... Everyone on my team knows who the favorites are. Everyone on my team knows that the 3-4 favorites can (and have) kick people off of the team for disagreeing with them. There are too many cliches to count. ...snip...
Another thing I've noticed on my own team, and I wanted to see if you guys have noticed anything similar on your own teams - girls run the show. They can easily knock anyone on the team off of it. In addition, they are in charge of programming, engineering, scouting, leadership, drive team and safety. ...snip...If FIRST is really about letting the next generation get a hands on experience in STEM, then why are we sitting here trying so desperately to help, only to be shot down by the favorites.

Just my take on it.

I work with a lot of teams (100+ teams each year), and while favoritism or perceived favoritism is often found, having exclusively female leadership on a mixed team is still fairly rare, and having that exclusively female leadership being that controlling/punitive as you describe would be an even rarer subset.

Female leadership on teams though is much less rare now than it was just a decade ago so I suspect this will be a more frequent occurrence.

As far as ideas getting shot down by "the leaders", that happens all the time. Even really good ideas may be shot down because they would require more resources than leadership can offer, or the strategy may be deemed lower value, or the group generating the idea did a really bad job explaining it. I too had thought of a Batman/Robin style approach in 2015, and my presentation was so unremarkable to the group choosing design direction that they didn't even remember when 148s video was shown. I did not push it hard as I did not think the team had the design resources to pull it off that year. We discussed this briefly after 148s reveal came out, but regrouped to focus on the teams robot.

Inner groups and favoritism do often form and cause problems. Sometimes this is because the "favorites" spend the most time. Sometimes it is because they behave the best. Sometimes there are other forms of favoritism (nepotism, sexism, cronyism) at play. Most mentors try not to play favorites, but it happens similarly to HS sports teams. Unfortunately, this is a real occurrence.
I am not trying to "blame the victim", but it is often worthwhile to do a self assessment to ensure you are not doing a lot of off-putting behaviors. If you come up with some, work on those. Also, ask if you can have a discussion with mentors about taking a larger/more important role with the team. Ask what they are looking for in their leaders and how you could demonstrate. You could try to have a conversation about favoritism, but often this can lead to confrontational discussion that may not be beneficial.

[nrgy_blast]

Originally Posted by IKE

*snip* Inner groups and favoritism do often form and cause problems. Sometimes this is because the "favorites" spend the most time. Sometimes it is because they behave the best. Sometimes there are other forms of favoritism (nepotism, sexism, cronyism) at play. Most mentors try not to play favorites, but it happens similarly to HS sports teams. Unfortunately, this is a real occurrence.
I am not trying to "blame the victim", but it is often worthwhile to do a self assessment to ensure you are not doing a lot of off-putting behaviors. *snip*

We had a student join our team that came from another team, complained about the things the other team did to limit his participation, focused on things he didn't want to focus on - made it sound like our team was a better fit. We accepted him on our team. By the end of the season it was very apparent that it was not the other team that was the problem.... Sometimes personal reflection can go a long way into resolving 'other people's problems'.

[NShep98]

Originally Posted by IKE

Inner groups and favoritism do often form and cause problems. Sometimes this is because the "favorites" spend the most time. Sometimes it is because they behave the best. Sometimes there are other forms of favoritism (nepotism, sexism, cronyism) at play. Most mentors try not to play favorites, but it happens similarly to HS sports teams. Unfortunately, this is a real occurrence.
I am not trying to "blame the victim", but it is often worthwhile to do a self assessment to ensure you are not doing a lot of off-putting behaviors. If you come up with some, work on those. Also, ask if you can have a discussion with mentors about taking a larger/more important role with the team. Ask what they are looking for in their leaders and how you could demonstrate. You could try to have a conversation about favoritism, but often this can lead to confrontational discussion that may not be beneficial.

I see your points about favoritism, but the fact that the girls seem to run the entire show, to the point where they are flat-out removing people from the team who disagree with them, leads me to believe that this team has taken the "inclusion of women in STEM" concept in the entire wrong direction. It certainly sounds like the boys are putting a considerable effort into contributing to the team only to be ignored, and such a significant split between "favorites" and "everyone else" is something I consider unacceptable. If it were me on this team, I would gather up the "everyone else"s to make a plan to confront the people who are apparently controlling the team. After all, you can only kick off so many people before it stops being a team. Just my speculation.

[IKE]

Originally Posted by NShep98

I see your points about favoritism, but the fact that the girls seem to run the entire show, to the point where they are flat-out removing people from the team who disagree with them, leads me to believe that this team has taken the "inclusion of women in STEM" concept in the entire wrong direction. It certainly sounds like the boys are putting a considerable effort into contributing to the team only to be ignored, and such a significant split between "favorites" and "everyone else" is something I consider unacceptable. If it were me on this team, I would gather up the "everyone else"s to make a plan to confront the people who are apparently controlling the team. After all, you can only kick off so many people before it stops being a team. Just my speculation.

I highlighted some key words from your post. Your speculation is based off of a lot of speculation by the other poster. His speculation could be absolutely accurate, it could also be off or jaded via the filter of the observations he is seeing and amplification of perceived slights he and others believe they are experiencing.
My point is with that much speculation and assumption, I would recommend a first response of treading lightly and gaining insight rather than rallying the troops for battle. One thing I have learned, if you rally the troops for war, you will likely get a fight, and rarely does the team win when a fight occurs.
A gentler, more tactful approach could cause additional insight that makes the person realize they were wrong, or misinterpreted some people leaving the team due to confidentiality of the issue they were being kicked off for.

Once better aware, if the person still believes that the favoritism is real, then it would be worthwhile to have a discussion about whether or not it is conscious effort, and worth while to verify if the mentors are aware of how this is impacting the student experience.

It seems that often the villagers want to gather pitchforks and storm the castle to destroy the monster, when it might be better served to learn that the monster has a fear of fire and outburst control issues.

I had a group of about 10 friends in college that graduated a year behind me. I remember getting a call from 3 of them that one of the others was conspiring against them to try to isolate them from the rest of the peer group as he had made sure they were not invited to 3 weeks in a row Saturday night activities. When I confronted the other friend, he explained to me they were watching a mini-series From Earth to the Moon and they were watching 3-4 episodes each week. the 3 that were "being excluded" had mentioned they did not want to spend their Saturday nights watching movies... thus they were not invited.

I once thought a little old lady had overfilled the oil in my car causing several simultaneous engine seal failures because I was using too many parking spots at the apartment complex. It made sense in the moment, but once I cooled down and talked with outside observers, I found that my rock solid case was a series of false assumptions and speculation that were far from the most plausible case.

[connor.worley]

OP,

Don't give up on FRC. I love VEX to death but there's just something special about FRC to me. I don't think the points you mention are problems inherent to the program - rather, these are specific issues that you can work to address. I've been a student and a mentor and let me tell you that your mentors want nothing more than for you to be inspired and successful, even if it doesn't always seem that way. Mentors are only human. In my experience the teams with the best cultures are the ones where the students+mentors are friends outside of robotics. Invite everyone to a team barbeque and make an earnest attempt to get to know them, including mentors. It sounds corny AF but your friendship will be more important than whatever conflicts happen during the season.

People getting selected for drive team because of their parents is not typical. Have you spoken to your mentors about it? They can't read minds and knowing how the students feel about decisions does weigh on them.

Lastly, why does losing competitions, failing to get into champs, etc. create a toxic environment? Please elaborate. Failing is part of life and one of the more valuable lessons in FRC - learning to fail gracefully and iterate onwards.

Hope this helps somehow.

[Jon Stratis]

Ike's post got me thinking more about favoritism. And frankly, it's all perception based. It seems that every year my students ask me who my favorite is, or even tell me who my favorite is. Does that mean I'm sitting there finding ways for my "favorite" of the year to get something she doesn't deserve?. No... Rather the students that other identify as my "favorites" are the ones that are dedicated, show up to every meeting, work hard, and show leadership. They get seen as "favorites" not because of what I do, but because of what they do -individuals that are around more and help lead the team usually end up working closer with the mentors as we help them figure out what's going on so they can then effectively lead others towards a common goal. Others get their share of time working with the mentors, but it's often on smaller scale, focused projects with more heavy mentor oversight - they don't go off and work independently very much. It's all based around the perceived needs of the individual student, not around who I personally like or dislike.

My team has also had students with involved parents take on visiblecompositions and leadership roles. One of them was a two year captain and Championship Dean's List Winner. Others have been on the drive team, sub team leaders, captains, part of the design team... All very visible leadership roles. But it all has to do with the individuals involved, not their parents involvement, and I really hope my students have seen that. I have heard comments that would point to them accepting that - saying that so-and-so was amazing and we need to model parts of the team off what she did, etc. But I can't guarantee that every student sees that or agrees with it. And as a mentor, I really don't know how to ensure that all of the students feel like they have an equal chance at those roles. Not when some of the decisions are made "behind closed doors" in meetings between the mentors or mentors and captains.

[NShep98]

Originally Posted by IKE

I highlighted some key words from your post. Your speculation is based off of a lot of speculation by the other poster. His speculation could be absolutely accurate, it could also be off or jaded via the filter of the observations he is seeing and amplification of perceived slights he and others believe they are experiencing.
My point is with that much speculation and assumption, I would recommend a first response of treading lightly and gaining insight rather than rallying the troops for battle. One thing I have learned, if you rally the troops for war, you will likely get a fight, and rarely does the team win when a fight occurs.
A gentler, more tactful approach could cause additional insight that makes the person realize they were wrong, or misinterpreted some people leaving the team due to confidentiality of the issue they were being kicked off for.

You've quite nicely summed up what I must have thought in my head and neglected to actually type. By "confront", I didn't mean go in guns blazing trying to attack someone, rather that at some point or another a conversation needs to be had, but with a large enough group that they can't pick on any one person.

Of course, this is assuming this type of response is warranted in the first place. It certainly seems so from an outside perspective, but I am neither you nor your teammates.

[jweston]

Originally Posted by Jon Stratis

My team has also had students with involved parents take on visiblecompositions and leadership roles. One of them was a two year captain and Championship Dean's List Winner. Others have been on the drive team, sub team leaders, captains, part of the design team... All very visible leadership roles. But it all has to do with the individuals involved, not their parents involvement, and I really hope my students have seen that. I have heard comments that would point to them accepting that - saying that so-and-so was amazing and we need to model parts of the team off what she did, etc. But I can't guarantee that every student sees that or agrees with it. And as a mentor, I really don't know how to ensure that all of the students feel like they have an equal chance at those roles. Not when some of the decisions are made "behind closed doors" in meetings between the mentors or mentors and captains.

This is the root behind a balance problem for which I'm still searching for a "good enough" solution. Robotics is going to attract a diverse group of students. They come with varying levels of STEM interest, not to mention an assortment of personalities. It's natural for the students who are most interested and most dedicated to doing robotics to pick up a lot of valuable experience and be considered a major asset to the successful performance of the team. Personality plays a role too. Some students may be more outgoing or pursue the chance to participate aggressively, leaving more passive students on the sidelines.

The balance problem comes when there is crowding out. FIRST's mission is to spread interest in STEM. Don't get me wrong. I think it's wonderful that FRC provides excellent opportunities for hard core techies to grow. That should be part of the mission too. But sometimes it feels like it takes an active and mindful effort to make sure the team doesn't turn into the handul of die hard students who make up the "real team" vs the rest of the students who come to meetings and events but never have the opportunty to engage in STEM.