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Unread 07-02-2017, 08:38
iyportne's Avatar
iyportne iyportne is offline
A Life Spent Reversing Entropy
AKA: B. Page
FRC #1533 (Triple Strange)
Team Role: Mentor
 
Join Date: Dec 2014
Rookie Year: 2011
Location: Greensboro, NC
Posts: 48
iyportne is on a distinguished road
Re: Looking for some brutally honest feedback...

I will not presume the details of your situation but I feel your frustration and will simply tell you my journey. I have been in this same place before. The moment that changed my direction was when I realized that I donate a vast amount of time and emotion to my students, not the other way around. That allowed me to let go and have them own it. Since then they have never failed to impress me. If they own it, leadership will percolate out of the group. If I owned it I risked "being angry with the minions". You will be disappointed if you try to fix where you are...just measure your base and grow from there.

So here's what I did:

1. Asked the team what they want to accomplish that year. The first time I did that the reply was "we want our robot to move in every match". It did and they were all winners. The following year they wanted to be above midpoint in qualification...and kinda were, but still felt like winners...etc. The moral of the story is if you coach and mentor them to their goals, with a measure of stretch, they will own their own success and grow. Today the team I'm with decided they want to be in eliminations at World Champs...an probably will.

2. Ownership is huge for me...so we created an acronym to communicate the ownership to the whole organization. M.E.N.T.O.R. = Motivate and Educate, but No Touching Our Robot. Now, I understand this was not introduced well in the past, so let me clarify...It does not mean I don't touch the robot, or influence design, it means I can only do so if I ask permission or am invited to do so by the students. This conveys true ownership. It also gives me the opportunity to say, if asked "no, you need to solve that problem...here's some ideas..." This works great for us and our mentor community, and I want to believe it has created a functional relationship between Students and Mentors.

3. M.E.N.T.O.R. is also a great way to immediately re-engage alumni who want stay active, by pointing out they have crossed the boundary they are already familiar with. We use alumni quite a bit, because they not only have the most current skills and insight, they are comrades and friends...they are the ones the current students want to be...I'm just the old guy in the room.

My growth and rewards came after I stopped fighting the details and focused on infrastructure and team growth...trust in the students, communicate that trust, and they will do the rest.

P.S. - I was told, and believe, that FRC is designed to mimic the real world - "No enough time, not enough money and not enough resources to do everything you want, so just do your best".
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2016 | NC District Awards - Creativity x2, Industrial Design, Innovation in Control
2016 | NC District - Campbell University Winner, District Championship Winner, THOR Winner
2016 | Carson/Galileo - Creativity Award

Last edited by iyportne : 07-02-2017 at 10:00.
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