Motivation and more

[KathieK]

One of the keys to getting people motivated is teambuilding exercises. Do you all know each other? Do you share the same interests? Or different ones? If someone is not motivated to build a cardboard robot, perhaps they might be motivated to look into the other components that make up a team - animation, programming, setting up travel plans, budgeting (accounting), team safety, fundraising, spirit... There's lots of other "stuff" that make a team work well in the FIRST environment, beyond designing and building a robot.

We often find that new members are disappointed to discover that they are not all going to be building robots and/or driving them. We remind them that it's a team effort, much like a sports team, where the chances of a freshman being the star quarterback on the varsity football team may not be rrealistic. You have to work at it, learn all about it first. And then we let them know about all the other opportunities on the team.