Who is in charge of your team?

[unapiedra]

After reading Lil' Lavery's thread asking you guys What does your team call its "leader" , I had the question Who is actually running the team.

So, who is in charge of your team?


I searched and didn't find anything, so I am sorry if I overlooked a thread.

[Bcahn836]

For team 836 we have our lead mentor Mr. Buddenbohn, creator of the team. Mr. B is also an engineering teacher at out technical center which many of his students are apart of the robotics team. All decisions about funding, sponsors, trips, materials anything and everything administrative must go through Mr. B, however he is not alone, the student leadership helps out when ever possible and so do the mentors and parents. But again it is Mr. B who is in charge and keeps the team running.

[dhitchco]

Good question
define "in charge" versus "leader"

1) I've never particpated in an event where there was a more clear SHARING of responsibilities amongst the students, the mentors, the teachers and the parents.

2) The one area that MUST always be kept separate is the area of "chaperoning". Since FIRST events are school events, the teachers and the parents MUST maintain the role of chaperones. The mentors cannot (and should not) get involved in chaperoning.

3) Freom the very first day, each student and mentor must be put "in charge" of some set of specific tasks. each task must be clearly written-out and must have a backup plan.

Many Japanese companies spend all their time on planning and then spend a lot less time in actually executing the plan. So,,,plan ahead ane make sure you know what your're "in charge" of....

[unapiedra]

Originally Posted by dhitchco

Good question
define "in charge" versus "leader"

With in charge I mean who is the leader, not what is the leader called but who is it.

Who, in your team, makes the decisions (not who signes them off but really decides) and who keeps your team together as a team.

Originally Posted by dhitchco

3) Freom the very first day, each student and mentor must be put "in charge" of some set of specific tasks. each task must be clearly written-out and must have a backup plan.

I am not asking about the specific tasks just the overall, like deciding when meetings are, what is being bought or who does what.

[Jay H 237]

Originally Posted by unapiedra

With in charge I mean who is the leader, not what is the leader called but who is it.

Who, in your team, makes the decisions (not who signes them off but really decides) and who keeps your team together as a team.

I am not asking about the specific tasks just the overall, like deciding when meetings are, what is being bought or who does what.

The main person is a teacher, who is also the one who founded the team, but some decisions have been and sometimes are made by others or by a team vote depending on the issue.

Now, for example, if one of the mentors on the mechanical team realizes we need a tool, off the shelf part or base stock to make or assemble something then they will locate and order it if it's inexpensive and charge it to the team's account. If it's major then it's brought up before the team.


Now here's where it may get interesting. If you ask me the same question again in a few weeks/month I may have a different answer. The teacher is retiring at the end of this month which will leave us without a main person. We are currently in the process of making decisions and seeing if we can locate a "new" main person on our team. The teacher will still be involved with the team but not as much as they currently are.

[Daniel Brim]

It is very hard to determine who is actually in charge on our team. We do have a steering committee, which is comprised of the student team captains and some of the parents. However, the steering committee does not make many decisions, just the ones involving money usually. Other than that, there is no real person in charge. We like to adhere to "leadership by example" and not "leadership by controlling" or something like that.

[Winged Wonder]

our team is starting something a little different this year. We want our students to have more ownership of the team, so they have been given more responsibility. ultimately, the real power that drives the team is the students. the mentors are just there to guide us and keep us from losing appendages while building the robot.

our "ultimate authority" is Mrs. Passmore, the sort of "coach" that has been with the team from the beginning, and before, she used to personally take everything into her own hands and make sure things got done, but after 7 or 8 years, that can be really draining, so she proposed that more students get involved in leading their peers. So, without getting too detailed (since most of this isnt set in stone and encrusted with jewels yet), we've divided the team into three segments: the Public Relations group, the Mechanical group, and the Information Technology group. each group has a leader, and within each group there are separate divisions with their own leaders, like for spirit, pit crew, website, fundraising, etc. the team is in charge of the team.. the mentors are just there to make sure no one gets hurt.

[JamesBrown]

Well, for all administrative purposes and for travel arrangements we have a teacher in charge. However for all robot decisions as well as keeping the pit running smoothly that is the students job, primarily mine as captain. The captain is also responsible for making sure every one is getting along and cooperating. As our mentor told me at UTC, If possible I would like to sit in the stands, It is your bot and your competition (your refering to the students.) we are a student run team.

[lsmith243]

That's (kind of) what our team is in the process of working on right now.. Our moderator makes all the final decisions, but a new structure is on its way to being instilled, so hopefully students will have a more active role in making decisions that affect people team-wide.

[spears312]

This year were probably going to have a group of students on a level authority field running the team with our mentor Mr. Dickman (coolest mentor ever, but I guess I can be considered bias). All in all, our mentor has the final say in what ever we do. A lot of the ideas for the team come equally from both the students and our mentor.

[tiffany34990]

we did something similar to 233 this past year

students really did take over the major aspects of the team. there were two team leaders. i was one of them. we helped in every section of our team from animation to fabrication. within the different sections there was a head student leading that group. our competition, stage crew was made up of all students too. a good student coach we found is better than an adult at times.

we had our mentors there to guide us and help with whatever we needed. they controlled things like the money and getting hotels and things like that since we can't do that.

it worked fairly well because of the strong leadership we had in this year's team.

[JackN]

Well it is a joint effort on the Martians. We have a mentor who is in charge of each portion who really just makes sure that we don't goof off. Than that the students do everything except make travel arrangements (again because if students did that it would never get done)

[Veselin Kolev]

Ive worked with 3 teams.. here is how they work.
-Note: this what when I was on this team, so it may be a few years old

MVRT 115 has a board of officers and advisors. The officers are generally president, two VPs, and electrical, mechanical, and other subteam leaders. There are advisors, who is previous years have been engineers, parents, and just random people who help out a lot and the team has no idea where they came from (but they still rock). This group also elects the next years officers. However, generally every year there are one or two individuals who really RUN the team, not dictate the design of the robot, but run the team. When I was with the team, it was run by Patrick Wang, the president, and Ted Shinta, our Woodie Flowers award winning mentor. Now I believe the team is being run by one of the student's parents, since Mr. Shinta left the team.

HRT 1072 is almost totally student run. This year was the first year I worked with them. They have one real adult advisor that just supervises and lets the studens use his room. He also manages most financial issues the team has. However, the operations of the team are totally organized by the students, specifically by the president, VP, and directors of finance and PR. Also, non officer students still do a lot, like the website, the team shirts, team socials, etc. Its all student run.

The rookie team I'm starting up is run similarly to HRT, totally student run. There are a board of "veteran members", as in members that have a lot of FIRST experiance (there are only 4 or 5) who really run the team. They all have titles like president or director of engineering, but they all have the same say on things.

[ClintDog]

Originally Posted by 1derboy

Well it is a joint effort on the Martians. We have a mentor who is in charge of each portion who really just makes sure that we don't goof off. Than that the students do everything except make travel arrangements (again because if students did that it would never get done)

Sounds a lot like boyscouts except if they left anything to us, nothing would get done!!

[CatchRothy22]

Team11 [MORT] has two main groups.

Student Core Engineering team. SCET
Adult Core Engineering team. ACET

SCET are deffinatly the leaders of the team. They do all the behind the scenes work. Almost all decisons are made by them, except when they need help from ACET.

But everything is decided upon the massive team, about 70 people. Before we even start building the robot, there is a hgeu team meeting, and everyone is split up into teams of 5, and they present ideas. From there, we work out which is best for this years comp. This happens for every large decision.

So there isn't really one 'leader'.