Team rules

[Bomberofdoom]

Originally Posted by ChrisMcK2186

Hey all,

My team right now is trying to get all the kinks hammered out with our leadership setup and rules. We are a rookie team that found out we are a team in December, so we didn't have time to get a very structered rules set.

My question is this, do the teams out there have a written down set of rules or is it more implied guidlines? If you do have rules, what is the discipline for those who break them? If you do not have rules, how do you maintian order?

Thanks for your help with this,
Chris

Chris,

Same thing happened to our team, we barley had enough time to go over the details of what is FIRST and how everything works and what we should do.
Even after the competition, when we had a major reduce in participation of students, we're not entirly sure about everything of what we should do next year(but we're working on it).

We didn't have rules in this year's season and we tried to come up with some "schedule" of work. It might have worked for the first weeks, but in the middle it started to prove wrong and lots of student participation was missing. Allot of days when we needed one preson from a sub team to assist another, he wasn't there because he left before for he was told he had nothing to do(who told him?) and the next time he would appear would be only a few more days.
It was very messy and there were people responsible for activity and sometimes it was because they didn't know what to do since we haven't had a lot of time to learn our roles and didn't have time in the building process to go over the rules.

I think the only way to maintain order without rules is to find those who want to be a big part of this project and try to set dates for them to participate.
In my opinion. The whole team should be available almost all day. Of course, it's sometimes imposible, but I think that there should be maximum participation for a successful building process.

I've been nailed in the last seconed the position of the team leader and I've spoken before with my team and I asked them what THEY think are the team goals, and they told me that they have some ideas but it's my job to ditermine and apply them to the rest of the team.

I've had my own problems trying to lead the programming sub-team, but it came out more or less fine and I'm afraid I won't be able to do better as a leader of the whole team.

While reading other teams handbooks, I find very interesting stuff that I would like to share with my team.

Chris, if you figure out something interesting about team mangement I'd like to know about it too, so I'm hoping we can keep in touch about these stuff.

I have one question from all this and it is how do I make people participate?

[technoL]

As a general thing to keep in mind, there are some amazing team handbooks out there, I've read a lot of them, but make sure to absorb all of this information and then apply it to your team specifically. You may want to hold a meeting with your whole team to see what went wrong, what went right, what needs to change, and how you are going to go about doing it. After this list has been compiled, draft a list of of general team rules, preferably into various sections. Make it easy to read so that students won't get confused about the difference between what is acceptable at school(or wherever you work), and what is acceptable when traveling or at competition.

Then you can compare your unique guidelines to an already existing handbook to see if you have left out or want to change something. Whats most important is that this fits your team. If you have any new policies that you would like to set forth, this would be a great time to introduce them. Good luck with creating a set of rules of your own.

-No L

[mtaman02]

To list a few major rules:
No Cussing. (Especially at the Competitions where there are many people watching including Judges!) Punishment - Member(s) should not be allowed to attend an event until they have learned their lesson. Repeated Offenses will not be tolerated.

No Cutting Classes. Punishment - Off the Team for 2 Weeks. Repeated Offenses will not be tolerated.

Not Allowed to Fail Classes. Punishment - Off the Team for a Marking Period or More.

Team Setup should be broken down into committees or sub-divisions with one person in charge of each or as needed. The Biggest Sub-Divisions are Team Leadership as a whole, Sponsorship and Fundraising (Which should be one committee), Pit Crew, Safety, Scouting, Drive Team, Build Team, Team Costumes, Graphics, Give Aways & Spirit (Which should also be one committee).

[Scott Carpman]

Originally Posted by mtaman02

No Cussing. (Especially at the Competitions where there are many people watching including Judges!) Punishment - Member(s) should not be allowed to attend an event until they have learned their lesson. Repeated Offenses will not be tolerated.

Just wondering, what was the initial reasoning for creating this rule?

[Simon Strauss]

Originally Posted by Scott Carpman

We use a Team Constitution that has been in effect for this season. It was created in order to have more autonomy within the school's chain of command. So far it has been invoked once to remove a student.

The constitution Scott is speaking of can be found here http://www.chiefdelphi.com/media/search/results/51666

-Simon

[mtaman02]

The Reason for the rule was b/c Kids of all ages - Including Mentors - kinda get carried away when trying to get their point across and kids usually learn from the adults. So to prevent kids from going off and using any words that come into their heads you start regulating whats appropriate and whats not. I work around many many people daily and there are soooo many other words to use other then the available cuss words. I admit I'm no saint but I restrain my vulgar opinion when in the public view whether at work or at an event with my old team or at an event by myself. Point Being teach the young ones now before they get out into the work force / continue on to college that there is no room for vulgarity. Respect the ones around you to obtain respect from them. Yes the members of all these teams in FIRST come from High Schools but not all these members no right from wrong. Teach them now while it's still easy to do so before they find out the hard way. And pray that the hard way is not by costing the team an award.

[Elgin Clock]

I figured I would resurrect this thread as we approach a new season, as this info may be helpful to all teams both old and new.

I also wanted to share our Team Handbook that we have for this season, and which we have built upon in the 10 years 237 has been involved in FIRST.

http://www.team237.com/team237handbook08.doc


Good luck to everyone in 2008!