Defining Leadership

[Bomberofdoom]

I'd like your opinions on the following topic.

I'm currently the leader of my team and I'm given the role of "CEO" or Cheif Executive Officer. I just don't like the feeling that I'm leading a company, who all the others under me are under my control and commanding, but rather that I'm just leading a pack, a team, who all of them are my friends, we all have the same visions and we all work together to reach our goals. I thought that the name of the role "Team Leader" would be me appropriate to the role I wanted.

I would like your opinion on what a Team Leader is and what his roles and position in the team are.

If you could also explain about the leadership roles (i.e Team Cheif, Team President, Team Prime Minister, Team General and/or what not), their meaning and their positions in the team, it would really help me and I would really appreciate it.

Many thanks in advance!

Nir.

But with all seriousness, our team uses the Title of Team Captain. It's kind of like the football team: The Team Captain is still one of the players, and so he does everything the players do: The running, the workouts, the drills, everything. He just has a little more to do on top of that. It's the same for us in robotics. Our team captain goes to all the meetings, works with the team during shop time, and is basically a normal member. The only extra duties he does are school and district meetings, as well as the rare annoying paperwork that the school makes us do. He also heads up the meetings, and keeps us all somewhat organized.

[Rickertsen2]

This has been discussed in various forms before and the general conclusion has been that there is no right and wrong way to run a team. Your team should form a leadership structure that works for YOUR TEAM. There are many such structures work well and if you look at successful teams you will find that they differ in their leadership.

In the case of our team, we did not have a written structure anywhere but there was a system of understood rank based on experience and strengths. We usually had a team leader who was the final decision maker and arbitrator of disputes. He led the team in meetings, kept things organized and handled outside relations (sponsors, school, first, etc) most of the time. He also generally made final design decisions, which is a tough thing to do. Input is taken from everybody and everybody has their own ideas. In the end one must be chosen. A democracy is not always best here as. Under our team leader were a handful of trusted right hand men. These generally consisted of the founding members and a number of members who had demonstrated dedication, knowledge and insight. They led things such as electrical, fund raising, manipulators, drive train, weights, etc based on their specialties and interests. Everyone else was under these people. This was a general pattern but flexed at times. There were no inflexible roles. You would very often find members helping with other members jobs, and stepping up to higher roles when they had a good idea. This structure worked well for us, but might also have been responsible for the death of our team. The team leaders and right hand people graduated at once without entirely leaving the remaining people with the necessary skills to carry on our legacy.

My experience with student organizations, whether in college or high school is that they are not corporations. In a corporation they employees are not trying to squeeze in their work in their spare time between class, homework and having a social life. In a corporation everybody has a defined job title, a defined salary and defined superior. This sort of structure does not always work as well for a student organization. Here the members are participating entirely in their very limited spare time, and without pay. Students organizations require something flexible and dynamic but still structured enough to avoid chaos.

There is not wrong and right way to run a team. Just find something you are all confortable with.

[pufame]

I don't think it really makes a huge difference what the role is called, but our team calls leaders exactly that "Team Leaders".

[Bharat Nain]

This is one of my favorite topics because most people do not understand leadership and how it works. In context of FIRST, one of my favorite leaders is Vince Lombardi. He really exemplifies how to lead a team to victory over and over again.

So first question - Are leaders born? Of course. In the course of history, there has never been an unborn leader. So basically the good news is, leadership can be learned. In order to succeed, leadership must be exemplified. It is one of the pillars of success.

So let's start by definition success. You must identify what success on your team means. Does it mean simply getting through the year? Does it mean winning any awards? Does it mean building an amazing robot? You must decide this along with your team mates. Your team must be dedicated to the team's goals. One person alone cannot accomplish all the team goals.

Leadership must be earned. It must be earned. Anyone can be the boss, but if his peers don't respect him, he isn't much of a leader. They must trust you and believe in you enough to follow you. How? By displaying the right character, integrity and hard work. A leader is also a servant. He does most of the hard/grunt work(Not to be confused with stealing other peoples jobs). Once you have "proven" yourself, they WILL respect you enough to follow you. Proving yourself is a constant process all year-round. Of course, there will be those one or two who will never respect/follow/acknowledge you no matter what you do. You cannot worry about them. Move on. Once you have proven yourself to others, you have also proven yourself to you. This means you will KNOW what you are doing without a doubt. This will help you take accurate decisions and keep your stand in tough times. Of course, you will make your own share of mistakes. You will also have invested so much into the team, it will matter more to you than anyone else. You will find those who look at your dedication and passion and know that you are the right person to listen to and follow. This is what makes you a person of influence.

So let's put this in FIRST terms. You are the team leader. You may have been elected or assigned. You must prove yourself to the team. This means you must start working all areas of the team enough to know what they are doing. You must have a genuine interest in what they are doing and should know enough to correct them when needed. For example, the tools in the pit crew are out of place and you know it. You need to know where they go and if others don't put them in place, you do.

The R in FIRST stands for Recognition. You should always recognize team members who do the work. Do this without any bias. You must also be strong enough to encourage and direct others in the right direction. When the time comes to decide on a robot design, you must be able to come to a conclusion the team can agree on. It is then your job to make sure everyone else understands their jobs. Questions come your way since you are the leader.

Sacrifice and self-denial is also a part of being a leader. Let's say your team decides to win the website award. Your team spends a lot of time and energy developing it and it is absolutely fantastic. However, results are out and team 2333434324 wins. You have to be strong enough to let your guys know that they did a great job. There is no need to really put anyone else down or praise them up but your team should feel they are equally deserving of that award and maybe they needed to work a little harder. Mental toughness - nothing should shake your teams belief. There will be many times people will annoy the living dinosaur outta you but you will just have to breathe in and suck it up. Displaying anger(at least frequently) is also a major sign of insecurity. Don't let it get to you. People are people and therefore not at the same "wavelength" as you. Understand that and you will be fine.

You must also believe in your team. I know some of them don't seem capable of literally anything. You must still believe in them and encourage them. The reason is you cannot do everything on the team. You must give them the responsibility and make them feel that they can do it. You do this by making sure they know what they are doing - train them, test them, work it.

Always keep the confidence, excitement and fun level high on your team. This is usually not the case on many FIRST teams because FIRST is an organization based on Inspiration. People will continue to contribute to the team as long as they are having fun.

There are so many elements but those are a few. You instincts can usually tell you what to do and what is right and how.

Now on to organization - You have sub-team leaders. Learn to be good friends with them. If thats not possible, you should be able to communicate with them effectively. Let them take their decisions and run their groups but always think hard and throw out your suggestions. Sometimes it may be necessary for you to override their decisions. You will know when to do that when you are absolutely sure about something. Understand that sometimes the people doing the work cannot see the bigger vision except their immediate process.

Everyone on the team should not feel that you are better than them. You aren't. They must know that you just work harder, maybe are more passionate about it and more dedicated. You are into it enough that you know what to do with the whole team and they trust you.

Lastly, all of this cannot be done in one day. It takes time and therefore patience. I know this is a long post and there is a lot to understand but I hope it gave you a better understanding of your job on the team. The intensity of this of course depends on your team. Everything I have said, I have tried to do in my years on the team. I know we accomplished a lot and I am proud of it. I also learned a lot of this from many people including my parents, books and leaders such as Vince Lombardi and John Maxwell. I didn't make anything up.

Hope that helps,

-Bharat

[BRAVESaj25bd8]

I agree with just about everything in Bharat's post. The only thing I differ with him in opinion would be that he said leaders are elected or assigned. I think that the true team leader will be obvious before any election or assignment. I like the fact that he said that team leaders are not any better than the rest of the people on the team. Team leaders are not better than anyone, just better suited to lead. Team leaders do not have to be the best at anything accept their ability to be leaders. When I was team captain last year, I kept in mind the fact that I was not the best programmer, animator, or builder. I yielded to them in any questions about their aspects of the team.

However, the part I enjoyed most about being the team captain was motivating the team. Captains/leaders must be the most optimistic realist on their team at all times. You never want to say you can run a 1 minute mile but you never want to say that a 4 minute mile would be impossible either. A good leader will tell people not what is necessarily the complete truth, not ever a lie, but always what a person/group of people needs to hear in a given situation.

One of my favorite examples of good leadership is in the movie "Remember the Titans." In the championship game, the coach was trying to motivate one of his players and said he once had 13 brothers and sisters depending on him and he was the youngest one. If he could do that, the player could definitely lead the team now. After the player left, another coach asked the ehad coach "You had 13 brothers and sisters?" The head coach responded "Eight". The other coach then said "yeah, 13 sounds better." I like that so much because that speech motivated the player. He may have embellished a little but he said what his player needed to hear in order to succeed. As a team leader, you will always be the one that everyone is depending on in order to fire them up. take advantage of that and make the experience as great as possible for them.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by BRAVESaj25bd8

...The only thing I differ with him in opinion would be that he said leaders are elected or assigned. I think that the true team leader will be obvious before any election or assignment....

Bingo. Leadership is shown before it is recognized. Being named the leader does not make you the leader; being a leader does. I could name the local bum the leader of a team, but that wouldn't give him the leadership ability. Or I could notice a team member who was showing leadership skills and name him as leader. The latter is evidently what your team did. (We hope--if not, you need some honing.)

And, as the team leader/captain/CEO/boss/president, I would say that you can pick your own title. Remember, the leader has to be part of the team, so your choice should reflect that.

One final word of advice (from Spiderman): With great power comes great responsibility. As team head honcho, you need to accept both.

[Bharat Nain]

Just to clear out some confusion, I realized that line was a mistake on my part. What I meant to say is he may have been elected or assigned as in the original poster. I of course agree with both of you that leaders are shown long before they are elected/assigned.

[JaneYoung]

You might want to select a title that best presents you to the outside world - outside your team. When recruiting, when soliciting sponsorship, when being introduced to other teams, to judges - what title best describes your role on the team?

I like short and sweet - student leader.

From that you can then go on to say what some of your responsibilities include. If you are introducing one of your engineers to someone, you would likely say, this is our lead engineer (or whatever role they fill with the team). If you are introducing your teacher who is also the team leader, you would quite possibly say, this is our teacher. If you were introducing a NEM (non-engineering mentor), you would say, this is one of our mentors. You can lump engineer, teacher, and NEM together under mentor but oftentimes, how you present them conveys who they are and how they contribute to the team. Same thing with student titles. Communication in all forms is best when kept simple, clear, brief.

Edit: This is a post that I found from Kyle Love that says what I'm thinking. Read his last bullet.
http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...2&postcount=14