Let's Put the Professionalism back in Gracious Professionalism

[Katy]

I want to talk about Gracious Professionalism. Mainly I want to talk about Professionalism and how it is being somewhat overlooked in the name of being Gracious.

Gracious Professionalism is not blindly agreeing with the organization of FIRST. Speaking well of FIRST may be gracious but speaking without thinking for yourself about the topic at hand it is grossly unprofessional. Internal criticism of FIRST, both before and after any plan is executed, is both healthy and necessary for the organization to function and improve.

This post has been anonymously coauthored. I tell you this to illustrate how the atmosphere of fear of counter-criticism is negatively impacting FIRST. It is a sad day when people are nervous to post a post asking people to be professional and think critically. I do not blame FIRST employees for this mentality. The issue comes from the droves of people who love FIRST to the point that they can not bear to hear other people speak ill of it. I ask you, for the good of this organization, to hear these voices in an objective professional manner as they might provide valuable insights.

There are absolutely unprofessional ways of criticizing something but that doesn't make criticism inherently unprofessional. Which side of a debate a post falls on does not determine how graciously professional the statement itself is. A polite, respectful, well thought out, factually based argument that the owner is capable of admitting the faults in seems far more important.

Considering yourself Graciously Professional is not a carte blanche for you to judge people and their ideas. Dismissing another person and their ideas because you have found a label, judged them by it, and found them not to fit is grossly unprofessional no matter what the name of that label is. The professional response is to instead consider these people's arguments and, if you disagree, to debate them point for point with logic and facts.

There are many ungracious posts on this forum. They are generally whiny, insulting, or both. This behavior is generally caught and the author receives negative reputation marks or comments asking him/her to modify future behavior.

There are also many unprofessional posts on this forum. They tend to be lacking in facts, research, original thinking, a spine, or some combination of the above. Many of them are in vague praise of FIRST or reprimanding somebody who the author believe has spoken ill of FIRST. These posts are generally at best ignored and occasionally actually rewarded. Don't get me wrong, FIRST is wonderful and I frankly haven't got the words to express how the program has changed my life for the better, but those facts don't constitute a counter-argument in a debate.

The ability to act as a professional in the adult world is one of the most important gifts FIRST gives to the students. Everybody, and I mean everybody in this organization from a freshman on a rookie team to the members of the GDC, must work to uphold this standard in order us to properly be able to give it to the next generation of FIRSTers.

I honestly feel that it is high time we began considering the act of being unprofessional as great a fault as being ungracious.

[JaneYoung]

Originally Posted by Katy

This post has been anonymously coauthored.

I'm not quite understanding this post/thread.

To begin with, I don't understand how this post is anonymously coauthored. Katy has posted this/started this thread and Katy is the one who will receive the responses.

The second thought that comes to mind is that this is obviously a post that has some concerns but I don't understand what the concerns are. There are generalities but no specifics that I can grasp and that may be why I'm somewhat confused.

Jane

[Jeff Waegelin]

Katy,

I definitely agree with what you've said here. Critical evaluation is absolutely necessary for any organization to thrive and grow. If we want the FIRST program to continue to grow, there needs to be room for discussion about the "hard questions" of where the organization is going. This is not to say that we should have an open free-for-all to bash FIRST - that would be neither productive nor professional. What we need is to maintain a professional attitude while discussing our thoughts about what's going on - negative and positive (and there's a lot of positive things going on!).

I would hope that everyone can read and consider this. FIRST is about changing the culture... and as they say, change starts at home. Let's have some positive change here in our online home.

-Jeff

[Joe Matt]

I agree in full, as other people I have talked to in private in the FIRST community. My signature says it all and supports your statement.

[David Brinza]

Let me see if I can help sharpen your concerns:

Is there a concern that any criticism of FIRST is generally viewed as being either ungracious or unprofessional?

If so, then let me offer this.

It is easier to criticize than to create. FIRST may get things 99% right and some people will "whine" about the 1% that isn't quite right. Depending how that criticism is offered, it can be ungracious/unprofessional or consistent with GP.

FIRST as an organization is quite responsive to constructive criticism. This sort of customer feedback allows the program to improve. People who blindly side with FIRST (believing them to be totally infallible in their judgments) are not ungracious, perhaps they are unprofessional (or more likely, inexperienced).

Why do we see updates to the Game Manual? It's because all of the possibilities of the rules haven't been tested. Pointing out flaws in the rules will improve the game. So, offering criticism can be a very good thing.

How flaws are called out is important, let's use a real example. Just saying "<G36> is stupid" is both ungracious and unprofessional. Saying "<G36> s*cks because it doesn't allow teams to remove their Trackballs from the opponent's overpass without incurring a penalty," is not gracious, but at least offers an explanation of the issue and therefore is more professional. Saying "the game will be better if <G36> were eliminated" is perhaps gracious, but not professional. The gracious and professional way to offer the criticism is to say: "<G36> should be changed because it does not allow teams to remove their Trackball without incurring a penalty." BTW, in the first update, <G36> was deleted.

If you just complain about something you don't like and you don't offer an alternative solution, your not helping. That sort of behavior is not GP and needs to be put in check.

[Graham Donaldson]

First, to Katy: THANK YOU for bringing this topic up. Nothing can be improved if we don't know what to improve upon. Stating grievances/problems/concerns/issues in a professional, level-headed, unbiased manner, should, in my opinion, be encouraged and applauded- not attacked. A negative comment may be directed at you/your team/whatever, but that doesn't mean you should take it as an insult. It's constructive criticism. It is something to improve upon. The best companies ask the people who work for them what to improve on. Members of CD and the FIRST community, I should hope we are not afraid to voice our concerns to the world.

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

I'm not quite understanding this post/thread.

To begin with, I don't understand how this post is anonymously coauthored. Katy has posted this/started this thread and Katy is the one who will receive the responses.

The second thought that comes to mind is that this is obviously a post that has some concerns but I don't understand what the concerns are. There are generalities but no specifics that I can grasp and that may be why I'm somewhat confused.

Second, to Jane: [to be read in an explanatory tone, not offended]

In terms of the anonymous co-author-ing, as I read it, it meant that someone sent a message to Katy that proposed the issue, asking her to post it since she was a senior member, and they were a junior member afraid of getting slammed. As for co-authoring, my guess would be that Katy added a little to it. At least that's how I interpreted it.

I interpreted the post as intending to be a general discussion about how people are afraid to post their concerns. A possible reason that we can't find any specifics is that there are no specifics (because members are afraid to post them). I'm sure some are somewhere, though...

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by David Brinza

FIRST may get things 99% right and some people will "whine" about the 1% that isn't quite right.

It's not the complaints about the "not quite right" 1% that bother me. Even if they aren't presented in a "professional" manner, they usually prompt reasonably lucid debate about appropriate changes. No, what gets me is complaints about the 20% of the things that cannot possibly satisfy everyone because of conflicting goals. A small bit of critical thinking ought to determine that to be the real cause of the problem. Rather than whining that this or that goal isn't being met, it would help to focus attention on getting the goals to more closely align instead.


Being professional means doing things right. Being gracious means doing the right thing. They complement each other perfectly. But I think we should remember to use GP as a guide for our own behavior, not as a yardstick to measure others' shortcomings.

[JesseK]

I fully agree and have been correctly accused of every instance of the original post on various occasions. The cohesion necessary for the varieties of situations of FIRST FRC teams to exist in the same realm takes tremendous effort to set forth, and I believe FIRST generally has a well-rounded framework to allow for it. Some teams have everything funded; some scrape the community and KOP for all they're worth. Some teams have vast ambitions with mentoring resources; others have a couple of teachers with a few students. All of these teams have an opinion, yet I'm not so sure of the effect their voice has.

All of these teams are also affected by any nitpicky technicality in the plethora of data there is to assimilate, and it's easy for many of us to forget that as we argue here on CD. It's extremely difficult to remember every detail of every rule and every update, and every [insert random usfirst.org link here] posted on the website. Then on top of that, teams have to build a bot. It's easy to get lost in the data and confused by misinterpretations or unrealised links in the rules. Bad assumptions also play a large role in arguments and many times it's hard to see how to break the news to the arguer without losing GP in either respect. If all of that wasn't enough, the growth of FRC teams each year means there is an exponential increase in the amount of opinions and available experience for all of us to discuss.

I'm glad Katy has put this on her shoulders and I support it; though support from my stance right now is the mere conjectures and opinions within these words. The question is, how to do you point out non-GP behavior without lacking GP yourself? I've witnessed several non GP situations at competitions in the last 2 years -- some stem from frustration about a bot and its expectations while others stem from overcompetitiveness. Still others stem from interpretations and the underlying stubbornness of engineers that FIRST forgets to inform students of. In one FSU* students are expected to trust their creativeness somehow amongst [sometimes] overzealous mentors and pressure to succeed with their bot and school. Inherently, it's hard to tell where to draw the line between GP and trusting your creativity in these situations: if every suggestion is ignored, every attempt failed or every word choice incorrect it is next to impossible to believe you can take another risk at being stubborn while contributing to a discussion or argument. In person or on CD, it's easy to open your mouth without thinking twice to denounce such a situation or thought. I've done it and I'm sure 99% of the rest of us have too. Where do we go forward from here?

*FSU = FIRST Standard Unit, = 6.5 weeks of building, if you were at VCU listening to Dave

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by JesseK

The question is, how to do you point out non-GP behavior without lacking GP yourself?

The best way I can think of is to concentrate on the goal rather than the shortfall. Try not to wag a finger and say "Don't do that." Give some incentive for the behavior to change for the better, and say "Do that." The details will be completely different for each situation, of course, and some people are by nature better at it than others, but we need to keep in mind what we're trying to promote.

[msd]

A lot of people are responding about GP, posts on these forums, etc, all of which are relevant, but a broader issue came to my mind when I read Katy's post:

FIRST doesn't seem to foster an attitude of openness.

What do I mean by that? In technology, for example, think..."open standards", "open architectures", etc. Think...a generally cooperative attitude of letting people offer input on your stuff, and letting your stuff work with other people's stuff, so that the world at large is better off.

Sometimes I think FIRST gets so caught up in being FIRST, it loses sight of its own goals.

The stated vision is to create "a world where science and technology are celebrated", but sometimes it seems more like they are trying to create "a world where FIRST is celebrated". Sometimes it seems as though the mission to "inspire young people to be science and technology leaders", has become a mission to "inspire everyone to be FIRST marketeers".

And truthfully, that's not that bad. FIRST is a *good* thing.

However, there are plenty of other good things out there too...but god help you if you mention any of them at a FIRST event/forum/whatever, you're likely to be chastised as if you just ran over someone's kitten. Not an attitude of openness.

And it's similar if you openly criticize some of FIRST's decisions and practices, though thankfully there are a few (very few, it seems) official channels/forums for this to take place, where this is handled more gracefully. But in general, it seems to be "FIRST's way or the highway".

You can't please all of the people all of the time...but you *can* listen to them, and work with them, and consider that maybe your way isn't necessarily the best way, and realize that it's alright if there are people other than you and yours out there furthering your own goals.

Again, FIRST is great, truly great.

But it seems to me that some folks have gotten so caught up in FIRST for FIRST's sake, that they have forgotten FIRST's goals...

[Leav]

msd,without quoting every single word you said, let me say I agree entirely with your opinion.

this is what I have to contribute to this debate:
When browsing the ChiefDelphi portal I sometimes spot a thread with a title that criticizes FIRST. I can tell that the person is going to get slammed pretty hard by pretty much everyone. I am never wrong about it.

and that is pretty sad in my opinion.

I think that for many people FIRST has risen to a state of "religion" (for lack of a better term) where there is an axiom that guides their attitude towards FIRST: "FIRST is flawless".

I am very close to this but since i'm still relatively new to FIRST (only 2 years on a team, 1 year as volunteer and 1 year as a mentor), I do not believe my thoughts about FIRST have matured enough for me to completely understand all upsides and downsides of FIRST.

-Leav

[JaneYoung]

So is this a discussion of the members of CD being critical of people who post in CD?

Or is this a discussion of how FIRST operates?

Or is this a discussion regarding being critical in general?

When I read threads, I often find the balance of opinions in the threads. So many points of view, perspectives, opinions. I rarely see any slamming, I see passion and reason often trying to find a way to work together.

[jimbot]

In this thread there will probably be some slamming, its sad but a neccessary thing to help the improvment of the FIRST organization. For without negativity how can there be postiveity. (Yeah Math!!)

Basically this thread talks about how people will not insult or speak poorly of FIRST in any way, shape, or form for fear of being un-proffesional.

[Leav]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

So is this a discussion of the members of CD being critical of people who post in CD?

Or is this a discussion of how FIRST operates?

Or is this a discussion regarding being critical in general?

When I read threads, I often find the balance of opinions in the threads. So many points of view, perspectives, opinions. I rarely see any slamming, I see passion and reason often trying to find a way to work together.

I may have derailed the post Jane, so please everyone get back to the original topic if I got it wrong...

Jane, I agree with you on most threads... except those which criticize FIRST.
CD is only a single case which acts as an indicator.

People are unable comprehend that FIRST may be doing something wrong on a basic level.
That something may be less than ideal in the way things are running now.
The common knee jerk reaction a criticizer would get is: "you are wrong if you say that FIRST has flaws."

Assuming that you have reached perfection is always the very first step on the road to ruin.


-Leav

[msd]

Originally Posted by JaneYoung

Or is this a discussion of how FIRST operates?

I cannot speak for Katy and her clearly-nervous coauthor, but that is how I interpreted her post, and my own thoughts were intended to refer to FIRST in general, not these forums in particular.