Team Productivity Issues

[Bomberofdoom]

Originally Posted by Molten

I agree that it is about fear at times. I've found it rather effective to shift the fear rather then disspelling it. Instead of them being afraid to weld, make it so that they are afraid to not weld. I do this through annoyance and persistence. Eventually they will work or they will leave. I don't care which. Now, I know this sounds mean...but there is a reason that most people don't like their boss. It is usually how he became the boss. Just an idea.

just make sure you have that seconed guy at hand who's not a slacker who'll be able to do the job (be it welding for this case) when the slacker decideds to leave.

I tried being presistent and annoying as much as possible, but it didn't matter. They were still part of the prjoect and their "work" was allready part of the robot (which anyway took them too much time).
That's why you gotta' counter it all before you start.
Do some pre-team selection activites to let those intereseted in the project to learn about it, the important subjects in it and with these activites try to see who fits and who doesn't.
Even if you're short on team members for the next season and all the students that applied for next season plus you won't be "big enough" (over 12 members), tell them the complete siriousness of the team (show them the team rules, explain all the do's and must's and explain the circumstances of not complining to the rules). Don't scare them too much, but the whole idea is to make sure you get the sirious team members you want.
If your team is really all about having fun, it's still funner to have fun with those who work as hard as you do.

Mentors wanting to create new teams need to make sure they are taking a group of students who are socialy connected somehow (or atleast that won't have any grudges or do something that will appear negative in front of the rest of the team).

Being the boss, don't fear any unpleasentary comments that will come. If you work propelly without distartctions and focus on making a successful robot/project (and proving it), noticing all the delays and problems that occur/might occur, the chances of having the worse kind of comments is slimer.

But we're all allready into this thing that we're called the robotics nerds and stuff, so these kind of comments shouldn't affect us at all.


(may I say "my 0.02$"?)