Getting your fellow mentors on board

[Nick Seidl]

I have been mentoring teams in varying capacities for a few years now and feel like I have gotten a decent grip on working with the students. The other adults on the team however are a whole other spicy meatball. This has become more apparent to me now that I am at the top of the mentor totem pole for my team. Please don’t take this as me throwing my fellow mentors under the bus. The problem I believe stems more from my leadership style and inability to articulate some things.

I have my philosophies on what the division of labor and decision making between students and mentors should look like. I call this “The Oldest Question in FIRST.” There are plenty of threads on this, so I am not looking to flog that particular deceased equine any further . The problem I am running into is that I have mentors on my team that are all at different points on that continuum. My question for the more experienced mentors out there is twofold:

1. How do I quantify things so as to better articulate where I think we should be on this as a team?

2. How do I go about either making my case and getting the other mentors on board with where I stand, or at least get them to arrive at a consensus on the issue that they feel they can live with?

Apologies for the wall of text.