Got out my computer to type out this response. I will also note that conflict resolution and buy-in are the topics for my 3rd installment of the leadership training modules I’ve been working on - it’s still in production though.
- What kind of bylaws do other teams have? How do you structure your team?
While our team doesn’t have an official set of bylaws in the traditional sense, we sign and our bound by our team handbook, which is a copy of the Citrus Circuits handbook and remains 90% the same. It gets reviewed by mentors each year, but doesn’t change much. The handbook outlines all norms, procedures, and expectations for students and mentors, as well as clarification on what constitutes unsafe behavior and removal from the program. If I need to mediate anything as head mentor, I always go back to the handbook so that I can reference something specific. Each student and their parent or guardian signs this before the season starts (our paperwork due date was 10/22 this year), so hypothetically everyone’s on the same page. Having a very very clear, publicly accessible set of rules is really important, because it means that students and mentors are working off of the same thing.
Team structure is really variable dependent on the program. From what I understand, 4561 is a pretty large program, so I’d look to other large programs (1678, 3128, 1923, for instance) to see how they organize. In general though, an organizational structure serves 2 key purposes: role clarity and delegation of responsibility. Especially in fast-paced environments with teenagers, it’s important that people know where they stand and what they’re supposed to be doing. By giving role clarity to students, you help them self-motivate and generate more buy-in for the team. Often, you can do this by giving them a strict set of responsibilities and a title to match it. Little Johnny FRCFIRST Robotics Competition might not really know what’s going on or where to apply himself if he’s mechanical student # 12, but as Tooling and Organization lead he’llLimelight, an integrated vision coprocessor feel more ownership and hopefully stay more involved. You have to strike a careful balance here, because you don’t want to come across as patronizing. Assigning a freshman to be “Mop Guy” probably won’t have the same effect. I sometimes see Safety Lead get tossed around in a half-hearted way to give a kid more responsibility but without the support needed to make it a meaningful experience, so stay aware of that.
When I think about team structure, I think about it as a series of buckets. You have some number of top level buckets, and each of those buckets has sub-buckets. You can go as far down that chain as you need. I’ve found that when the bottom-most bucket has 3-5 students, that’s usually a good place to stop. I’ve experimented with several different structures across the years, but the method I keep coming back to is having the top-level buckets be mechanical, controls, and non-tech (our team calls it MOO for Marketing, Outreach, and Operations). Some sub-bucket examples might be CAD, manufacturing, and construction for mech (you could also split these into subsystem-focused verticals), vision, swerve/autonomous, scoring movement, and electrical for controls, and impact, imagery, and business for non-tech. We also have separate competition roles as a way to further role clarity and generate buy-in. These are things like drive team, pit team, media, scouting (robot scout, super scout, shift coordinator), and strategy. I actually wrote an article about this as a student and then subsequently went to college to study human and organizational development, so it’s something I’ve thought about a lot. I’d be happy to talk about it more if you want to dive into anything deeper.
- How does your team select its lead mentors? Are there teams that hold elections?
For both teams I’ve worked with, the lead mentor was simply the person who showed up the most and put in the most time. I haven’t been on a team where more than one person actually wants that job. With 7525, I’m in person 20~ hours a week and then virtual working on stuff (either with students or in the background) another 20~ hours. We’ve had general consensus on who was fit for the role. Lead subteam mentors were similarly distributed. If I were in an environment where multiple people wanted the job, my sort orders would be around time commitment and organizational oversight. Being head mentor means a lot of running around doing squirrely things to make sure the team doesn’t fall apart (organizing KOPKit of Parts pickup, running mentor meetings, coordinating with the school/parent org/student parents), so the person who takes on that role needs to understand that. Day to day, I don’t actually spend that much time with the robot unless we’re thin on mechanical mentors, in which case I put on my project manager hat and step in. I have had to remove a mentor in the past. This came from unanimous agreement from our other mentors. I would need near-unanimous agreement to do it again, unless there was a safety/YPPYouth Protection Program issue involved.
- How does your team handle student discipline issues? Student-student conflicts?
This goes back to the handbook. You need to be very clear and upfront in the beginning, because students will lose all respect if they feel taken by surprise, tricked, or taken advantage of. If they know the expectations going in, it helps alleviate this. I would recommend looking into a norm-setting activity to start your (pre) season, as it gives you an open forum to really talk about these expectations and gives your students a voice (therefore generating more buy-in). You can also look to some exercises around group emotional and psychological safety to help set the tone. If your mentors and your lead students take it seriously, your younger students will too.
When I’m handling student discipline (student-student, student-mentor, or student-world), I remind myself to approach every situation with compassion. We’re here as educators, and high schoolers are partially-baked real people. Things are forming, but they’re still rising and growing. Something that might be dumb and obvious to you or me could be a totally new experience for them, and new is scary and uncomfortable. For me, the first step of conflict resolution is to try to understand what led that student to act in the way they did. Give them a chance to speak, share their story, and try to connect it to the rest of the situation. Then talk with them about how that affected others. I like to ask guiding questions, but let the student come to the conclusion on their own. Instead of “you really hurt Little Sally FRCFIRST Robotics Competition’s feelings when you did [ ]”, I try to ask questions like “how do you think the others around you felt?” or “how would you feel if someone else did that?” I know this sounds really rudimentary and how you’d resolve something on an elementary school playground, but it’s important for teenagers (and adults). This is another place that norm-setting and holding a psychologically safe environment will pay dividends. This is largely the same for student-student conflicts as well, where I would serve as the mediator. If the issue is more work-related (skipping meetings, missing deadlines, etc), then I get a little more corporate and give that student a performance improvement plan (PIP). I make sure there are very clear deliverable objectives that need to meet a certain threshold of completeness by a very clear deadline, and outline a very clear consequence if that deadline isn’t met (demotion, suspension, removal). Again, this is an opportunity to generate buy-in with the student. Instead of handing them their assignment, work with them and let them lead the conversation around achievable goals and deadlines. You can definitely steer the conversation or push back on something if it’s too far out there, but letting them make the decisions is a really powerful tool - it either shows they know what’s realistic for them, or it shows them that the consequence is valid because they didn’t meet their own goal. For major safety infractions (tool safety, any largely damaging and unacceptable behavior) would start with the consequence and then add the PIP to work back up to a level of trust again.
- If your team has student leaders who can make/influence decisions that affect their peers (e.g. drive team), how do you counsel or protect them from the inevitable backlash when kids are disappointed?
This is a norm that gets set at the beginning of the year. We don’t pick favorites, we pick strategically. For example, I (as drive coach) pick students for drive team. I make it clear from the get-go what I prioritize in my drive team – it’s basically all soft skills. Keeping the expectations very clear helps, and it’s important that this is supported from the beginning by the mentors. The friction usually comes from when students feel that a student leader has an unfair amount of power that they don’t deserve. If that power is validated by mentors, it helps reduce some of that friction. I’ve found learning about the 9 types of power in leadership to be helpful, because it helped me better understand the dynamics at play. Students will be disappointed and there’s no real way to avoid that fully, and student leaders need to understand that some of that disappointment will reflect back onto them. Heavy is the head. Setting norms and reinforcing decision power will go a long way.
Please let me know if there’s any part of this that I can provide more clarification on or any other questions you might have, and I’d be happy to help. My DMs are also open, if that’s easier.
– Bryce | 7525 Head Mentor