How to go about change with a biased PDP Regional Director

FIRST General Forum
1

Hello,

I will start this off with acknowledging that specific details provided will be vague.

In my area our Regional Director has been showing some bias to specific teams in the area for some time now. It appears that the RD is choosing to support certain teams more so than others. The RD goes above and beyond to help some teams out, whether that is helping communicate their events to other teams in the area, or giving exclusive outreach opportunity that can only come with having lots of favor with an RD. On the opposite side the RD seems to give little or no support to other teams in the area.

This mostly happens with outreach events. The RD will immensely help out certain teams and almost ignore others. It has gotten to the point to where it almost seems as if they are grooming the teams to get certain team attribute awards

I think everyone here can agree that teams doing outreach is 100% a good thing and that we should actively encourage it. Problems start arising when events are being gate-kept. I want every team in my area to have the same opportunity. When bias is being had it is hard to make a supportive and effective program.

Is there any rules on the behavior of Regional Directors?

Is there a code of conduct they have to follow?

Does the Program delivery partner have to maintain an unbiased stance to all teams they oversee? Is there anything in place to prevent bias?

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Just to provide an alternative perspective, nothing you’ve said actually sounds outside the realm of an RD’s job description. If a team is known for having a flexible schedule, does a lot of outreach, and has accessible mentors, they’re going to get asked to make appearances places. This does create a feedback loop, yes, but RDs only have so much bandwidth for this part of their job.

It is entirely possible that they don’t realize there is a problem, and a simple conversation could help.

I have a lot of thoughts on this - if you want me to elaborate, let me know, and I’ll say more.

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[I know nothing about your particular situation and am not a RD]

Not all bias is bad. FIRST and an RD have a huge interest in making FIRST look good to the public and potential partner organizations, etc.

If Team A has a history of putting on “Home Run” outreach events and Team B has a history of putting on sloppy, unprepared, disorganized events, then if I have an opportunity, Team A is getting the call.

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