Need Advice on Team

Competition Team Organization
1

Hello everyone,

I have created this anonymous account as to not reveal the identity of my team, but I need some advice. I have been a member of my team for 2 years, during the first of which I enjoyed my rookie year. However, this year we had some changes. We doubled the size of our team and we reassigned leadership roles to be more like a company. This started out pretty well in the season, with us winning our offseason event and having a good season in our secondary competition. However, this month things have, to be frank, gone to Hell in a handbasket.

We are very behind on the construction of our robot and one of our new software systems. We almost didn’t submit our Chairman’s submission because we didn’t manage that project correctly. Last Saturday, things got so bad that we had to “remove” two of our members from their leadership positions in the build team. Now, they are focusing on our crate, pit design and the Chairman’s presentation. The one working with me on the presentation, I’m happy that I have some additional help, but I just don’t like working with him. He cuts me off all the time and acts a little pretentious in my opinion, but I’ve learned to suck it up.

Worst of all, we’ve had allegations of lewd comments and actions among our team members. We had a meeting about this 2 weeks ago with the team and the leaders, but nothing changed. On our leadership calls, the leaders of build tend to be polite to our head mentors and will leave without letting us know.

I have to balance all of this with a condition for which I have to get infusions. When I was at my last one, one of the reassigned leadership members sent out a list of things to do before bag-and-tag. When I was reading it, the machine I was hooked up to spiked, which led to the other nurses having to make sure I was okay.

There have been only 3 things that have kept me up this semester: my grades, President Trump’s election (not to get political) and these events. Yesterday, our presentation mentor asked me why I kept coming. I said that it was because I enjoyed the outreach, but when I think about that question now, I can’t figure out why. That bothers me, that I’ve changed from this enjoyable person to this guy who doesn’t know why he keeps coming. My parents have come very close to removing me from the team a couple of times this school year, but in all honesty, if they did, I’m not so sure I would put up a fight. We had an activity in psychology class at school where we had to analyze each other. 80% of my classmates say that my robotics is not a good thing for my stress, which often triggers flares for my conditions. And to be honest, I don’t disagree with them.

I guess my question is, have any of you ever felt this way before? What did you do? Am I a bad person for feeling this way?

Thanks,

StressedoutFRC

P.S. If you are one of my team members reading this, I’m sorry but this is just the way I feel.

2

You’re not a bad person for feeling this way.

You should be talking to your team’s mentors (and your personal mentors and support people, whoever that may be) about this. There may or may not be things they can/will do to improve the situation, but they can help you through your feelings better in person than we can over the network.

If you do decide to leave the team, don’t just fail to show up some day - turn over your responsibilities to someone else before you go. As the team has “doubled” in the past year, there should be one or more team members available to take on your role(s).

3

By structuring “like a company", do you mean that tons of responsibilities have been levied on individual students? The failing projects / demoted students might be a reflection that your team is pushing those students into situations where they’re out of their depth.

If this is the case, it might help to restructure such that leadership becomes more interdependent; i.e. student leaders have to regularly coordinate and check in with each other and the mentors to figure out the best ways to do things / provide extra manpower when projects start to falter. You should make such cooperation as mandatory as possible, say with regular leadership meetings, such that student leaders don’t have to go out of their way or feel embarrassed when they need to seek help. Promoting cooperation on the team could also help with what might be an issue of respect (what with students being disrespectful with lewd comments and what you’ve described as a pretentious teammate, could be something that needs work on the team).

In short, see if you can talk your team into treating the leadership like a team of its own rather than separate nodes in a hierarchy. My suggestions here are based on a lot of assumptions / guesses about what your team might be like, but I hope they are relevant / helpful.

4

Worst of all, we’ve had allegations of lewd comments and actions among our team members. We had a meeting about this 2 weeks ago with the team and the leaders, but nothing changed. On our leadership calls, the leaders of build tend to be polite to our head mentors and will leave without letting us know.

Meant impolite in leadership calls.

You’re not a bad person for feeling this way.

You should be talking to your team’s mentors (and your personal mentors and support people, whoever that may be) about this. There may or may not be things they can/will do to improve the situation, but they can help you through your feelings better in person than we can over the network.

If you do decide to leave the team, don’t just fail to show up some day - turn over your responsibilities to someone else before you go. As the team has “doubled” in the past year, there should be one or more team members available to take on your role(s).

Thanks for your advice.

5

I agree, you are not a bad person for feeling this way.

I’m a mentor, and also felt bad when the stress of build season just got to me. Life started to suck, and so for my own health I just stepped away a bit. Things got better, so I stepped away a little more. I’m at a point where all is good.

The guilt was at first tremendous, but I managed to get over it when I realized that my health was getting better.

No matter how much they need you, stay away for two days in a row and see if you don’t feel better. You are a volunteer - even as a student - and so the team must be grateful for even a minute a week. If they aren’t, then wish them well and stay away. Find a different outlet for your efforts.

Do let your mentors know why though. They are who promote or discourage certain aspects of team culture. If they don’t put a stop to behaviors like impoliteness, they are implicitly saying that behavior is acceptable on this team.