Team 1293 needs the robotics community’s help. We are currently at a crossroads in our team. The leadership setup and organization needs to be redone. Please leave how your team is organized, it will really help.
Leadership as in student leadership, or as in adult leadership?
student leadership mainly but how each individual plays a part.
For example:
Does your team have one or multiple “top leaders”
Is it more of a hierarchy or is everyone equal?
Are there sub-teams and how are they organized?
Are there specific leaders of each sub-team?
971 has a leadership manual that’s posted in the whitepaper section here. It details how the team is organized and what the duties of each student leader is. Since 971 is a smaller team, many students hold multiple positions.
There’s a lot more info there too, since it was written as a guide to running the team. There should be an updated version by the end of the summer.
As for 217, we’re set up much like a corporation. We have a CEO, 3 Vice-Presidents, and under each of those VPs are various student leadership positions such as Head of Programming, Head of Electrical, etc. The CEO’s job is pretty self-explanatory. As for the VPs, there is one for Robotics and Engineering, one for Marketing, and one for Public Relations. Each have their own specific areas of concentration, but we help each other out and work as a team most of the time. So far this system has been pretty successful for us, but depending on the breakdown of your team and it’s size, it might not work for everyone.
Just for a frame of reference, how many kids are on the Thunderchickens this year? (The concept makes sense for a team of 20 or 30, but it doesn’t work as well in my head for a team of 10.)
Does your team have one or multiple “top leaders” 1
Is it more of a hierarchy or is everyone equal? Explained later
Are there sub-teams and how are they organized? Sub teams: Eletctronics, programming, build, media
Are there specific leaders of each sub-team? Yes
Basically we have a full team leader, who is theoretically in charge of making sure everyone shows up, and leading anything that is supposed to be lead by students. Then there are division leaders(like I am programming leader), who when it comes down to things that are specific to that area are in charge, for instance assigning tasks during build season, deciding what to do for off season projects, and making sure what needs to get done gets done.
For reference I think our team consists of slightly over 20 kids.
To elaborate more on Nick’s post:
Team 648 is made up of about 23 students from three schools.
We used to have a student leader from each representing school (Sherrard, Davenport West, Moline) but recently, post-2005 I believe, we changed it to a single person as the “student team leader.” Personally, I don’t think this was a great decision because some students can’t handle taking care of 20+ students. I liked it more when there were three heads to take care of a problem. Although, not enough responsibility is put on this position.
As for the divisions, we’ve always had a leader for each of the four team divisions. Our divisions are Build, Media, Programming, and Electronics. Each leader have some specific duties they are to do. I would like in the future years to make more detailed requirements to fulfill these duties.
To get these positions we hold elections. They aren’t run the greatest, there was a bit of, what I thought, bribery this year. I’ve entertained the idea of these students running campaigns.
Good luck with redoing your leadership, hope this helps. If you have anymore questions, don’t hesitate to ask here or PM me… I’ve been through this for 6 years now and I know the ins and outs of team organization.
Jeremiah
1983’s leadership really runs on the positions you are in, for example, this list will run in order from leaders to minions:
1st Coach
2nd President
3rd Pit Chief/Scout Master/Electricians (we view electricians as some what of gods, seeing as how there are currently 2 of the)
4th The people above’s second in-commands
5th Minions
Driver and Operator are not ranked, because they are out most of the time and do not make contact with many people but the Pit Crew. Apart from this, Drivers and Operators are ranked a little below Pit Chief but above Scout Master. This is because the Drive Team usually came from the Pit Crew (Dave and I both worked on the bot before we became the drive team) thus they know what they are doing when it comes to the robot and how to repair what is broken.
We follow the rankings quite to the point, if you are above someone in rank, they will follow what you say. Not to say they we are like the army, simply that if the Pit Chief tells you to get out of the pit, you had better listen because he or she probably knows what he or she is doing.
The people who are in higher ranks also are pretty much in full command of what they are doing. Take the Pit Chief for example, he/she will make the rules, regulations, and final judgments about what goes on in the pits, who is in the pits, and any other ruling he sees fit. A rule that was set in place this year was that “there are 4 people on pit crew and only the pit crew and drive team are allowed in the pit ever, so if you are down here and are not on either of those teams, leave now or so help you.”
Now, the Scout Master was in full command of that division as well, if you are not on Drive Team or Pit Crew, you where a scout (unless you where the Runner or Mascot, but those simply count as minion) and the Scout Master was the guy you reported everything to, then he reported to the Coach.
We are composed of 3 main teams during the Main season (Pit Crew, Drive Team, and Scouting) and 1 large team during Build Season (this year we had 18, we needed everybody.) Within the team we have smaller divisions such as Graphics (2 people, myself and Tedrick, who taught me what I know) Website (Graphics team and a few parents) and Build Team. Because we are so small, we have many people wearing different hats when they need to be worn. So the Graphics team is also the build team for the drive train.
Please pardon my long winded explanations, but that is our leadership setup.
Brian Richards
675 has one leader (the team founder/runner) who handles a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, outside of the shop.
The students design the robot based off of what we want it to do, plus our capabilities.
In manufacturing, there are subdivisions with their own leaders.
It seems to work out alright.
Going off what Brian said a little bit more, we also have a Vice President who helps the president whenever possible, a secretary to keep track of photos, emails, and any other important documents, a treasurer to keep track of the money coming in. These are just the leadership roles on the team other than the coach. These 4 people will then assign people certain tasks or jobs on the team that best suit their skills and what is best for the team.
-Zach Wydick
Our team has 34 students and 13 mentors. At the head of the team is our lead teacher sponsor, Mr. Ritchie. Our other teacher sponsor, Mr. Wherry, and Chris Fultz also have a large say about what goes on in the team. In terms of students, this year we have two co-captains. Each subteam (maunfacturing, website, programming, electronics, design, publicity, outreach, promotions, etc) has a captain. Other than that, the team is mostly lead by the students who are the oldest or have the most experience with the team.
Our team is set up to where there is one lead student for each field (Engineering, Public Relations, Scouting, Electrical), and under that we have people who are either experienced or are learning because that person is a senior. We try not to have seniors as people who are leaders because they wont be there next year and that they can do it on their own when they are gone. On Thursday during the championship we had no engineers until lunch time. But our team was able to run under students and we fixed a problem on our robot, got our robot inspected and even played our first practice match (we were the first team on the field by far on thursday). I think that a team should be run by the students and have the adults there to help out.
I did a conference on our leadership bootcamp at the championships. All of the material is posted here.
In short, this year we attempted to give EVERY student some leadership opportunity. Every student was encouraged to lead a fundraiser, demo, community service, subteam or the team. Whether it was a small activity or a year long leadership of the team, they all gained some sort of leadership experience, and it made huge leaps and bounds in building our team and getting students to take initiative.
The way our team is organized officially by our handbook, we have a student leadership group, 2 leaders per class, that I as the team leader work with. Reporting to us are the student & adult leaders of each subteam.
Take a look through our leadership bootcamp material, it might prove useful 
Sorry about that…we had 43 students on the team this year.
On 830, we basically have it set up so that the students are placed in charge of different projects through the season. For example, there will be the group that will always be working on build, and will take other students and show them what to do. Of the students working on the nonbuild projects, each person is held responsible for organizing something different, be it a bake sale, communication with the sponsors, scouting, etc.
It is a little less formal in that students are not exactly defined as leaders at the beginning of the season. But it also gives each and every single one of the students the opportunity to step up and be a leader while getting advice from the mentors.
If you are looking for something more formal (and something that would probably work better with a larger group), when I was on 573, we had set student leaders for the various subgroups, who would be responsible for communicating with their mentors to create a plan for said subgroups. We had a student project manager, who was in charge of making sure all of the plans were compatible and feasible and served as the main representative for the team.
This year our Captains were ***es, we kept them there because we didn’t want mid-season collapse. It was apparent who took their place (The team recognizes them as Captains)
Next year we’ll do this:
3 Captains: PR, Build and Team (Discussed later)
Captains oversee divisons and leads
There is 1 Team lead, and 1 Team co-lead (per division)
Leads decisions can be overthrown by a Capatin (if it falls under there division)
Leads can go to the team for a vote if they don’t like Captains choice(s)
Mentors count as 1 vote, however they’re choice of what to build counts as 0 when picking what robot to build (Start of season)
Weekly voting meetings start at 5:00, regular start at 6:00PM
3 days a week (before build season to letter)
4 days a week (start build season to letter)
PR Captain-Manages community involvement and leads meeting if Team Capt. is gone: Oversees PR, Marketing and Operations
Team Captain-Leads meeting, has more “authority” in tie breaker votes: Oversees-Animation, Inventor, Field Design, Programming* and Website
*Because of stress on Build Captain
Build Captain-Involved in Robot Construction and robot progress: Oversees Robot Design, Construction/build team, pneumatics and Machining
Animation-Makes animation and images for community
Website-Create/update website for community
Operations-Training of newer members and “utility” crew when others are absent (Up-to-date on all divisions, “fillers”)
PR-Sends groups to community meetings (rotary/business conferences)
Marketing-Makes phone calls, sends PR to meets
Inventor-Robot design on computer
Field Design-Creates field for robot trial and “errand” people
Machining-Makes parts for robot
Build Team-robot assembly
Pneumatics-parts assembly
programming- makes sure robot can work/move
Our team is **extremely **unorganised,:ahh: the perosn who was elected to be president dose’nt act like the president. :eek: And all of our other elected officers in other positions most don’t come to the meetings.
team 1094 learership lies with the oldest member on are team. this year we chose a team capataion which is usually the oldest member on the team or some that everyone ageers on. For our drive team it is teh person’s who have to best drive time/ recation time. Coach gose to the person who was 3rd in reaction time/drive time.
Over the past two or three years, we’ve altered our hierarchy depending on our student involvement.
Last year, do to our large size, we had a President (Senior) and 2 Vice Presidents (Also Seniors), one for mechanical, and one for business. From that, both auxiliary and drive were under the first VP, and operated seperately from each other. Our business/non-engineering department worked under our other VP. Sadly, our electrical and software group (mainly myself and one or two others) had no representation in the higher ups (but i still made my voice heard).
This year, however, due to our much smaller size, we had one president (Senior with most experience), and then a group-specific leadership based on team experience. This format allowed for less conflict among groups, and also for our new freshmen to learn alot from their older peers. Also, because we were so small, our mentors helped us out alot.
Really, you should base your student leadership around your team size, your subsections, and how you want it to function. If you want, you could even do a Knights of the Round format, where the President just helps get things started, but has equal say with the leaders of each subsection of your team, which I really wish we could implement in our team, but we’re just too small as it is.
I hope this helped you out a little.