After one of my matches, our entire drive team seemed upset. Apparently, one of the mentors on our alliance (a different team) was yelling at them. (i.e. barking orders) What would you do in this situation? (please post this below)
I went over and talked to the team. I made sure he understood that he shouldn’t have been yelling at my team mates. He came over and apologized to the members he had yelled at. According to him, it was a misunderstanding. The whole thing is over now and I hold no hard feelings, but I want to know everyone’s opinion. Did I do the right thing? (Just vote on the poll)
Some drive coaches are loud. Some of them yell very loud to get their points across. Some of them will yell to/at your drive team. If you are in the tournament and you are selected by them, as a friend put it “they own you”. “They own you” is in the sense that they are in charge of that alliance, and, while it is a team, when push comes to shove, it’s their call.
That being said, obscenities and namecalling are inappropriate and unacceptable. If you are uncomfortable with something someone else does, however, the appropriate response is always to maturely and politely talk to them about it.
As an adult team member I yell at the drive teams all the time. Normally “yes! YES! Go! Auuugh! No!!”
But I do it from the stands. Anyone who can’t control their enthusiasm sufficiently to be a productive, GP coach should join me in the stands and let the kids have fun playing the game.
It sounds like you did the right thing, and that the overly enthusiastic coach did the right thing by apologizing… hopefully they will think about coming up to enjoy the game from the stands and consider that a better place to indulge their enthusiasm rather than down on the floor.
And while I can see that occasionally it may be useful to have an adult as part of the drive team to help sort out a problem, I would encourage all adult team members to consider giving up the coach position to a student so that one more kid can experience the excitement and responsibility of being down on the floor. It lets the adult yell that much louder gives the kids a very clear, “I trust you” message.
Remember there is a difference between yelling and shouting. Sometimes during the din of a competition, voices have to be raised just to be heard.
Also some people’s voices are just naturally harsh. I recall one soccer coach I know with a gravelly voice. Whenever he raised his voice to be heard, it sounded bad. But I very rarely saw Coach Tom mad - you just knew he was going to be loud.
That’s why talking to the other mentor is important - you may have misunderstood his tone, and he may not realize he is upsetting others.
I remember as a student in FIRST, I would yell at my teammates, simply in order to project my voice over noises in the pits. I was the pit chief then, I would normally just yell at the drive team when we were repairing the robot together and they would just yell back. It was purely for communication and we all understood each other. This came from our athletic sports. I was used to yelling in Lacrosse and the Drive team and I have played soccer with each other many times.
However, not everyone on the team is familiar with us yelling. If they did not know me, I can be confusing to tell if I was angry or simply projecting my voice . I yelled at a teammate to help me and he though I was criticizing his efforts with the repairs. A bad call on my part. He was visibly upset and yelled back at me for being arrogant . I immediately apologized to him. Despite my intentions, I was at fault. It was not necessary for me to yell. It may have been very clear to understand each word, but my tone meant something entirely different. It is important to distinguish supportive/communicative from actual anger (very unprofessional). I realized then, while my friends and I were used to communicating to me that way, my other team mates were not and I should be more watchful of how I was projecting my voice in any case.
Now as a mentor for my high school team, I think there should not be case at all for me to yell at my team. The students defiantly do not know me enough and it would unprofessional for me to behave like that. If I was the head coach with the drive team, there may be yelling to communicate better while on the field. This only if the students are comfortable with that. For students of other teams, I think yelling orders would be unprofessional. So presently, the only time I raise my voice is to cheer for my team.
You absolutely did the right thing by coming to our pits and asking to talk to me. I thank you for giving me an opportunity to explain what I think happened to cause a misunderstanding. I think sometimes people are offended by the actions of another team or its members and never bother to pursue it to either prevent it from happening again or to find out why it happened.
I do sometimes yell instructions to other drive teams during matches. I feel this is sometimes necessary to stay in sync as an alliance to follow the agreed startegy and to stay informed of the situation. My voice does sound harsh at times and I guess it can sound intimidating. I apologize for that.
During a match, your drive team should not be afraid to tell the other teams if something is going wrong, in that case that your robot had been disabled - they will also have to yell for us to hear them. It is good for alliances to communicate during a match when things are going wrong.
Again, thanks for having the wisdom to try to straighten things between us rather than letting it sit.
I also know that when you yell, your voice is loud but your tone is very respectfull. I have never seen a coach with a better ability to yell with love.
I really appreciate you saying so yourself. I tend to overreact at some things and wanted to make sure that this wasn’t the case. I think that the problem was mostly circumstance. Half of my drive team was new this year and the fact that our robot was disabled just added to the stress. I think that your yelling just happened to be the bit that put them over. I think that you came over and personnally apologized really helped us move on with things. Once again, no hard feelings.
That’s what I like about this game.