Listen to the episode [musicsingle file=”https://www.thevillargroup.com/ftcteam6024/wp-content/uploads/entry-01-entering-orbit.mp3″]
Tip 1: It’s very important that every team member has distinct roles on your team. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t do multiple things, simply that you have definite roles and when you go to tournaments you know them and are prepared to talk about them to judges and other teams. Even if everyone helps some with the robot at meetings, you need to have at LEAST one main job that you’re the lead of. Plus, you don’t want absolutely everyone to be crowding around the robot at tournaments. There’s just not enough room, so everyone should have their own job they can work on!
Tip 2: There are some roles that are more fun than others, and there are some that nobody wants to do– like the engineering journal. However, it’s important to compromise with your team members and split work and fun equally. No one person should be doing more work or hogging, even if they’re more experienced in certain areas.
Tip 3: Even if you’re not experienced in a lot of areas, don’t immediately just pigeonhole yourself on one role, branch out a little! Even if you are dead-set on building the robot, that doesn’t mean that’s all you can do on the team. Try helping out with fundraising or programming, you might find you like it. You can be the person in charge of one role and the assistant with another. Or you might find after experimenting that you don’t want to be a robot builder at all, and would rather do media. The point is to at least try several things before you decide on your role or roles. The important thing is that you’re not just randomly helping out with things. Experiment a little until you find a role or roles you like, then have those be your official roles and take charge with them. That way you’ll get more experience with more things and may discover a hidden talent you didn’t know you had. Obviously if you’re on a smaller team you’ll have to manage more roles, whereas if you’re on a big team you might just have one.
To summarize:
1: Know what your distinct role or roles are
2: Don’t just hog the fun jobs even if you might be the most experienced at them
3: Don’t be afraid to try new things
For more tips & tricks, listen to our radio show, Captain’s Log, every other Sunday at 7:00 PM.
http://mixlr.com/captains-log–2/