SL3 Aren

• Chapter 8: Hunter lists three key steps for ongoing change: foundation, feedback, and friction.  In our FRC team, who sets the foundation?  Who provides the feedback and how?  Who provides the friction and how?

In the past mentors have set the foundation.  Hopefully the team leader will set it next time.  Last year the feedback was lacking, but the entire team, mentors and students, provided it to each other verbally.  Once again the entire team provides friction with our interactions.  

• Chapter 9: What are the satisfiers that get people to show up to robotics and exert at least minimum effort?  What are the specific motivators that push some students to work very hard for the team beyond simply being present?

Some satisfiers are building stuff, solving problems, resolving problems, Ultimate Frisbee breaks, and of course food.  Some motivators that I see pushing people is we only have 6 weeks, wanting to win, and enjoying what they are doing.

• Chapter 9: How much "hunger for excellence" do you think we have as a team?  In your view, are we shooting to be the best or trying to just be mediocre?

As a team I would say we are somewhere in the middle. We have different people who want different things from robotics.  Some want to win, some enjoy working, and a few want screw around, but we all want a winning robot.  As a team I would say we want the best robot but don't have infrastructure or work environment to do it.

• Chapter 9: What will you do this year to help us build community in our FRC team?

I will try to implement Scrum and other methods that should reduce the amount of debating and increase efficiency.  One of these methods is testing many versions and modular assembly scrum teams.

• *Chapter 9: There is a list of summary bullet points on the last page.  Choose one that you think is most relevant to our team and talk about it.

"Find ways to make people's work more challenging, interesting, and rewarding."  One of the problems we had last year was not enough people had jobs or could work on something.  If we used a scrum board we could have time to test more ideas, we wouldn't have to many people on one project, and all this would happen faster.

Summary: I learned in order to improve yourself and others you must set the standard, get feedback, then provide friction to keep the change going.  Also I learned you should make peoples work enjoyable, recognize good performance, and give everyone a useful purpose to fulfill.

Jacob SL3

• Chapter 8: What is emotional intelligence (EI)?  In what ways are you strongest in EI?  How do you get EI "smarter"?

Emotional intelligence is essentially all of your interpersonal skills combined.  My EI strong point would probably have to be empathy since whenever I'm angry or in an argument with someone I try to see the argument from their perspective and to understand why they are disagreeing or angry.

• Chapter 8: What is the coach's role in developing leadership capacity in the team?  A mentor's role?  A student's role?

The coaches role in developing leadership in a team is to demonstrate good leadership qualities (or at least improvements in them) and encourage students to learn about and develop these qualities.  A mentors role is similar to the coaches in that a mentor must demonstrate these qualities for the students as well.  A mentor however can help students develop their leadership ability a little more efficiently since there are simply more of them and they can spend more time with the students.  A students role is to learn leadership and other skills from the mentors and coach and then to try to implement the leadership tactics.

• Chapter 9: What are the satisfiers that get people to show up to robotics and exert at least minimum effort?  What are the specific motivators that push some students to work very hard for the team beyond simply being present?

I think one of the main satisfiers of our team is that you get to spend time being social.  If our team were to be all work all the time people would be less likely to volunteer to do it.  Another satisfier would be the fact that team members get to see the robot in action.  I know that on other teams this isn't a given due to transportation issues, but for our team at least it supplies a great goal to work towards.  As far as motivators go, personal recognition and a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the task really get people to work harder.

• Chapter 9: How much "hunger for excellence" do you think we have as a team?  In your view, are we shooting to be the best or trying to just be mediocre?

I think that our team is trying extremely hard to become excellent at everything.  We have been inspired by the change in performance from last year and we want to keep improving and make it farther in the competitions.  We really are trying to shoot for the best and, although I don't know when, as long as we put that energy to use in the right places we will accomplish a lot.  For instance we WILL go to St. Louis this year.

• Chapter 9: There is a list of summary bullet points on the last page.  Choose one that you think is most relevant to our team and talk about it.

Seek out best practices and implement them- Our team has already begun to implement this goal through this very activity and I believe this is because of its importance to our team.  Last year we had a large number of issues pop up due to laziness, inefficiency, lack of communication, and a bunch of other factors.  If we implement better practices and really make them work, we should be able to multiply our last years improvement greatly.

• Summary

In this final section of the book I learned about the way to encourage people to improve their leadership skills, the difference between satisfiers and motivators, and things such as the reasons to demand excellence.  All in all I think that this book had many great insights on how leadership should work and how to become a great leader.  In the overall course, I think the book I learned the most from and enjoyed the most was definitely the one on scrum, but I think that all of the books were relevant and useful to what we hope our team will be.

Braxton SL3

Alright, home stretch. Here we go...

Chapter 8: What is emotional intelligence (EI)?  In what ways are you strongest in EI?  How do you get EI "smarter"?

EI is essentially the lump sum of all of your social and interpersonal skills, and it is practically necessary for successful leadership. I'm sure exactly what my strongest areas of EI are, so it's probably not self-awareness. Instead, it might be habit-breaking, as I've recently had to break several old habits to improve my leadership abilities, and I at least like to think it wasn't too difficult, but I don't know. In order to get EI smarter, go through the three F's, and especially the feedback part. You need to know how you're doing. Then, you need to make an active change in your personality to improve your EI.

Chapter 8: What is the coach's role in developing leadership capacity in the team?  A mentor's role?  A student's role?

On our team, our coach's role in developing leadership capacity is producing courses such as the one we are enrolled in now in order to develop our leadership abilities. He also, in addition with the mentors, mentor students and teach them not only technical skills, but also teach leadership skills by example. Students should act as proverbial sponges, and absorb this knowledge, and then apply themselves. They should educate themselves and then put those skills into practice.

Chapter 8: Hunter lists three key steps for ongoing change: foundation, feedback, and friction.  In our FRC team, who sets the foundation?  Who provides the feedback and how?  Who provides the friction and how?

On our FRC team, the foundation is set by several people. FIRST founders, such as Woody Flowers and the glorious Dean Kamen, other teams and their journeys, as well as our coach, mentors, and founding students. All of these people and organizations contributed the foundation our team was founded upon. The feedback is provided by students and mentors. They do this verbally, by email, or even passive-aggressive grumbling. Often, we voice our concerns to each other, and then bring it to Pethan if there is sufficient cause to. This also can contribute to the friction, as some team members and mentors aren't afraid to be up front about problems, and possible solutions to these problems.

Chapter 9: What are the satisfiers that get people to show up to robotics and exert at least minimum effort?  What are the specific motivators that push some students to work very hard for the team beyond simply being present?

One of the satisfiers that encourage lazy students is a lack of discipline. If a student isn't doing anything, or is playing video games, or is goofing off, what happens to them? Nothing more than a quick talk and maybe a task. There's no detriment to simply continue what they were doing, day in and day out. Now, I'm not saying that we should start flogging people, quite the opposite. We should treat the cause rather than the symptom, and give them a purpose and a motivator. Ideally, we shouldn't have to take away iPads or yell at people. They would be trustworthy enough to instead work, and then play games on their own time, or during a (not overly frequent) break. Some motivators would be the obvious, like scholarships, or the more abstract, like a sense of belonging and pride in their work, which tends to be on the high end of quality.

Chapter 9: How much "hunger for excellence" do you think we have as a team?  In your view, are we shooting to be the best or trying to just be mediocre?

On our team, I feel like we're starting to really find out how good we really are, and our hunger before that definitely contributed. We we're pretty shocked to see how well we did this past year, as compared to 2014, and we now believe we can do even better. So I'd say we definitely strive for the best, even if that is sometimes forgotten in times of distraction.

Summary:

In this final section of reading, I learned about the more abstract of leadership, such as emotional intelligence, the three F's, satisfiers and motivators, and the hunger for excellence. It summed up a summer's worth of reading and this book, and this entire course has taught me a great deal about leadership styles and traits. Now, that I'm done, I think I'll celebrate Now that I'm done, I think I'll celebrate...