Communication-Teamwork-Safety-Integrity-Inclusion-Respect
For the second piece in our Girls of Steel Principles segment, we wanted to address teamwork, perhaps the most crucial element to collaboratively developing a robot.
Quite simply, our team narrows down the broad idea of teamwork into an easy concept: put team success ahead of your own agenda. However, the ideal situation would be to align your individual goals with the team goals, and that way, each team member has a personal and collaborative connection to the process. This is super important to ensure the team’s success as a whole!
Every member of the team should be willing to work together in pursuit of the best solution. Put your best ideas out there, but don’t feel hurt if they are modified or rejected. One of the most effective parts of teamwork is combining partial ideas of multiple people together to form one immaculate idea. Another aspect to this is that, as our team is organized in subteams, different girls tend to have different strengths or areas of expertise. Especially in this team structure, teamwork is necessary to create the best potential idea.
All members of our team are involved in the brainstorming process that takes place after the challenge is released. We all sit down and analyze the video, breaking down the point system and stages. After that, we hold another brainstorming process where we actually start designing potential mechanisms. All girls are welcome to attend, and a whole spectrum of ideas are discussed.
Teamwork is imperative in a collaborative team dynamic. By stressing the importance of this, you can ensure a more positive and innovative FIRST season!
