Treat your team members with respect if you expect them to respect you.
Fundamental to all successful teams is mutual respect. Respect is never something that you can
achieve because of your age, your position, or how loud you shout. Before any of your ideas
will be considered seriously, you must gain the respect of your team members. Completing
assignments on time, being helpful, will all contribute to gaining respect, but nothing will have
be as significant as treating others with respect.
Respect Example - Marvin is not very good at programming, and has been struggling with an
assignment to write a subroutine that controls the stepper motor.
Rank the statements below from 0 (very disrespectful) to 5 (very respectful)
"You're too stupid to ever get that to work."
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"It's a difficult problem, Marvin. Have you read the section in the manual about stepper motors?
I found it really helpful."
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"You're really a great programmer. You'll figure it out."
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"I'm a lot better at this than you will ever be. Why don't I just write that for you?"
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People will not listen to you if you don't listen to them:
Real respect for others means you listen to and seriously consider their ideas. It's more than just
smiling and nodding and waiting for them to take a breath so you can jump in with your thoughts
and ideas. Pay attention and think about how you can implement and improve upon their ideas
even if they conflict with your own.
Just because a person isn't speaking doesn't mean they don't have something to say. Listening
often means asking questions. Address the quiet members of the team and ask their opinion.
Bring them into the discussion, even if they seem reluctant.
Listening Example: Sheryl wants to add a finger print sensor to the project that will verify the
operator's identity. They are complicated devices and you have no experience with them. You
feel it will risk putting the project behind schedule.
Rank the following statements from 0 (Poor Teamwork) to 5 (Very appropriate response)
"Hey, if want to do it go ahead, but don't come to me when it fails, and if we don't have our
project working by the conference, it will be your fault."
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"I've been reading about finger print sensors. There are several programs you have to
understand. You have to teach it your finger prints, then a different program responds to it. It's
hard, and we might not get it working in just 2 more class periods, but help me understand how
this will improve our project."
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"Finger print scanners! THAT'S REDICULOUS. We are not adding a scanner. Look, we got it
working we aren't doing this."
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"You want us to fail don't you. You have never liked my idea right from the start. You have
been trying to sabotage the project right from the beginning. I don't know why you even took
this class…"
Engineers argue with facts, not emotions
Good decisions require information. When a team must make a decision, it is important to have
supportable facts to weigh alternatives. People disagree. This is normal and should be expected
whenever they work together on a project. Team members will often present opposing
proposals. Good disagreements are resolved with facts and when team members consider all the
options and make a decision based on the data, it usually works out for the best.
Decision Example: Andrew thinks the team should buy multiple motor driver circuits. You
believe that one is enough.
Rank the following statements from 0 (Poor negotiating skills) to 5 (Very strong arguments)
Andrew: "I read the reviews on Amazon. The some of the people who bought them said they
failed in the first few hours of operation. I think we take unnecessary risk only having one."
You: "That's a good point. My concern is they cost $23 each - $46 is almost half our budget.
We have the money, but we don't know what will happen and we may have forgotten to get
something. We should look at the percentage of people on Amazon had failures?"
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Andrew: "Look we've got the money. We have to buy at least 2 of these or we're screwed."
You: "You're crazy. We don't need 2 of them."
Andrew: "We've got enough money. Maybe we should buy 4 of them."
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Andrew: "I'm ordering 2 of them and that's that."
You: "You can't do that."
Andrew: "I'm the team leader. I can do whatever I want."
You: "Yea, Team Leader - I hate this team."
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Andrew: "Let's let Gail decide what we should do."
You: "Gail doesn't know anything. We'd be better flipping a coin."
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What do you think Andrew should say to support the idea that they should purchase a spare
motor driver circuit?
Compromise Example: Carol wants to build an automated bird feeder. You want to your
project to be a salt shaker that monitors your daily salt intake.
Rank the following statements from 0 (Poor negotiating skills) to 5 (Very strong arguments)
Carol: A bird feeder would be really cool. We could use the 3D printer and besides my aunt
said she wants one for the back yard.
You: Bird Feeder??? Not happening. We're going to build a salt shaker that keeps track of the
salt a person eats every day.
Carol: That's a stupid idea. Who would want a salt shaker anyway.
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Carol: My aunt was telling me she needs a bird feeder for the back yard. I was looking on the
net, and the Website talks about numerous reasons why bird feeders are good for the
environment, good for the people who have them and good for endangered species.
http://birding.about.com/od/attractingbirds/a/Benefits-Of-Attracting-Birds.htm
This project would have very positive social value.
You: I had not thought of building a bird feeder. I'll check out the web site. I was thinking
about doing something more health oriented. Most doctors believe that too much salt in the diet
can lead to heart attacks.
http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20090122/salt-may-restrict-blood-flow-to-heart
My idea was to build a salt shaker that warned a person he or she used it to often in a single day.
Carol: That would be fantastic if we could do it, but I'm concerned it might be too complex and
it would have to be put into a very small package. Even the smallest Arduinos are 2 square
inches and batteries are over a half inch thick. I'm worried that we don't have the ability to pull
that off.
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Carol: I think song birds are so wonderful. I just love waking up in the morning and hearing the
robins chipping. This year we're going to build a bird feeder to attract song birds. It will be a
really great project.
You: Birds?? Birds are dirty and they poop all over everywhere. Nobody wants birds hanging
around. No, I got this great idea for a salt shaker that beeps when you use it. It'll be a fantastic
project. It's sure to win us first place at the conference.
Carol: NO, we're not going to build a stupid salt shaker. We're going to build a bird feeder.
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Carol: Well, since Miss Marple made me the team leader, I have decided we are going to build
an automatic bird feeder.
You: You only got to be teal leader since you're the only girl in the class and just because you
never learned to program the Arduino doesn't mean that it can't be done. We're going to build a
salt shaker that beeps.
Carol: I'm the leader and what I say goes. We're building a bird feeder and that's final.
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What would a combination of these two ideas look like?