FSAE Leadership & Team Motivation

[Dipper]

Thought I would start a topic on Formula SAE Leadership and Team Motivation.

Team leaders – what do you think is the most effective way to motivate your team? Do people put in countless hours designing components just because they want a chance to drive a racecar? Or are they mostly in it because they see the project as a career springboard? Maybe they just have gasoline in their blood or petrol pumping through their brain and can't imagine studying engineering if it wasn't related to cars. It is more than likely that every individual of the team is motivated in different ways, so how, as a leader, do you motivate people to get their work done on time? What works well, what doesn't work? How do you reward people? How do you fire people, or give them the sack when they let you down?

Team members – Why put in the all nighters? Why skip your classes in favor of machining components for your car? Why spend your own money, give up your social life, and dump your girlfriend to spend more time with a group of fellow engineers? Why pour your heart and soul into a car that might end up getting the black flag in the Enduro when the car in front of you plows through a slalom and leaves cones on the course that your car ends up choking on? Is it because you love the camaraderie, the chance to be part of a race team? Is it because you admire the leaders in your team? Is it because you've seen where alumni from your team are working and you want a chance to work in exciting industries like them? Or is it simply the chance to work on a project where you get real feedback on your engineering work, a project where if your calculation is wrong the car breaks down, a lesson so much more memorable than a red mark through an assignment.

This is meant to be a pretty open-ended post. I'm curious to see what people say on the topic...

Victory is Today!
Justin

[Mechanicaldan]

I just emailed this to our team as part of a much longer email concerning tasks over our winter break:

"This project represents why I want to be a mechanical engineer. I want to be creative. I want to design. I want to manufacture. I like assembling. I love testing. I like project management. I really enjoy being around intelligent, creative, motivated people."

I just try to start early, and get people involved. I have a list of things that need to be done, and I personally ask people to do things. You need to make a specific list of things that people can do. The biggest problem is usually having new people stand around the shop with nothing to do. They don't usually come back. Asking a general group for volunteers doesn't usually work, pick people out individually. Most of the time, they help out, or they at least speak up and decline.

Positive reinforcement really does help. Thank you's go a long way. Thanking someone for work they have done works. It works well for keeping sponsors also. Make sure your sponsors get at least a small plaque or team picture with the car at the end of the year.

The opposite doesn't work. You can't fire volunteers, you can only not give them stuff to do.

Lead. That's another big item. Set an example. Be good at everything, and try to know about everything. At the bare minimum, be really good at 1 thing, and know a little bit about the rest.

Memorize the rules. New members have questions.

Here's one that has worked surprising well. Order shop shirts with names on them. The dark blue, short sleeve, button down, blue collar work shirts. They are cool in a weird way, and have name tags. We have a medium to large team, and it makes learning names easier and quicker.

Knowing someone's name shows you care. They then care, and stay involved. It's tough when you have 50 new people at a meeting at the beginning of the year, but if you do a good job, you'll develop a core team.

The core team is usually the gearheads and racing fans. That's just the way it is for our team, year after year. Almost all of us raced and turned wrenches before ever coming to school.

One concept I struggle with: Being taught and trained to make assumptions while doing engineering homework. Avoiding assumptions so as to not make an ass of you and me.

One last thought that I enjoy personally. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

Cyclone Racing
www.cyclone-racing.com (http://www.cyclone-racing.com)
Iowa State University
Project Director

[PatClarke]

Hi all,
I think a huge mistake is to dangle the carrot of a drive in return for hard work. You have the best designers design, the best engineers engineer, the best salesmen sell and the best accountants account, so why wouldn't you have the best drivers drive? Remember, the drivers are the guys who demonstrate your product!

They dug a guy out of a hole in the ground in Tikrit in the last few days. Potential FSAE team managers should look hard at his management style, because there is a lot to be learned there http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif Lay off the phosgene gas though.
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Sam Zimmerman]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Suddenlee:
They dug a guy out of a hole in the ground in Tikrit in the last few days. Potential FSAE team managers should look hard at his management style, because there is a lot to be learned there http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_wink.gif<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Does that mean I have your permission to continue the beatings until either competition or I am found in a hole, whichever comes first? http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

Sam Zimmerman
Vandals Racing (http://www.uidaho.edu/~racing)

[PatClarke]

No Sam, you continue the beatings until morale improves http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif
PDR

Rudeness is a weak mans imitation of strength

[Dipper]

Dan in Iowa - I agree 100% with you thoughts about shirts. Team uniforms and merchandise go a long way toward motivating people. Certainly worth the time and effort - and they make excellent gifts for sponsors. You wouldn't believe how much free work you can get from a heat treatment shop in exchange for a $15 hat.

Pat - Your advice on choosing drivers is so important! Guys designing the car and machining the components put thousands of hours in the reducing a few kilos from the car - its a complete waste of effort if your team leader and chief engineer drive the endurance when there are faster drivers in the team. I got to see some professional drivers drive our cars and it was truly amazing to see a car I built pushed to its limits. What a rush. If you have someone like that who can drive your car, I don't care how much or little work they have done, put them in the car as a driver. Watching them drive it will be way more exhilarating that driving it yourself. Many race drivers have big heads for a reason - they make or break the team. The same holds true for dynamic events in FSAE. In our case we were lucky to have extremely good drivers who were also nice blokes, but that may not always be the case.

Here is a thought for discussion. Team motivation can be boiled down to forming a core group of people who are working together to achieve both team and individual goals. Everyone on a team would like the team to be successful, but as individuals we want team success mostly because it will help us personally in interviews...

And one more thought. How do teams out there deal with political/personal conflicts in the team? One thing we did was make an open space in the meeting to discuss these issues. At the beginning of every meeting we started with three questions:
-How do people think we are doing as a team?
-What can we do to work better as a team?
-What grievances to people have?
Grievances ranged from people leaving tools out to people not pulling their weight and letting the team down. The value here was that there was a correct and open place to air your frustrations. In my opinion this worked extremely well. I'd be interested to see what other people on my team have to say about it and if other teams do similar things.

Cheers for now.
Justin

[Brent Howard]

In my experiance sped in these cars is only slightly due to raw skill with the majority of good drivers simply being those guys that have been in the car alot and are comfortable with the limits of their car. For this reason often the best drivers are the team leaders and core team members. This is a really good thing though because I would be quite pissed off if I spent weeks of sleepless nights trying to finish the car only to have some one show up and get to hop in the car and drive it.

Actually in all reality, although I enjoy driving the car, I would NEVER want to have to drive in competition. It's too much pressure, everyone is counting on you and if you screw up you just wasted 20 people's hard work.

As far as motivation that is a hard one. We have some motivated people that are very hard workers, and we have some people who are not so comitted. I think the best way would be to keep those core people happy and use the others whenever they show up, but don't count on them...ever. For many many people they will say they will do something, but always have excuses when it comes to actually doing it.

Brent

www.ucalgary.ca/fsae (http://www.ucalgary.ca/fsae)

[leclercjs]

Dipper, I'm glad you've put the subject on the table. For me, I think the best way to encourage all your member to form a team is to set standards, to give them hope, to give them the space to bloom and let them make errors. It is sure you can't fire people off your team because you never know when you will need them. One thing I did this year was to set high standards. This year, we're planning on doing 2 competitions, Formula Student and FSAE in Detroit. I think when you're doing 2 competitions, you do not want to fail. And I think the faster you put this mentality in the head of your teamates, the faster you will see great things happens. It is sure there will be some delays down the road, but as a leader, you have to restructure your planning in consequences and see how you can arrive on time. This is my point of view!

Jean Sébastien Leclerc
Dir. Formule SAE Poly 2004
http://www.fsae.polymtl.ca

[oz_olly]

I know this is an old thread but I think it is worth reviving. Here at the Australian Defence Force Academy we have trouble getting team members and keeping them motivated. This is mostly brought about by the fact that when we graduate we all have altleast 5 years guaranteed employment due to our return of service commitments. This means that people aren't really interested in joining so that it will look good on their resume. People are also reluctant to join a team where they have to put in extra time and effort. The 51% is 1% wasted effort culture is fairly common. I think this is because there are alot of what i see as unecessary compulsory extra curricular activities such as inter squadron sporting events on weekens etc. So this basically leaves people to generally having the attitude of not wanting to do anything they do not have to. We get very little holiday compared to normal uni's as we have extra military training so time off is a prescious commodity and the guys don't seem to want to hang around sunny happening Canberra when they can go home and see there families etc. I think the lack of team members is also a representation of the fact that the guys who join the defence force to be engineers are generally into military hardware, all my mates are jet nuts and my army mates just want to fang around in tanks, but i figure doing FSAE will make me a better engineer (and these little cars put a huge grin on the face of anyone who drives them).I am personally on the team because I used to own motorcross bikes and loved tinkering with them and FSAE is a way cooler way to design and tinker until your hearts content.

Next year I will be the team leader and my recruitment plan is to basically develop a small team of first and second years who are responsible for maintenance and driving of our test car. I figure that this would be a good introduction to the sort of activities that the team does while also providing members to help out with the administrative tasks. I also plan to run milling and turning classes so that the junior members can get experience and then be given parts to manufacture. I am also planning to train them in CATIA, what I see as being far more valuable CAD training than what the school actually teaches. I am planning to emphasise the fact that FSAE makes you a better engineer by getting experience working with professional tradesmen and the issues involved with getting work out of a workshop. I feel alot of my peers misunderstand the time it requires to set up a machine, make a jig and then finally machine somthing. I figure this is pretty valuable knowledge and as an engineering officer will get alot more respect from subordinates as they appreciate a boss who knows what they are talking about. The third and fourth years will be the designers and sub group leaders who will aim to do alot of manufacturing themselves while also farming out work to the newly trained junior members.

I am after as many techniques as possible to recruit and keep team members focussed and motivated. I really want to focus on the team building side of things to ensure the project has a sound future as there will only be two fourth years (seniors) on the team next year. We learn in our leadership training that positive peer pressure is a great tool and I figure that a cohesive team will have an atmosphere where no one wants to let the team down. I figure holding social functions such as bbqs and team go karting sessions will really help to build a good team culture. I am a very big fan of thanking team mates for the work they do, from my perspective it means alot to be thanked for long hours of work as a volunteer when I could be doing other things less all consuming. Do many other teams out there have a culture in place where the senior guys help out the juniors particularly with school work? I think if the team looks out for each other without plagiarising we can put in long hours without guys having to be frightened of failing exams which for us means having to repeat the whole year.

All comments will be greatly appreciated, and the best advice will go in the draw for an invite to ADFA for a personal tour http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif. (Seriously though I need all the help I can get our team numbers for next year are quite low).

Cheers

Olly
ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

[Magnarama]

Hi,
I've been skulking round here a while, reading up a lot trying to gather as much info as possible without making a fool by opening my mouth with dumb questions(see Waiting Period hehehe). I'm at Adelaide uni doing 2nd year so this is more from the point of view of a 'young 'un'.

From my point of view, last years team was composed of pretty much final year students only and FSAE was viewed as a final year project only, where only final year students had any real input. Younger guys were members of the team but they weren't kept up to date on anything with how the car was going or what was happening with the team. We did have a couple of go-kart nights, but that was about it.

This year there has been a fair bit of a turn around though. The management has decided that it would be a good idea to get some younger people involved with the team so that we could get a more long-term team structure happening. They decided to set up a auxilliary team called the Special Projects Team, SPT, or 'Specials' as I like to call us lol. We were given the task to get the '05 car running in the hope that we would be able to have a car running early for driver training. Due to various reasons this didn't really happen, but it did give us a taste of FSAE http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif.

Along with go-kart days, nights and bbq's it has helped us younger guys to get to know other guys that are interested in this lark and have a glance at how the car is made and designed. By allowing us into the team and allowing us to have some input, even if it is just trying to get a car in running order, I feel the team is gaining more of a legacy and it is stopping us from making the same wrong decisions year after year. According to the course advisor, the previous teams with composed of final years have been making similar mistakes year after year, mainly in management from what I can gather.

The best part about it, from my point of view, is that some of the 2nd and 1st year guys from the SPT have taken up positions in the '07 team. A mate and I have taken on the body design and it's something that we are taking pretty seriously, as we have seen the massive problems that have happened this year due to some manufacturing concerns. Although it isn't a mechanically integral part of the process but we're the ones that make it look sexxy, and that really helps when campaigning for sponsorship. So next year look out for Adelaide at the Aussie comp, we'll have the sexiest car http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_razz.gif.

I like the idea of tutoring you had there Olly, although at this time of the year all of the 4th years are flat out with finishing reports and cramming for exams, so it'd have to be a more term-time thing.

Well Thanks for reading,
Tommo

[JHarshbarger]

I'd like to hear more from new SAE team members like Tommo. We also have a hard time keeping new people around. Whether it's lack of interesting projects to do or poor motivating on our part, we only retain about 1 in 10 people that have the motivation to come to the weekly meetings. We've thought about doing a type of tutoring for people who aren't familiar with fabrication - having a little "workshop" on the lathe or mill, etc. I like the idea of having small "teams" or giving a group of people their own big project to work on when they have the time. For some people it seems like we can't find enough things for them to do, and for others it's like they need a good push to get them going.

If more people could chime in on what they do to keep new members on the team or, if you are a new member, what kept you on the team, that would be very helpful. Right now we are hurting for man-power, and if we don't get more soon we won't have a team in a couple of years.

[Bookhout]

First step is a good team that will back you I think. I was "team Leader" for Binghamton's FSAE team I guess you can call it. We left for summer last year with all intention of doing this project but over summer it turned out I was the only person to do anything. We gave assignments out but no one said they had time. I tried and motovate people but I feel some times if your team doesn't have it in them then it won't happen. We had a meeting the second day of classes and basically canceled the program because no one was motovated I feel it is partially my fault as team leader but if the team is not willing to put time in then they will not be a good team. I am trying to set up the underclassmen but my school does not seem like it has a good chance of sustaining a program. PS. When everyone on my team wanted to drive the old car it just wasn't going to happen and I think that was the only reason most of them joined. Plus they thought it would be an easy project. Oh well now about 13 guys dislike me for that but I did not want to produce less than quality work with a team that was not into it

[js10coastr]

For myself, the shot at winning was a huge motivator. Just thinking of the glory kept me going... and so focusing your program on making the top 5 and making sure that everyone knows that and how all of their efforts are part of that will go a long way.

Alot of the drive has to come from within... the want to improve yourself, along with some curiosity in engineering.

You can't force people into doing volunteer work they don't want to do... so what you have to do is to make the work something that they want to do. Make it fun, exciting, and as easy as possible to find work.

[mtg]

...and find people like js10coastr and I that are caught up in the glory of racing.

[Jersey Tom]

The quality of your car and your placement at competition is first and foremost based on the team you have, how motivated they and the leadership are... and how well your core members can pick up the slack / mistakes from the rest of the team.

Team doesn't need to know much about vehicular design, they just need to be motivated and take direction well. So how do you motivate them? I wish I knew. That's what I'm tryin to figure out now.

What motivates me? The car, and the placement at competition, is a reflection on the program and the team. Its a reflection of me. I take a lot of pride in the quality of my work, am confident we can do top 15 this year, and want to make the best car I can.

The other, big motivator, is having seen how much work goes into these cars over the past two years. Realizing, "Shit, I'm responsible for getting this done right and getting it done on time with a couple months test and tune time." I don't want to be caught with my pants down in April scrambling to get the car done, so I am putting in as many hours now as I can, and will continue to go full tilt until the car is done.

The biggest problem to overcome I think is getting the new guys to realize just how much work it is and how much thought has to go into it. You HAVE to go through a year on the car to really appreciate the amount of hours it takes to get it done. People think something will take one week.. and it winds up taking five weeks.

[Mike Flitcraft]

I'm not an engineer, but I simply love cars and learning new ways of doing things.

I've skipped a few micro-econ classes, but I have to put my classes first. I can't compete or be part of the team if my grades aren't good enough to be a student.

Realizing that you're part of a team and everyone is doing their best to pull together to get it done is a great feeling. After all, Miller Time does come eventually.

[mtg]

Originally posted by Mike Flitcraft:
I've skipped a few micro-econ classes, but I have to put my classes first. I can't compete or be part of the team if my grades aren't good enough to be a student.


As much as it is politically correct to put classes first, the people I saw acheive the most and reap the most rewards while involved with FSAE in college did not put classes first.

From my own experience, I put FSAE first in '04 and '05 while my GPA went down. In the end, I learned much more putting everything in FSAE those two years than I did in all of my classes. Even though I graduated with a pretty good GPA to boot (because of my first two years), both employers I've had since I graduated were much more interested in what I did as Chief Engineer of the FSAE team than my GPA.

The problem with trying to be the person that graduates with a 4.0 and involved with a bunch of crap is you end up with what I call "all-season tire syndrome". You're ok at a lot of things and great at nothing.

Your statement definitely has ground, and this is in no way derogatory to you, Mike, but I figured I'd throw out my thoughts.

[oz_olly]

I really appreciate all the replies so far really good stuff, especially Tommo as you represent the team member I am trying to cater for. Keep up the good correspondance.

As I mentioned in my previous post my uni has a fair few people who are either 51 percenters or they care so much about their marks that they are too scared to do anything that might comprimise their academic glory. So participating in FSAE is seen as either too much work or too much risk. I completely understand the idea of just ticking the boxes but where is the satisfaction in that? You can't really say to future employees how awesome it was that you developed a solution on how best to hold your text books while you copy notes down for hours on end to learn the subject matter (and expect them to be impressed) with little to no practical experience what so ever. If your going to be managing aircraft mechanics (in our case)who love what they do and expect them to respect you if you don't understand some of the issues they face day in day out, I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle for credibility from day one. I figure that if you want to get the most out of FSAE then you have to be prepared to make some sacrifices. With class schedules and limited weekend worktime, I often found myself missing classes so that I could get a decent run at a job. Stopping and starting for classes was very unproductive and seemed to be a waste of time. Like Matt said I am a firm believer that an employer would recognise the lessons learned, time spent and dedication required to build an SAE car while also managing to achieve marks high enough for the uni to give you the piece of paper saying you now have a BEng or otherwise and place this well above a high average with no other experience. For myself my primary role once i graduate will be maintenance and personell management so what better place to learn about these subjects. Even all the leadership and management training admits that there is no substitute for experience. I have learned so much just by critiquing my teams management and looking at where we can improve for next year.

I am really hoping that selling the 'improve yourself as an engineer' will work in getting team members involved rather than just relying on the fact that people should be car mad. There's nothing wrong with being car mad, I often suffer from sleeping difficulties due to processing packaging layouts while trying to sleep (doesn't work well). But as driving is only a carrot that can be dangled for so long i think being a better engineer is a much more sustainable motivator. How much is that a factor for all you guys out there?

From my experience the guys who place academics over SAE seem to dump it as soon as the pressure comes on with assignments etc, and by Murphy's Law it always seems to be at the worst times when the team really needs people. How are hard working team members expected to feel when they are slogging away on their saturday night changing engines etc when a team mate leaves to work on an assignment that all the team members have due and are working themselves into a corner as the submission date approaches rapidly. I don't think there are few things that will smash team moral than that sort of thing. I completely understand that SAE is little without a degree to back it, but whats the worth of a degree that leads to a booksmart engineer who doesn't even know how to tap a thread. I know you can give drawings to a machinist but you have to be able to draw it, dimension and tolerance it in the first place.

Sorry for the disjointed, longwinded rant but I believe commitment from team members is so important if you are to have any real success. I know there is a requirement for balance between school and SAE but is it very realistic to do a good job at SAE and not expect even a slight drop in academic performance?



Olly
ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

[Superfast Matt McCoy]

Give gold stars to members when they get stuff done, then award a giant cookie to whoever has the most gold stars at the end of the year...

There is a LOT of material on motivation and managment, you just have to look for it and read it. Look up "sid's story" or just get a book from the buisness college library. Even with people who are self-motivated, you frequently need to motivate them to do what needs to be done, instead of what they want to do.

Friendly competitions are always helpful, but make sure to try to get everyone involved.

As far as getting team members involved, make it as easy as possible to get involved and always have something for people to do. keeping people interested is a lot easier than getting people to show up in the first place.

[muffrx4]

one word = mouthtestical.

there are numerous HR/SHRM articles on the subject, it's a chicken and egg problem.

Seriously though, it's all about fields of reference and past experience. Understand the individual and only then understand their stengths.

Like seriously, wtf would anyone buy a subaru WRX or a mitushity FTO. i cant answer that question, so how can i give you rules on motivation!

So what do you do?

build a strong team unit just like any team sport, where the sum is greater that then parts, give them all the toys in the world; and move heaven and earth to remove any obstacles(excuses). Humans naturally tend to observe habits that reward.

but most of all - mouthtesticals.

whats a mouthtestical? - it like your balls are in your mouth for 12 months.

[Jersey Tom]

You Australian guys are weird as hell. I like it.

And the giant cookie idea is not bad.

[Mike Flitcraft]

I know there is a requirement for balance between school and SAE but is it very realistic to do a good job at SAE and not expect even a slight drop in academic performance?



Olly
ACME Racing
UNSW@ADFA

THis is my first time back in full time classes in about 3 years. I intend not to screw it up. My ajor isn't engineering (it could be someday, who knows), but after having to do a years worth of night classes just to get a high enough of a GPA to get accepted to full time courses, I refuse to fall back into that hole.

[Wesley]

To be honest, as a new member, I'm not worried about GPA or having the time.

I've got a decent GPA (3.57), and I put maybe 4 hours a week into classes, I'll be a senior in hours after this semester. I expect work hours to change upward, maybe even 200 percent, but the point is, I already have a ton of free time anyways, that I usually spend sitting on my ass doing things like reading FSAE forums. http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif

So if I can just devote the time to SAE that I already waste, that'll be like 4-6 hours a day.

The motivation for me isn't driving. I want to drive it, don't get me wrong, but thats not why I joined. I think the SAE program is the bridge between mechanics and mechanical engineers. Both know their stuff, but ultimately, an engineer who can't cut it outside the world of paper and computer simulation won't be even as useful as an auto mechanic, and an auto mechanic is typically destined to be repairing things for the rest of his life, instead of pushing the envelope and creating new things.

I'd probably be happy working in a machine shop for the rest of my life. But I have the opportunity to both get a degree and valuable experience and some collective knowledge, so I'm going to take advantage of that.

[John Valerio]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Wesley:
So if I can just devote the time to SAE that I already waste, that'll be like 4-6 hours a day.
QUOTE]

exactly. the way i see it is that the average university student spends a ton of time doing nothing (tv, movies, drinking...alot for some) and it is very possible to be involved in FSAE and keep your grades up. i'm not speaking for myself though, as i bombed a couple courses while being the 1 man suspension team last year, but we've had (and have) managers with very good grades.

formula teaches you the cost/benefit analysis way better than classes do. for example, saving time by buying parts like a steering rack you save the design time and material and machine time but lose out on a few grams or packaging integration. this, i find, is akin to some lab reports where, for example, if you don't do any error propagation you save a lot of time but lose only a few marks. maybe i'm shooting myself in the foot, but you gotta do what you gotta do when you're running from the shop to classes to meetings with profs to visiting sponsors etc etc. That's another advantage of formula grads, we can deal with more than academic pressure, and we have the closest to "real world" experience any student has.

[Jenner Collins]

Hi All,

Can I just say this is a great topic to bring up here - management as opposed to techy stuff!

I am a 2nd year BEng Motorsport student and am the group leader for the Class 1 effort we are putting together for this year. I have learned alot about the management side of the team - it is hard. I have made mistakes, but that is what FSAE is for. Whether you miscalculate a bolt size and the car fails, or you can't motivate people - FSAE teaches you this stuff for free.

I am nearly 27, have worked in motorsports a few years now, although not in a management role, and am originally from Australia - been in the UK over 5 years. I would class myself as someone with a bit of get up and go through volunteering at 17 to work for various teams in Australia, then similarly when I got here to the UK. I was not given my opportunities on a platter(this is just how it was - not trying to get a sympathy vote here! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif ).

What I find is that those who want to win and those who are proactive will be the ones who get somewhere in their careers. That drive or desire to win and be the best, not let others down, that is either in you or it is not. On top of this, you make your own luck, the harder you work the luckier you get. Michael Schumacher was always classed as 'lucky', but all you ever hear from Brawn and co is how damn hard he worked - I see a link there.

I wish I had the answer to motivating people and giving them that desire. I love when people come to me and say they have done this, and the radiator will be this size and cost this much, or the guy that tells you the suspension is designed, this is the reason I enjoy the whole team 'thing' for.

Here at Brookes they attach some dissertations/final year projects to the FS car. Which can be good or bad. If someone is motivated it is great and they are enjoying their dissertation as they are really designing somehting and can write about how it all went. However, if someone is not moving fast enough, you can't get someone else to do the job as someone's diss is attached...

Why do I do it? Last year I got a buzz from being one of the team, pulling my weight and getting jobs done. I was lucky enough to drive the skidpan and accel in both the UK and Germany. Whilst I would be dissapointed not to race at the comps, I am a training engineer and so I see driving as a bonus. The team policy is the best drivers drive - that is how is has to be as Pat mentioned a few posts back. All the top teams have great drivers and we have been lucky enough to have some good ones too. And again, as mentioned before, it is satisfying watching your little baby being driven to within an inch if its life! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

As one of two people carrying over from last year (although we do have some from other unis with experience), I was one candidate for Group Leader. Like a few teams, we had a team of 90% 3rd and 4th years, but that changed this year and should benefit the uni in years to come with the 1st/2nd years coming through with early experience - I feel this is invaluable.

Well done to those who made it to the bottom of this long, but hopefully informative post http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif Hope to see you all at competitions very soon!

Regards,

[afroney]

I'll have to vouch for Dan on this one. Dan and other leaders of the past of Iowa State FSAE built a foundation for the success of our teams. I'll have to read the rest of these posts. This is a very interesting topic, and I have always wondered how other teams deal with the the issues that we all share in common