Gracious Professionalism and Ethics

Gracious Professionalism^® is a key part of every FIRST^® program. I’ve introduced the concept to kids as young as first grade as part of a FIRST^® LEGO^® League Explore team. Doing good work, trying our best, and treating everyone with respect and grace are straightforward concepts for young kids to understand.

FIRST^® Tech Challenge Sr. Program Director Rachel Moore spoke about Gracious Professionalism as part of the FIRST Tech Challenge Kickoff a few weeks ago. If you’ve not yet seen it, I encourage you to check it out and maybe watch and discuss it as part of a team meeting (you can find it at around seven minutes into the FIRST Tech Challenge Kickoff Broadcast).

Several years ago, Dr. Woodie Flowers encouraged FIRST teams to approach Gracious Professionalism by looking at ethics. He encouraged teams to explore and develop their own team cultures by evaluating the Codes of Ethics of other organizations. I’m sharing his instructions below, and I encourage all teams to try this ethics activity this season prior to Kickoff.

Create an Ethics experience for your team! 
by Dr. Woodie Flowers, FIRST Distinguished Advisor and 1996 Woodie Flowers Award Winner

Have a short conversation about how Gracious Professionalism is linked to ethics. Introduce thinking ahead — how the team/individuals should react to an ethically-complex situation since one or several will likely happen every season.

1. Assign homework for two or three team members to find and read the Code of Ethics for three major professional organizations. Encourage them to pick diverse organizations but include at least one scientific or engineering society.
2. At the next team meeting, report on their research by distributing a typical Code of Ethics. Point out how the ones read were similar.  Point out how the ones read were different. (The presentation should be brief – this issue is not to study others’ codes but create the team’s own).
3. In a less-than-one-hour exercise, have team subgroups of 3 or 4 write codes for team members behaviors toward one another, team behavior in interacting with other teams before competition, team behavior in interaction with other teams in competition, team interaction with society.
4. Collect the responses without discussion. Before the next meeting, summarize the codes in each category and give each team member the opportunity to rate the importance of each code statement in a secret ballot. Use a simple rating such as essential – not an issue – not needed. The “vote” should be after brief discussion – but save the deeper discussion until the results can be seen by the whole team.

A rich exchange may result.

If consensus is reached, have the group voice vote to accept the most popular code entries. Then have the team decide how they would like to publish their code.

Planning is key. Just like how having a safety plan can help your team be prepared to respond to unsafe situations, having an ethics plan and a team-based understanding of Gracious Professionalism can help team members be prepared to handle tricky, complex situations that are bound to happen during the build season, at events, and in life.