The difficulties of managing a "independent" team of high school students

Hayabusa Racing 初期メンバー

It's not a "club activity," nor a "circle," nor a "club activity." It's not that there are no adults around, but they don't help out, and while all the responsibility lies with the high school students, they don't have all the decision-making power either. This "high school volunteer team" is in an exquisitely difficult position.

What is a independent team?

First of all, what is a "independent" team of high school students?

A typical high school team is backed by a school or some other organization, has an adult who takes responsibility, and an adult who manages the management of funds, etc. This would be a "club activity" or a "student council." A typical team is basically made up of students from the same school.

In contrast, a volunteer team is a team that is formed when, for some reason, a school cannot do something and people from various schools say, "Let's do it on our own." Responsibility is basically left to the high school students themselves and the leader's parents, but of course high school students alone cannot do anything because they cannot even open a bank account: therefore, basically some kind of adult power is needed. It is often a parent, but it can also be another company, a non-profit organization, or a mentor.

As you can see from the paragraph above, it is very unclear at this point where responsibility and decision-making power lies, and in the first place, it is extremely difficult for high school students to run a team on their own without any guidance from adults.

What are the challenges in managing a team?

The most difficult aspect of managing a volunteer team of high school students can be summed up in one word: "motivation management." This is because it is very difficult to be asked to do something by an adult and for high school students to decide to do it together. It's a different story if you can get some kind of reward, but it's really difficult to assign work to members who join because they "just want to try something."

That is because high school students do not have the two letters "responsibility" in their minds. There may be some when they become adults, but at least in high school, anything other than "doing what someone tells you to do" is basically just play, and doing work independently and responsibly is truly unheard of for high school students.

For some reason, most of the members of our team are strangely responsible, so we assign them regular work and they complete the work when the deadline comes, which is a great help. However, with other teams, this doesn't work out so well, and they suddenly disappear without doing any work. I'd like to say that they are irresponsible, but the general opinion is that it can't be helped since they are high school students.

For smooth team management

There are still many problems in the team that have not been resolved, but I feel that what is needed for smooth team management is not so much "relationships of trust" but rather "the ability to trust." That is, when entrusting work to someone, I feel that the most important thing is to give him work that matches his abilities with 100% confidence. There must be some joy in being trusted, and when that overlaps with your area of expertise, you can demonstrate your strengths, so I think it is important to have the right person in the right place.

Of course, there are some jobs that cannot be done this way, so I believe it is our role as leaders to either ask a teammate who we have confidence in to do the job, or to have the leader or project manager take on this task.