How to help combat un-involved team members

Well, I find this to be ineffective. Simply showing up doesn’t necessarily mean active involvment as I have many team members who show up but fool around for most of the time. What I can say is that there needs to be a leader somewhere who is willing to put up with these kinds of teammates and guide them to an active role.

No one likes a controlling team leader, that is not a good way to showing anyone the best parts of STEM. Rather, STEM (robotics in this case) should be driven by curiousity. You have to make your teammates curious to learn more, and let them explore for themselves. For some teams, this means assigning roles in things those members are actually interested in. For others, it can be working fluidly between roles with no real structure. The choice is up to them.

The biggest take away here is communication. The best teams communicate and build strong friendships. You don’t want meetings to feel like a burden, they should feel fun. Talk to your team members on what they want to do, and allow them to have (productive) fun. I hope that helps.