From Hero to Leader
Do you feel that every hard problem lands on you? When something is urgent, or nobody else can figure it out, it comes to you and you get it done? There’s a real pride in that. There’s also a quiet exhaustion, and underneath it a frustration you probably don’t say out loud: “why isn’t anyone else stepping up?”
Book: Shatter the Hero Culture
Hero culture is a situation where one person, or a small number of people, take on the majority of the work, and others start to step back. If you hear things like “these people don’t pull their weight and I have to do everything for them”, you may not have lazy people at all. You may have the effects of hero culture destroying the teamwork that you should have.
Hero culture revisited
It’s fairly common to have a junior team of people, with one far more senior person leading them. This can be an effective way to grow skill across the org.
My people aren’t participating
I frequently hear “my people won’t speak up during standup” or “they aren’t participating in retro” or other activities. Unfortunately, there are many different reasons why this might be so it’s not a simple problem to fix. Step one is to figure out why this might be happening.
Hero Culture
Hero culture is when we rely on individual heroics on a regular basis. Someone pulling an all-nighter to get one thing done, one time, may be ok. Relying on that on an ongoing basis is unsustainable and will destroy whatever teamwork and culture you used to have.