Why being a hero isn’t great – Don't stagger from crisis to crisis, be a leader!
Swooping in and saving the day is great in the moment. But long term, it hurts your career. There's a better path to being invaluable.
Going the extra mile, being dedicated, intelligent, knowledgeable and hard-working. These are great attributes for any employee — and your classic hero generally ticks all the boxes. They’re ambitious and at the top of their game and of course, they have a reputation for saving the day, pulling the team out of the fire again and again.
Take Jimmy, a senior developer at an interactive design agency. A customer called with an emergency after hours. Their servers were down. Apparently, part of the system that handled video intake, transcoding, and streaming to who knows how many other platforms stopped processing video. Jimmy was there, jumping on the problem and diving right in. He pulled a late night, found the problem, and everything was back online before business kicked off in the morning. The client was happy again.
If you’re new, welcome to Customer Obsessed Engineering! Every week I publish a new article, direct to your mailbox if you’re a subscriber. As a free subscriber you can read about half of every article, plus all of my free articles.
Anytime you'd like to read more, you can upgrade to a paid subscription.
This wasn’t a one-off either, Jimmy is always saving the company’s bacon. There was a time when a looming deadline threatened as delivery fell behind schedule. A late delivery would mean stiff penalties for the agency. The team was doing everything they could to finish on time, but it was Jimmy who pulled it over the finish line. He knew the code better than anyone else, and was able to crank out feature after feature just 48 hours before launch. Once again, Jimmy saved the day.
Jimmy is a hero, and heroes are common in small teams that face lots of challenges. Heroes often are the team. Brilliant engineers, founders, creators, they have the whole product in their head, they know the solution, and they’re the best one to get the job done.
On the surface, being a hero sounds like a great career move and an excellent way to make yourself invaluable. It’s not. Being a hero is a huge liability.
Before we talk about more effective ways to make yourself invaluable, let’s explore what being a hero really means.
What happens after the party?
After Jimmy saved the day and delivered that project, the team got together to celebrate. Somewhere amidst the revelry, the CEO asked, “Why can’t we perform like this all the time?”
The attention was on how the team, but especially Jimmy, came together to overcome yet another crisis. The assumption was that the team had rallied around that crisis, and triumphed — perpetuating a misconception: That heroes arise because they are responding to crises beyond the team’s control. In fact, perpetual crises are generated by a culture that prizes heroism and enables the hero. There was talk about “learning how to improve” but in the end, the team failed to acknowledge what was really wrong.
Which brings me back to the CEO’s question, and the root of the problem. Heroism is a sign that you have a very immature organization, and we’ll expose exactly what this means. Sooner or later, leadership is going to clue in.
We’ll talk about what happens after leadership has clued in a bit later. First, we need to understand why heroism is bad.
Why heroes aren’t good for the team
First, we have to recognize that heroes can only exist when there are crises. Those crises are what position a hero to save the day. But, in a healthy organization, a truly mature team will be adept at foreseeing the signs of a crisis well in advance — and will defuse the situation before it actually becomes a crisis.
And that comes to the heart of the matter: If a mature team will defuse a situation before it turns into a crisis, then heroes need immature teams that they can save. In other words, they need to keep the team down, limit growth, and foster attributes that perpetuate immature team dynamics. Ultimately, this is going to be frustrating for the team because it limits their growth. Most of the time, it’s not going to be through overt or aggressively negative behaviors from the hero. It’s going to come from a vacuum of leadership. Heroes tend to be “too busy” to mentor their teammates, or perhaps they can’t be bothered with “management duties” when there’s important work to do. The outcome is a team left to their own devices, while the person most qualified to uplift the team is busy elsewhere. With a bit of introspection we’ll see other signs of an unhealthy relationship. Information hoarding, poor communication, and perhaps subtly pointing the team off track (which might be as simple as not pointing them in the right direction — while the hero goes there alone).
It’s destructive, self-serving behavior, leading to more crises and a false sense of being indispensable. But it also prevents the company from growing and scaling. Eventually, it’s a house of cards. The overall lack of efficiency leads to collapse at scale because the hero is a single point of failure.
There’s an ever-increasing likelihood that luck will run out, and the hero will fail as other countermeasures against risk are not instituted. Eventually leadership will clue in. By then it’s too late — now the hero has been identified as the source of the problem. It can be a career-ending move, and it’s inevitable.
Understanding hero culture
Chances are it’s not just one person enabling a hero culture. It takes a whole work culture to do it. That culture in and of itself can be pretty destructive. But there’s good news — hero cultures can’t survive without that team effort. It’s pretty easy to break out of the dysfunctional mold and start building maturity in the organization.
One of the common organizational dysfunctions is failing to recognize work that delivers results where heroics aren’t involved. The very definition of “hero culture” means the lion’s share of attention goes to the hero, ignoring the majority of the work being done by the wider team. In other words, the day-to-day hard work of the team and individuals needs to be recognized, not the heroics. By aggrandizing the hero role, it demoralizes everyone else while stoking hero egos.
Instead, focus on rewarding everyone for work well done. Recognize that effort, call out team accomplishments and those regular deliverables, let individuals know their work is valuable. It also helps to shift away from calling out one person’s effort, and instead recognize how the team played a role.
Don’t create a culture that supports a hero mentality. A hero personality, when catered to, can destroy a team — the behavior is destructive, and an addiction.
That’s why being a hero is actually a career killer. Once the problems are exposed, the heroes are the first ones to go. Once identified as the source of the problem, the hero becomes a liability that needs to be managed — and often, that means eliminating a role that’s deemed toxic.
The good news is, heroes are ideally positioned to turn things around. There are far better ways to become invaluable and indispensable.
Better ways to be invaluable
The reformed hero is in a perfect position to turn things around, creating a well organized and mature team. That means eschewing those dysfunctional behaviors in favor of new strategies that benefit the team, not a hero’s ego. The first step is recognizing the value of this transition: Transforming a dysfunctional organization into a streamlined, mature one that scales along with the business.
The key is transitioning into a leadership role that creates and multiplies value, builds the team’s capabilities, and creates benefit across the organization.
In the rest of this article we’ll explore strategies for making that transition, and the tactical, day-to-day actions that lead to success.
Instead of thinking along the lines of serially solving one crisis after another (until burnout), the reformed hero can take on a transformative role. By becoming a force multiplier the hero truly adopts a heroic stance: Transforming an immature team into a high-performing, efficient team. Instead of tackling one crisis at a time, the multiplied power of the team eliminates every crisis thrown at it.
At the core of this transformation is shifting from information hiding to sharing, from positioning oneself for success to enabling others.
It might feel like trying to make oneself obsolete — and in some regards, it’s exactly that. But practically speaking that won’t happen because the strengths of the hero (dedication, intelligence, deep product knowledge) are differentiators. Once the team adopts today’s practices, the hero will be forging ahead figuring out how to organize the team to surmount the next obstacle. The hero becomes the tip of the spear, pointing the team and the organization to their next success.
Here are some day-to-day actions that can help lead that transformation:
Create high value work that others rely on. This just means upping your game when it comes to sharing the work you’re already producing. Think about how that work can better be leveraged by the team — improved documentation, better organization, cleaner interfaces.
Lead the team with best practices. Demonstrate the right design approach, development patterns, and day-to-day practices with your team. Take on pair programming or peer review roles, collaborate with the team, and guide them toward better behaviors.
Share knowledge. Build on delivering value to your team by actively sharing what you are learning. Spend time with team members that are looking for an opportunity to pick up new skills (or improve existing ones). Think about doing “team brown bags” to demo new technologies, techniques, or the solutions to tough problems.
Be a problem solver. Be that resource the team comes to when they need help. Solve problems side-by-side with your team members, teaching them how to implement the solution instead of just solving it for them.
Become a mentor. Take on the role of a career mentor for one of your team. Spend time once a month to talk about where to invest in skills development, suggest learning and development resources, and talk about career paths (or just answer any questions that come up).
Take on a customer obsessed product mindset for your own work, thinking of the team as your customer. Align on creating more value for the team.
Level up everyone’s game. Challenge yourself to find new ways to level up the whole team. Look for what’s not going well, and talk with your team about how to improve. Bring ideas to the team as a group, socialize possible solutions, and let the team come up with some of their own brilliant ideas. Then support them by taking part in implementation.
I’ve run some pretty large-scale quality assurance efforts over the years, including some pretty nifty stuff in the defense and aerospace area. These were big projects, and I had the privilege of working with some really amazing quality assurance professionals.
One of my biggest take aways from that time was the remarkable difference I’d see in the QA division. There were basically two kinds of quality assurance professionals:
The “QA cop” that scolded the team when they did something wrong.
The problem solver that helped level up the team.
In the first role, the QA would expose problems. Maybe a bug, or poorly structured deliverables, or missing acceptance criteria. Whatever it was, their approach was to call out the problem, throw it back at the team, and act like Gandalf (“thou shalt not pass!”). When the team saw these QA coming, they’d typically head the other way. It was never good news, and nobody wanted to talk to them.
In contrast were the QA pros that turned up the same problems, but dealt with them in a totally different way. Instead of being an obstacle, they’d come to the table with a solution. They’d sit down with a developer, saying in essence, “Hey, I found a problem, but I think I’ve got a couple ideas on how to fix this.” They’d work across teams, often finding better ways to tackle the problem. They were valued members of the team that everyone enjoyed having around — because they knew their own jobs were going to be easier because the QA had their back.
That kind of contribution gets noticed. It raises the overall capability of the whole team, and ultimately the company. Being recognized for that is truly transformative. It makes you irreplaceable because you are a force multiplier — effectively creating a supercharged team. As the leader that creates that kind of high-functioning organization, you are truly invaluable.
Be the catalyst for change in your organization. In any business environment, it’s essential if you want to thrive and support your team (and your company) as it scales. Imagine what you can accomplish as a leader and force multiplier.
For the team lead or manager
If you’re a team lead facing the reality of having a hero on your team, it’s time to take action. Long term, the hero culture will destroy your team. Start by engaging with the hero and the team in a constructive way:
Don’t be tempted to overreact. The first step should be one-on-one conversation with your hero. Awareness is the first step and in some cases, it could largely be lack of awareness of the problem — find out if your hero is willing to make a change. If they’re open to it, encourage leadership and mentoring. It might be that repositioning the hero within your organization makes sense too, depending on their own interests. A slightly more siloed R&D role might be one possible outcome. The important thing is to break the dysfunctional behaviors that elevate a hero role and create crisis in the team.
Don’t recognize the heroic efforts of a hero. Don't reward someone that creates the very conditions they need to step up and save the day as a hero. This will help break the dysfunction.1
Be cautious when installing a hero in a leadership, management, or mentoring role. If it turns out your “reformed hero” is good at it, that’s fantastic — but there’s a dangerous downside if they aren’t: From a position of authority, a hero can do even more damage. Move a hero into these roles incrementally, and with care. Make sure the transformation is real.
Reinforce cross-functional planning and communication. Drive practices that improve team awareness across the project and the organization. Require best practices like up-front collaborative design work, and avoid having any one person become embedded or siloed in one specialization. By moving responsibilities within the team, each team member gets exposed to new skills, team capabilities are improved, and a wider base of knowledge about the project as a whole is established.
Reward teams, not individuals. Make sure that the team gets recognized for pushing a product over the line. Don’t single out individuals except in a way that also supports the whole team (and don’t keep rewarding the same individual).
Develop systems, not ad-hoc practices. For example, push the team to develop a playbook, and encourage the team to follow it. Such a playbook should be a group exercise, and once in place it guides the team on how to deliver. Everyone will be expected to follow the best practices of the playbook, from junior team members to seniors, and yes, the hero. No more hoarding information or soloing.
When it comes time to talk about progression, measure team dynamics, not just individual contribution. “Contribution to others” measures how well someone collaborates and supports the work of others, while “leveraging others” measures how good they are at reaching out for help and building on others’ ideas.
Read Does Your Company Lurch from Crisis to Crisis?, and explore the 4-step program for Heroes Anonymous. Step one? Admit you have a problem. Understand that the need for heroes is a sign of an immature organization.2
Jim Schleckser, The CEO Project, Why Heroic Efforts Are Damaging Your Company Growth, Inc Magazine.
Ron Carucci, Does Your Company Lurch from Crisis to Crisis?, Harvard Business Review.
Again a great topic and some content focus we both have in common 👍 :)