An "individual hero" in a tech team is a team member who is sometimes perceived to be the only one involved in the success of a project - because of their knowledge. These individuals are usually sometimes perceived as the only one getting a lot of the work done during a specific sprint or project. This does not necessarily mean these “heroes” are the brain behind the success of all projects in their teams, but they can sometimes take on the pivotal role of solving critical and complex problems that their teams encounter during their daily work.
Having a person that’s perceived to be a “hero” in a tech team might have a few benefits. Some of these benefits includes:
Speed and efficiency - the team is able to speedily and quickly resolve complex problems that might show up - especially close to a release or delivery.
High innovation within the team.
“Heroes” can sometimes take up leadership roles within the team thus ensuring that the decision making process is fast and seamless.
“Heroes” might serve as an inspiration to new team members with very little industry experience.
However, as much as a few of these “heroes” are perceived to be more talented by leaders, it should be noted that one persons competence cannot single-handedly determine the success or the failure of a project, sprint or task.
There should a balance between rewarding a “hero” in a team and recognising the effort of all team members towards the successful completion of a project. Not striking this healthy balance could lead to: reduced team morale as other team members might feel under-appreciated for their contribution. In extreme situations this reduced team morale can lead to high turn over of employees (employees quitting), reduced efficiency and productivity within the team as well as passive aggressive behavior amongst team members. Excessively rewarding and glorifying perceived “heroes” in tech teams could also lead to over-reliance on these individuals which might then cause several bottlenecks within the team’s work - a case of nothing gets done until the “hero” shows up. This slows down innovation within the team, kills team morale, slows-down learning and shatters the confidence of other team members.
The downsides of leaders over glorifying “heroes” in tech teams is not only borne by other team members. There are downsides to the perceived “heroes” themselves as they are prone to taking up more work than they should take up. This happens because they usually would feel under pressure to retain the “hero” status. Taking up more work will lead to burn-out which might eventually make them quit the organisation.
In order to mitigate or reduce these problems, leaders of tech teams should recognise all team members contribution towards the success of a project - this will boost the morale of everyone in the team, reduce toxicity in teams, increase retention, increase unity and improve efficiency as well as product quality. Leaders should also promote knowledge sharing at all times as this will reduce the bottlenecks and dependencies that having individual heroes in teams bring. Workload will be balanced when bottlenecks are reduced and burn-out will be eradicated.
Lastly, great collaboration and excellent team spirit should be every leaders goal. These can be achieved when every team member is a part of the success story of the project, sprint or task.
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Interesting write up. These are among the many issues within a team that never get discussed. It takes collective effort within any team in resolving this. Silos is no brainer in building an efficient and effective team within any organization.
Great
This is indeed a subject that should be discussed more amongst tech leaders. Thank you for writing about this.