When we think of a hero, it's often a good thought. We instinctively picture someone in a tight suit with a cape, rescuing someone from a burning building and we feel nothing but love and praise for this hero, right?
In this article I'll introduce you to a different view on the hero, and the hero-behaviour many of us have in us. I'll explain why this is harmful for your organisation and why it's sometimes better to "let the fire burn". Sounds unnatural? Keep reading.
What is hero behaviour?
So to start off, let's look at the term "hero behaviour". I don't exactly know where it first came from, and couldn't really find a definition online. But here's a definition I came up with myself:
Hero behaviour: behaviour that occurs when someone is acting outside their accountabilities over and over again, for "the greater good", while actually forsaking their actual appointed responsibilities.
A term you might be familiar with already, if you work with Holacracy, is the "Individual Action": doing something you don't have a role or accountability for. This can happen sometimes, right? But Individual Actions should only be one-offs. If one happens more than once, it should be processed in governance, and the repeating action documented as an accountability on a role.
Maybe you're like me, and you're just the type of person who likes to solve stuff and help others by solving problems. Of course you want to help out your colleague by giving them a full tour of your CRM system. Sure, you'll water the plants this week. A colleague having trouble with the overloaded info inbox? Of course you'll help out by picking up an issue or two. Great colleague, right? Nah-ah.
Let's take the inbox example and explain it a bit further. Imagine I'm Bob, and I hold a role that's accountable for emptying the customer support inbox by the end of the day. On Mondays the inbox is often overflowing and I'm struggling to get it to zero before the day is over. So I ask my support colleagues for help. I Slack a few colleagues to each pick up a few support tickets, so it'll be empty by the end of the day. If two or three people help out, it'll be done in no time.
Now, as a Lead Link, I'm accountable for allocating resources in my circle. But I'm not aware of this problem. All I see at the end of the day is an empty inbox. I also see that the support team is doing fewer calls and making fewer bookings. In this case I'd rather see an inbox with unanswered emails by the end of the day, or be notified by the inbox role that the volume of tickets is too high for one person after the weekend. When others step outside their roles to fix someone else's problem, more problems get created (fewer calls, fewer bookings), and more confusion is created when trying to find the root cause.
This is a simple example of an email inbox, but it happens all over the place, with more complex work too. My point is that sometimes, however awkward it feels, it's better to let the fire burn, or at least notify the right person or role.
In this example it was clearly a resource issue, something a Lead Link can solve by allocating more resources to one role. So, two people handle the inbox on Mondays instead of one, and it's solved.
In other situations, you might be solving problems you're not actually accountable for. And even though you may be praised for wanting to help, you shouldn't do this continuously if it isn't your role. If someone asks you to do it? Point them to the right role. If no role exists? Create one, or add the work you keep doing to an existing role whose purpose it relates to most. But do document it somewhere.
Your pathways, summed up
Imagine a colleague asks you to water the plants again.
- Do you have a role for this? If it falls under your accountabilities, it's not hero behaviour, it's something that can be expected of you in your role.
- Do you have a role for this, but it's too much to do alone? Talk to your Lead Link, who's accountable for resource allocation. If a role is too much for one person, they can assign multiple people to it.
- Is another role accountable for this? Point them to the right role. It's perfectly OK to answer with "not my role". Nice person that you are, you might say "not my role, but check for a relevant role in the office circle", pointing them in the right direction rather than a stern "no, now leave me alone".
- Is there no role accountable for this thing you keep doing? Bring it to governance. Is it work that belongs in a circle you don't hold roles in? Notify the Lead Link, or ask for an invite to governance as an external member.
To be able to do this, I think it's important for an organisation to have a high level of trust. If your culture pushes too much on performance, team members may find it hard to say when a role is getting too much. It's important that they do, instead of trying to solve things like Bob with the inbox role. You need a place where team members feel safe to fail.
So, to sum up: sure, you want to be a nice colleague and help out a teammate every now and then. But don't do it structurally. If you're a naturally helpful type, this is harder to get used to. Stop trying to solve things for other people. Sometimes it's better to let others feel the pain a bit, no matter how awkward it makes you feel when you know you can easily solve something. Solving stuff for other people can also mean you rob them of the opportunity to learn, or to find a solution themselves.
An example is how I once set up a sales team. I was the first Sales Agent and soon got a hiring role to start recruiting and building the team. Every time a new Sales Agent was hired, they were onboarded by a colleague who knew nothing about the sales processes we used. So in the end, I was explaining all the sales-related stuff to them.
The onboarding role wasn't in my circle, and even though I'd requested to be assigned to it, I hadn't been given it yet. So one day a new sales agent started, and I did nothing. I prepared nothing, I explained nothing. I let the onboarding role handle the whole thing, which was suddenly confusing because they had no knowledge of what had to be done.
Everyone felt this tension so badly that shortly after, I was assigned an onboarding role with a focus on Sales Agents. Boom. Could I have done more to solve the tension? Maybe. But I wasn't accountable for it, and from my roles I shouldn't care about it, the onboarding role should. I stopped doing what I wasn't accountable for, and because that made the tension so obvious, it was solved in no time.
You might argue there are other, or better, ways to solve a tension. But my point is simply that by trying to solve other people's problems you create more work for yourself, work that takes time away from the things you are accountable for and the things others can actually expect of you. So be aware of this phenomenon. If you catch yourself in something that looks like hero behaviour, be conscious about it and ask yourself whether you're really helping, or potentially harming the bigger picture.
Roll up your cape and let people solve their own tensions.