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.
I’ve written about hero culture before and I’ll let you read it there instead of repeating it.
It’s quite common to have a team of people where there is one senior person and many less experienced people. This arrangement does not necessarily mean that we’ll start to develop hero culture, although it’s a very real possibility and something we need to watch for.
Left unchecked, hero culture will result in the “hero” burning out and everyone else so thoroughly disengaging that nothing gets done. Nobody wins when we let hero culture take over.
Last week, I read Shatter the Hero Culture: Organizational Strategies to Boost Teamwork, which is the first book I’ve seen on this topic. The author does an excellent job of explaining the fundamental problem and providing specific steps for undoing it.
I see hero culture at just about every company I work with. Sometimes there are just one or two heroes and sometimes it’s everywhere you look. If you see it in your environment, this book may help.