Look for new battles
Prepare to reassure your heroes by looking for new opportunities to engage and excite them. Help them feel valued even as you change their roles.
While you don’t want things to fall apart if something happens to one of your heroes, you equally don’t want to your heroes to become disillusioned. They like being seen as essential, after all. Plan to redirect their efforts into things that are less mission critical, day to day, but that still make them key players on your team:
- Can they help train your team, sharing their knowledge?
- Can they coach individual players, not just on what to do but on how to do it better?
- Can they write down what they know, creating a resource that other people can refer back to? Can you give them responsibility for keeping it up to date?
When to take this action
This action is from 'No heroics' and should be used when a small number of people on your team are involved in everything, when you're worried about succession planning, when you're managing risks
Need something else?
personal-development
Who are your heroes?
Constant heroics lead to long term damage. Who are your constant heroes and how risky is their behaviour?
personal-development
Reveal the damage
You may have to make drastic steps to convince your heroes that things need to change, but you don't want to cause disaster.
one-to-ones
Offer reassurance
Keep your heroes onside while you reduce the risk they create.
with-your-boss
Enlist support
Help your boss understand what you're doing, and build a case for change together.