No Super Hero in Team

Our modern day culture worships super heroes: Superman, Superwoman, Batman, Antman, Spider-Man, Cat-Woman ... When we have enough of these up tight, righteous heroes, we create anti-hero like Deadpool. They all share the same script: when we commoners screw up, when we are oppressed by bad people, when we are hopeless and helpless, super heroes show up and save the day. They are our saviors. We can always count on them. Super hero might be a lucrative genre for movies, but in a real team, I would argue that a super hero is bad, both for the team, and for the super hero themselves. When we stay in a team long enough we tend to know a lot of things: the types of stuff that are not documented and nobody else knows. We feel good about these precious knowledge and we might even unconsciously hoard them so we can hold on to the super power. We become the only one who can do X - the super heroes that always save the day. The team and leaders count on us. They can't live without us. We are the ones that work the hardest and the long hours. Every decision has to be made by the super heroes. We complain about we never have the time to work on that strategic project but - we are so busy saving the days. Secretly we enjoy the super hero status so much we just can't let it go. A common example of a super hero in a software team is the one who can get a release out. When a team doesn't invest on continuous integration and deployment, every software release needs a heroic act. So there will be someone in the team who knows the magic of shipping a release to production - the super hero! Team members around super heroes don't grow much, just like the mortals in the super hero movies. They get used to relying on the heroes. The super heroes also don't grow much. They stay inside their comfort zones and enjoy doing the same heroic stunts again and again, although they might constantly complain about why the team being so dependent on them. When you ask a super hero team member to give a tech talk to train other people how to do X, or automate the process for X ... they often find excuses not to do it. Because without X, who needs super heroes? The moral of the story: 1. Don't be a super hero in your team, be a leader, a force multiplier, make the people around you better. If you feel your team can't function without you, you have to be in every meeting, you never have the time to think and learn anymore: you are in a dangerous super hero position, fix it. 2. As a team, don't encourage super heroes: everyone is replaceable, everyone can leave and will leave one day. Automate, invent and simplify, make all processes repeatable without relying on heroes. We need self driven, self reliant professionals in teams, not super heroes.