At some point in time, an employee (let’s call him Eddie Expert) gains deep knowledge in a certain area of his job. That’s good and valuable to the company.
A healthy perspective of a leader is to consider Eddie as a seed of knowledge that is meant to grow throughout the company by sharing his knowledge.
But the reality looks different: For the sake of “efficiency” guided by “we don’t have time”, managers take terrible decisions because they are not aware of the following vicious cycle.
Back to Eddie Expert: Instead of supporting spreading the knowledge an expert has, some managers route all work related to this area to Eddie Expert. So he really (even if he would like to) hasn’t time to educate others. The usual arguments sound like “This is a logical and economic decision” or “We need to do it fast, so Eddie has to do it”. By doing this multiple times, Eddie will change his opinion about the situation he’s in.
I see three solution approaches Eddie will soon consider:
- becoming a toxic expert
- leave the project
- leaving the company by quitting or burnout
Recently, I put this into a broader context to reveal highly destructive behavior managers must be aware of as it is not obvious at first sight.
How to read the following diagrams
Read in multiple iterations
The more often a person experiences these cycles, the more likely it is, that he/she will try to get out of these cycles as it is getting worse and worse for them.
Format
Thick lines are the current path I’m talking about.
About colors:
A seemingly harmless start
Business as usual: Eddie is the only guy with knowledge in this area. He asks his manager for support and creates awareness, that he’s the only one. His manager postpones knowledge sharing and promises to take care of it afterward. Seems like everything is going fine.
Manager fails gives a promise and fails
The same situation, but now Eddie reminds his manager of the promise he gave to him. And the manager doesn’t keep his promise for whatever reason.
“Run Forest, run!” – Escaping
The same situation, but now Eddie understands, that nothing will ever change. He heard enough promises and he is now actively starting to get out of this misery by avoiding working in the project or company. It is a highly competent decision to escape from an environment where he’s totally stuck with nearly no control.
Birth of “Toxic Expert”
This time Eddie Expert learns and likes that he’s the one and only guy that can do these expert things. Eddie will from now on defend his position as an outstanding expert by holding back his expertise in some way.
The more often his expertise is required by the company the more it depends on him. The consequences on his colleagues can be quite dramatic on the internal processes and the motivation in the team, as they also depend on him. This is a horrible situation for a team striving for high-performance and autonomy.
What to learn?
Managers are responsible to create an environment where people have the opportunity to learn and share their knowledge. Of course, this only works well if experts see it as part of their job to educate others.
To me, it can be a dramatic risk for the whole company if such a person is (for whatever reason) not there anymore. Who can drive things forward? Which projects are affected or blocked?
But still, I see managers preventing people from learning and sharing by the excuse of “we don’t have time”. I understand that this is sometimes true, but then tell me: “And when will we have time”?
It is their job to mitigate the risk for the company.