What an Organizational Hero is not.

• You stay late to complete a project every so often.
• You work a lot of hours over a short period of time because of an high-impact season 
  • Let’s say summer camp, Christmas, a major outreach promotion. 
• You work really hard
• You feel like you can do a better job at something than someone else
• You take pride in your work

What an Organizational Hero is.

Essentially, the Organizational Hero is the extreme case of these tendencies.

• You stay late to complete a project regularly. You always feel like you have more work than you can get done.
• You always have a reason to work a lot of hours–regardless of the ministry season.
• You work really hard without taking breaks to rest
• You feel like you can do things better than others, but you take on more yourself rather than helping them do better work
• You find your identity in your work

How do people become Organizational Heroes?

1. You love the organization.

2. Leadership affirms that you should invest more.

3. You are proud.

How Organizational Heroes hurt the organization.

1. They hide issues

2. The drive a toxic staff culture

3. They burn out and increase turnover

4. They prevent others from developing

5. They make it impossible for leadership to plan

What do I do about it?

1. Check your heart

• Address the root of pride in your life that is causing you to elevate yourself above your peers and look down on them. Instead, identify someone you work with that you can help make better. 

2. Start measuring things

• It’s hard to tell if you are losing weight without weighing yourself
• It’s hard to tell if you are running faster if you aren’t timing yourself
• It’s hard to tell if you are lifting more if you aren’t keeping a log
• It’s hard to tell if you are under budget if you aren’t tracking your expenses
• How can you tell if you are taking on too much if you aren’t keeping track of what you are doing?
•  Track your time over the course of a week. Look at where you time is going. Start learning how much time each of your tasks takes. 
  • For example, how long does your small group take? Most people will say “a couple of hours”. Is that true? Is it more like 2.5? Sometimes is it 3? The difference between an even taking 2 hours and 3 hours becomes really important when leadership asks you to add another responsibility to your plate.

3. Talk about it

• Have conversations with leadership unpacking what your workload looks like. If you just say you “feel busy”, you haven’t helped anyone. Explain what things take the most time, and see if there is something that can come off your plate.
• Leadership won’t react immediately because the conversations you have are the beginning of them studying the situation and seeing how they can best solve the problem, while also accomplishing goals for the organization.
• These are ongoing conversations that help you and leadership. Having them might feel embarrassing at first, or even like you are failing. But you aren’t failing. You are hanging up your cape so the organization can be made better.