Employee Phenotypes Part 1: Rocks and Slingshots
And how we can find a place for every effective employee
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As a manager, I have a few different frameworks I use to understand the role each person plays on my team. I call these roles “Phenotypes”, because while they are fairly universal across teams, it isn’t a dedicated role that someone decides to take on, rather it is a determination made based on the behaviors and characteristics of the employee. This is the first in what will likely be a three-part series of posts on the different phenotypes I have observed in my management and coaching practices, the goal of which is to help you understand who you want to be, how to best utilize your strengths, and how to market yourself to your current or future manager.
A Team In Transition
One of the larger teams that I inherited when starting a job was directly in the line of sight of the entire organization. Their work impacted every engineer at the company, and had historically been failing at every turn. The team was understaffed, unmanaged, and tired. Right before I joined, things started shifting: a handful of senior engineers from around the org had moved to this team to help fix endemic issues in core technology, and some of the lower performers were “encouraged to move on”.
Most of the team was able to deal with the the shift towards faster paced work, and embraced learning newer technologies. But one of the engineers was defeated and confided in me that he didn’t think he was going to be able to cut it. He had a perfect storm of family issues, medical problems, and was crippled by the fear that he was not going to be able to keep up. In fact, it didn’t even seem like he wanted to keep up- this engineer requested of me that I never promote him, as he didn’t want to increase his responsibility.
My direct wouldn’t hear any of this- if I brought this information to him, he would have had me fire the team member. His new edict was “top performers only.” But at the same time, I knew that we couldn’t lose this team member. Not only would I not be able to live with myself if we terminated someone in his situation, but the reality is, I saw this person as a top performer- he was a rock.
Rocks Vs. Slingshots
Rocks are reliable employees. They log on at 9 and log off at 5. They do their trainings on time, keep their tickets up to date, and show up to meetings without fail. They are reliable and sturdy.
When we give a rock a task that is well-scoped and clearly defined, they get it done. If we give them a project that is large and unclear, they struggle to start moving on it- because rocks don’t propel themselves. If they’re asked to go above and beyond by taking extra on-call shifts, they will acquiesce, but if they’re asked to build something from scratch that has never been done before at this company, they will likely either freeze up or do the bare minimum to just get it working, duct tape and cardboard style.
If you don’t see the need for this type of member on your team, you haven’t (successfully) led enough teams.
Slingshots, on the other hand, are dynamic. When given a target, they aim, draw, and fire. If they hit their target, they can take down a beast (such as a BHAG), and if they miss, they start again. These are the employees who take on big projects, who go off and try things out until they find the right approach. They’re not always the most reliable- sometimes they dry fire, or miss their mark, but they get up and do it again.
The reality is, however, a slingshot is useless without a rock. When a slingshot brings a solution to the table, they need a team to help execute on it. Your slingshot will deliver a prototype, a project plan, a backlog of tickets, and will send your rocks sailing at their target. It takes both types of employees for a team to build, maintain, and sustain itself successfully.
The metaphor is pretty straightforward:
Without rocks a slingshot cannot accomplish anything meaningful.
Without a slingshot, a rock won’t have anything worthwhile to do.
As a manager, I ensure that I have a solid balance of rocks and slingshots on my team. As the keeper of the roadmap I will know what the right balance is, and as it changes over time, I’ll know how to continue growing and coaching my team members. As a career coach, I help my clients understand what their type is, and help them market themselves as such- because a self-actualized, self-aware employee is the best one to have.
Where To Put Your Rocks
So what happened to my rock? Systems thinking tells us that a component isn’t broken or unnecessary just because it doesn’t fit, rather it might just be misplaced. I zoomed out and looked at the problems on the team. Given that all of my slingshots were “drawing” (in the planning and early execution stage for high-profile projects), anything that took their attention away from those projects threatened timelines. Meanwhile, this employee didn’t want the responsibility of leading a project, and would rather just chomp through a queue of work, helping people and feeling useful. The solution hit me like a bag of bricks (or rocks? I don’t know, I’ve abused this metaphor enough).
When I announced to the team that we were shifting from a team-wide on-call rotation to having a dedicated front-line help desk engineer, everyone was thrilled. When one of them turned to the rock and said “Wow, thank you, I know this can’t be easy for you”, he smiled and laughed in a way that I’ll never forget. There’s nobody more joyful than a rock who has found their place.