Symbiotic Growth

At one of our recent weekly Clubhouse Engineering Management AMAs, an interesting question was asked by a leader in the audience. How do you deal with high performers who are a pain to work with? This led to one of the panelists challenging the underlying premise that engineers who are not solid team players could, in fact, be a high performers. I couldn't agree more, and I felt this question was a good segue for discussing something I’ve always felt is a vital ingredient for high performance both for individuals and teams: symbiotic growth. So what is symbiotic growth?

Symbiotic (adj.) denoting a mutually beneficial relationship between different people or groups.

Growth comes in many shapes and forms, and a lot of it can be stimulated by siloed learning.  Some examples of that are picking up a new programming language or a design pattern by using the relevant literature. Engineers can, over time and through practice, master these skills and make themselves effective and efficient. But is that enough to make them high performers?  

Well, that really depends on what role they are being evaluated for. If they are expected to simply do their work in silos and clock out, then yes, they may be doing enough to be considered high performers. But if they are part of a bigger team with shared objectives, then part of their performance has to be evaluated through the lens of the team’s overall performance. A good engineer can be effective doing their own work, but a great engineer can make even other engineers more effective. And when success is a team goal, the engineers who are able to lift up their peers and amplify their impact will almost always outperform the lone wolves who do high quality work in solitude. And this culture of collaboration is critical to both the success of the team and the growth of the individual engineers. This mutually beneficial interdependence between teammates and peers forms the underpinning of symbiotic growth.

In this symbiotic relationship, engineers seek help from their peers when they need it and offer it when it’s needed of them. And even if they are too senior to benefit from peer support, they can still amplify their impact by upleveling others and scaling themselves so they can take on even bigger challenges that are conducive to their own growth. And naturally, engineers that embrace this symbiotic growth and take full advantage of the symbiotic relationships they have with their peers tend to grow faster and in multiple dimensions too.  

So if you are an engineer who wants to be a high performer, always remember that the biggest difference makers on most teams will be the team players and the collaborators who are able to have an oversized impact by making their teammates better. And if you are a manager, be sure to build teams rooted in a culture of symbiotic growth to get the most value out of and for your engineers.

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