In the book The Growing Season, author Sarah Frey distinguishes between two types of employees she has in her company: hunters and gatherers.
She describes gatherers as the ones who “keep the tires full of air and make sure the paperwork is in order. In the wild, they’d be cleaning and cooking the wild game. They are there every day, the most solid team members that you can have. They are extremely important — as important as, if not more important than, the hunters.” In contrast, hunters (by her definition) are “the ones who are always thinking ahead to the next deal, the next kill.”
Every organization needs employees in both categories and everyone needs to recognize the gifts the other temperament brings to the organization. Without vision and funding, the group’s work stays small; without implementation, the ideas remain just a dream. Too often we fail to appreciate the contributions from those whose work and style are so different than ours.
Think not only about where you fit into Frey’s classification but also whether your organization has an appropriate overall mix. It’s tempting to look for others who operate as we do, but we need to both hunt and gather the intellectual fuel in order to thrive.
Source: The Growing Season: How I built a new life and saved an American Farm by Sarah Frey, 2020, p. 183.
