Hi, my name is Mike, and I am recovering fixer. I’ve spent a great deal of my life taking ownership for and fixing other people’s problems. I used to think this was a good thing, as I was able to make life more comfortable for others. However, there is a price to pay for being a fixer.

Letting the teamwork through a problem

I was once coaching a team in the use of Agile methods. One of the issues the team identified in using Agile was the amount of time it would take to do a code review.

The code review process was mandated and would make it impossible to deliver code every two weeks. This situation created a lot of anxiety for the team as they felt trapped between a rock and a hard place.

I resisted the urge to fix anything or excuse the team’s feeling of being trapped. I could have quickly fallen into old habits and fixed something.

I remember thinking this was an opportunity for the team’s growth. So, I challenged them to work on the problem and find ways to get the time under half a day. There were objections from the team, as they didn’t see a way around the requirement to follow the process.

After several iterations and days, I had a developer in my office excitedly telling me they got the code review time under an hour. I congratulated him and said how impressed I was. I asked how they did it.

He explained all along they were sending emails. The thought of going four rows over and talking to the reviewers was uncomfortable. They were dealing with…