People are complicated, diverse creatures with many motivations, quirks, and ideas. Everyone has dozens of vectors of motivations, each one pushing them in different directions within their “behavior space,” and each vector gets increased or decreased in magnitude, minute-by-minute, based on their background, personality, coffee intake, or who won the Westminster Dog Show last night. Leadership gurus like to create models that lump people into categories, like Type A vs Type B, Myers-Briggs, or men-are-from-Mars, women-are-from-Venus.

All of these models are wrong. Nothing and no one is ever simple. Humans are complex and fickle beasts.

So… yeah, I’m going to talk about a spectrum that I find useful – because I find it useful. I recognize that it’s fundamentally flawed, and there’s no way to simplify people down to just this one dimension. It’s never true, but thinking about it helps me help other people.

In this model, the dimension that I want to investigate is the “enabler vs. fixer” spectrum, specifically as it applies to managers.

The question is: given a problem, when does your manager step in? Fixers will step in at the slightest hint of trouble. Enablers will let the team solve the problem themselves.

Both extremes are bad. 100% fixers are micro-managers, telling you what to do, how to do it, and taking full control at the slightest hint of a problem. 100% enablers are laisse-faire, do-nothing bosses, that teach people what to do, but then never step in when something goes wrong, thereby letting other people take the blame.

Fixers can be very successful leaders, because they get shit done. Senior management tend to notice when shit gets done. Fixers fix stuff through sheer will. But when a fixer fails, they fail hard.

Enablers, on the other hand, usually fail more often, but less severely. They almost universally end up with happier and smarter teams. They create cultures of trust, they educate rather than direct, and they share the celebration on wins. They let their diverse teams solve complex problems that one person alone couldn’t solve. But when an enabler succeeds, they often don’t get the credit for the success.

Neither of these are good, just like neither one is bad. Every leader is smeared out somewhere on this spectrum, each person perhaps leaning more in one direction than another.

Where I find it most useful is when I change teams. I also coach people on what to do when they’re thinking about changing teams, or jobs, or roles. When they do, I tell them to ask your new (potential) boss: are they a fixer or an enabler? Understanding your manager’s style helps you better understand when, and how, they’ll step in when something goes wrong. And when compared and contrasted to your own style, it tells you a lot about how each of you will react when that happens.

I know, for example, that I lean slightly towards being an enabler. I do step in when I need to, so there’s no small amount of fixer in my boss DNA, but if I was forced to pick one, I’m definitely more enabler than fixer.

Early in my Amazon career, I learned when that can be a problem – specifically, when my boss was a fixer (and a pretty strong fixer). One day, I walked into his office, because I had a question that needed a lawyer’s opinion. It was a question related to sending emails to customers, and I don’t remember the specifics, but I needed to know the answer to clarify some software requirement. I asked my boss, “is so-and-so still the right person if I have a legal question?”

He said, “yeah, what’s the question?”

And I told him, because it was the natural thing to do. And the next logical and natural question was, did he know the answer? He didn’t, but he slapped his knees enthusiastically, jumped out of his chair, said, “let’s go find out!”… and walked past me and out the door.

We went upstairs, and learned that the person we were looking for was out of town. We poked our heads into a few more lawyers’ doors, and eventually found one that knew the answer. Satisfied, we both went back down the staircase.

And as we walked down those stairs, I had a realization. I said, out loud, “I just let you do that.”

I’m an enabler. I came to him asking if person X was the right person. I had the right intent to get the right answer, and was just looking for confirmation that I was on the right track.

He was a fixer – and so he decided to step in and solve the problem. I didn’t ask him to solve my problem. I essentially asked: this is what I know, this is what I plan to do next, am I on the right track? And when he didn’t answer the question, and instead inserted himself into the solution, I let him. I enabled him! Without thinking about it!

We talked about it, and agreed that both of us were wrong, and we both needed to be better about it in the future (which we were). I learned from that point that I needed to be more clear and more assertive when I just wanted confirmation that I’m on the right track. And he learned that when the question is just that – am I on the right track – the right answer is a simple yes or no.