Steve LowiszFounder of Guide, Don’t Drive™ Leadership | Keynote Speaker |

Stop Being the Bottleneck #leadership #teamgrowth

10 Feb 2026 · 1 min

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1:03

In this segment, Steve Lowisz explains the "fixer reflex"—a common tendency among leaders to jump in and do work themselves when progress feels slow, rather than taking the time to teach, guide, or coach team members. While occasional fixing can be appropriate, repeatedly intervening creates dependence, undermines team growth, and shifts the leader’s role from enabler to bottleneck. The speaker highlights the need to recognize this reflex and shift toward coaching to foster autonomous, high‑performing teams.

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I have the fixer reflex, and so many leaders have it. So what is it? Well, the fixer reflex— think about it this way. You're in a situation where the work isn't getting done fast enough, and instead of taking the time to teach that person, to guide that person, to coach that person, you think, it's just faster if I do it, and you jump in and you get it handled, and off you go. That's an example of the fixer reflex. Now, what's the problem with the fixer reflex? Well, there's always a time for us where we need to help our teams achieve whatever they need to achieve. And fixing it once maybe is okay. It all depends on the actual circumstance. But as we continue to jump in and fix it time and time and time again, let's think about the impact that it actually has, right? We start, we, we go from helping our team to actually creating dependence.