Be the enabler

In this series of articles about qualities I appreciate in team settings, I want to focus on an often overlooked but incredibly valuable one: the enabler.

The enabler is the person who doesn’t just solve problems, but abstracts them, understands the friction, and looks for ways to make things easier for everyone else. They identify patterns and remove barriers. But before we dig into how enablers operate, let’s first look at what can happen in a team when knowledge isn’t shared effectively.

Capital knowledge

In tech, knowledge is capital. We’ve all seen situations where a specific person is the go-to for a recurring task, even something as routine as setting up access to a server, getting production data, creating a ticket, making a deployment, to name a few.

Disclaimer: We can't fix people's laziness.

Moving on, even if this person teaches the task, others don’t take notes or don’t internalize the process. Eventually, the habit becomes: "Just ask them again."

This may not be intentional, but the outcome often mirrors another, more deliberate pattern: gatekeeping. Unlike passive dependence, gatekeeping happens when someone actively holds onto knowledge, stepping in with “Let me do it for you” instead of enabling others to learn.

Yet in both cases, the result is the same: a single point of dependency and a bottleneck.

Now, is it fair to keep relying on the same person over and over, even if they’ve tried to share what they know?

Enable alternatives

I'm not saying it's inherently bad ( sometimes having subject matter experts is how we scale in specific domains), but it can be improved if we reframe the situation.

This is where the enabler comes into play. Similarly to how Windows was designed to make computers more accessible to everyone, we can reflect on that idea and bring it into our team dynamics.

Let’s go back to the mundane task of creating a ticket. Why does someone prefer to delegate this instead of doing it themselves? To me, that’s a signal that we need to make the process more accessible.

Instead of getting frustrated with always being the go-to person, we could shift our energy toward enabling others. This could be as simple as building a Raycast extension that automates ticket creation, setting up a Slack integration, or even using an LLM that interacts with Linear or Jira using natural language.

So instead of ranting or asking, “Why am I always the one doing this?”, we can flip the script. By making these tasks more accessible, whether it’s through automation, better documentation, or low-friction internal tools, we enable others to act independently.

This shift doesn’t just reduce bottlenecks. It fosters creativity, as team members start thinking of their solutions and improvements. It also pushes us to improve our internal tooling, making the team more resilient and scalable in the long run.

Takeaways

Enable before you complain.

It might feel good to be the one people depend on. But over time, being the sole knowledge-holder makes you a bottleneck. It leads to distractions, unnecessary context switching, and limits your own growth.

Instead, build paths. Make things easier. Document what matters. Automate the repetitive. Share the why, not just the how.

Enabling others isn’t just generous, it’s strategic!. Everyone benefits.

Be the enabler.