The Problems with Overachievers on Agile Teams







What Is an Overachiever?
An achiever is an eager, involved team member who buys into the project and is willing to go the extra mile by lending a hand or working extra hours. The agile achiever focuses on teamwork and collaboration.However, the overachiever is focused solely on the work and on himself, to the detriment of the team. Whenever things appear awry, the overachiever takes over and personally does the work. When the project is going swimmingly, he creates a false sense of urgency. He may, perhaps unconsciously, believe that his way of doing things is best. He may be totally unaware of his behavior.

An overachiever is often seen by anyone who observes the team as an informal leader. Management praises him instead of the team for heroic efforts. After a flurry of production problems, the true effects of the final rush—high staff turnover and morale at an all-time low—become apparent. The hero stays on, waiting for the chance to prove himself once more as the lynchpin.

Why Is an Overachiever a Problem?
Expectations, team growth, mutual trust, group direction, and commitment can be negatively impacted by an overachiever as he sets a pace that few can match, which in turn puts a lot of stress on team members. Managers may judge team members relative to the overachiever, saying “ Joe’s a good coder and puts in his forty-five hours, but Fred is working even more hours and doesn’t waste time playing games at lunch with the others.” Management often favors a person like Fred and overlooks and ignores someone like Joe. As Carly Chynoweth put it so aptly in the The Sunday Times, when there is an overachiever in the mix, the overachiever can turn team into subteams: “You get a sense that there’s an in-crowd who the leader rates and others who are left by the wayside and don’t know why. They will become disengaged and leave.” [3]

Another problem is that overachievers emphasize short-term results rather than developing their teammates or giving feedback. In believing that they can do the job better than anyone else, they deny others the opportunity to learn and grow. In this way, no individual can improve to become as productive as the overachiever.

Team members might feel that the overachiever doesn't trust them if he routinely pushes them aside when difficult situations arise. Their initiative and responsibility evaporate as they take on the routine, task-focused work. They are intentionally or unintentionally kept in the dark by a hyper-busy overachiever. This sentiment is best summed up by Daniel Goleman from his article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” published in the Harvard Business Review: “People [working for an overachiever often] do not understand where they are going. They’re just following the walk of this turbocharged leader, who doesn’t direct the team but focuses on output. They get annoyed, exhausted, and feel that they need to second-guess what the leader wants because they’re not being told.” [1]

Agile and the Overachiever




Aggressive product owners may take advantage of overachievers by equating acquiescence with collaboration and pressuring them to add little features “under the table.” Agile development can be a threat to the overachiever’s sense of control. With agile, we want whole-team participation and swarming, team responsibility, and team recognition. The overachiever, now with less of the spotlight, may feel lost  and long to add value as an individual contributor.

How to Deal with an Overachiever
You can’t change people, but you can encourage new behavior by making the environment conducive to the expected behavior [9]. Here are a few ideas on how to take the fun out of dysfunctional:

Set an Example
Overachievers are motivated by recognition. When an emergency happens and an overachiever steps in, acknowledge the sacrifice but don’t affirm heroics. Rather, recognize team collaboration and emphasize that the team needs to ensure that this pattern of emergency and heroics doesn’t happen again. [10] Make it clear that this type of behavior is a symptom of something worse than the problem that required heroics. Find and fix the root cause.

Appeal to His Intellect and Ego
Overachievers may not realize that the biggest impact within an organization comes from teamwork, not individual effort. Additionally, overachievers are very goal driven.  Help the overachiever understand his style – show him where he can change toward a more collaborative style and set goals focused on changing that behavior.  For example a goal of pairing, giving a brown bag on the project, or a goal of picking an apprentice would help the overachiever be more collaborative.

Appeal to the overachiever’s sense of self-worth by pointing out that being the central focus is limiting his advancement. He can’t take on more responsibility, lead more people, or add higher-level value if he can’t delegate to his teammates. He needs to boost the skills and abilities of his team to create more value. Collaboratively set goals that groom the overachiever to reach the next level, which focuses on team productivity. The overachiever should feel that the goal is something highly important that everyone must accomplish together.


Remove Opportunities for Bad Behavior





Overachievers are the team heroes—those who come to the rescue when the project is in trouble. They feel the need to pull the project single-handedly from the brink of failure. This may seem like the type of person you need on your team, and it may produce short-term results. However, it has a disastrous effect on the dynamics and well being of the team. Incorrect management reinforcement can set up a feedback loop that kills team productivity, which in turn makes the overachiever seem necessary.

You must mold the overachiever into a catalyst for whole-team productivity. Redirect the overachiever toward teamwork. Reward collaboration, take advantage of the overachiever’s tendencies in helpful ways, or directly challenge the overachiever to change. By doing this, you will be on the way to promoting whole-team effectiveness.


  1. Goleman, D. “Leadership That Gets Results,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2000.
  2. McBride, Patricia and Maitland, Susan. EI Advantage: Putting Emotional Intelligence Into Practice, McGraw Hill, 2001.
  3. Chynoweth, Carly. “Do it my way and stay in tune”, The Sunday Times, accessed 4/2/2011 at
  4. Beedle, M. et al. “The Agile Manifesto,” 2001, accessed 10/2/2010 at
  5. Larman, C. Agile and Iterative Development: a Manager's Guide, Addison-Wesley: Boston; 2004.
  6. Adkins, Lyssa. Coaching Agile Teams, Addison-Wesley, 2010, p. 39.
  7. Suscheck, Ford. “Jazz improvisation as a learning metaphor for the scrum software development methodology,” Software Process: Improvement and Practice, Volume 13. Issue 5.
  9. Heath, Chip and Heath, Dan. “Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard”, Crown Business, 2010.
  10. Deming, W. Edwards. Out of the Crisis, MIT Press, 2000.

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Dave Maschek's picture


August 14, 2014 - 12:25pm

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