From the course: Developing Your Team Members

Reduce steamroller friction

From the course: Developing Your Team Members

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Reduce steamroller friction

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- Your steamrollers are in the upper left quadrant of the Leadership Matrix because they deliver great results. However, you have to invest a lot of leadership capital in repairing the damage they cause. Your goal with steamrollers is reducing the friction they cause while still getting the same great results from them. This means investing leadership capital in the form of regular guidance and feedback to this person on how they can build and strengthen relationships. Leaders have to make steamrollers aware of the impact their behavior has on other people. This means providing specific feedback on steamroller behavior, explaining how it impacted another person, then providing guidance for having those interactions more effectively. To improve a steamroller's performance, leaders must gather and clearly communicate feedback. Give the person examples. Let them know in this meeting when you said the following words, here's the impact it had. Those specific examples help the steamroller key in on the behaviors they need to change. Explain how their bad behaviors are going to offset the results they get on their performance review. A lot of times steamrollers justify the bad behaviors by saying, "Yeah, but I'm getting great results, "so why does it matter?" You need to help them understand it's both about the results, as well as the way they get the results. Think about how you can provide the steamroller the resources they need to be successful. I have one individual who I'm an executive coach for. He is absolutely a steamroller. He goes into meetings and bullies people. He's made people cry because he's been so direct and in some cases pretty mean. The intervention this individual's boss decided to go with was getting this steamroller an executive coach who could gather feedback from the individual's peers and colleagues and provide that feedback in a clear manner that ties it to how the individual is behaving and how his behaviors are impacting his colleagues. A lot of this the individual was unaware of. They thought they were just getting things done. They didn't realize how much they were upsetting their peers. Those conversations have been very productive in helping this individual change their behaviors. The benefits of effectively leading a steamroller are you retain the great results they're delivering while reducing the number of problems they're causing with how they're treating other people. You get to save your goodwill that you're usually spending smoothing things over for them and invest that goodwill somewhere else where it'll be more productive. You also set this individual up to be successful in advance, because they can grow on the back of the great results they're delivering. Your job with a steamroller is to get them in tune with the issues they're causing and how them understand it's not just what they deliver, but how they deliver it as well.

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