Why do some talented executives fail?part 5

5) Bulldozing the Competition

"Most of us learn early on to play nicely with the other children," write Waldroop and Butler, "but some of us don't." Extreme examples of such people who never learn to get along with others are called bulldozers. Like an offensive lineman in football, the bulldozer's goal is to flatten people, and to run roughshod over them as necessary.

Although bulldozers love to think of themselves as irresistible forces, ultimately they run into a real immovable object, something they cannot plow through, and because they never learned the skill of moving around resistance, they are defeated. Of the twelve behavior patterns Waldroop and Butler describe in their book, eleven of them are as likely to be women as men. But not the bulldozer. Although a few women do fit this pattern — women such as Margaret Thatcher and Leona Helmsley — bulldozing is a condition that is almost exclusively male.

According to Waldroop and Butler, bulldozers view any and all situations as zero-sum games and adversarial in nature. They focus only on how to get the biggest piece of the pie — if not all of it. Some bulldozers manifest their behavior by monopolizing air time in meetings and by instantly squashing any opposition. Others achieve their goals through simple intimidation — using a domineering physical presence or a steely glare to get their way.

Fortunately, the world has evolved in a number of ways over recent years to render people who exhibit this behavior pattern increasingly obsolete. Bulldozers might have been okay people to have around in a manufacturing based economy where assignments are generally clear and straightforward. But bulldozers generally fall down in face-to-face service relationships with customers where they have to read what people are thinking and adjust their tactics accordingly.

Like the other Achilles' heels, bulldozing is a correctable flaw, but it takes a lot of work. The motto of the recovering bulldozer must become "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" — the Golden Rule or the Law of Reciprocity. Because the fatal flaw of the bulldozer is a lack of empathy, taking the time to think about and understand how other people feel is the only way out of this rut. On the other hand, because of their energy and tenacity, a reformed bulldozer can actually be a valuable asset to any organization — but it's rare that people who exhibit these traits are ever able to stick around long enough to get a second chance.

Putting It All Together

In the cases of Paul the acrophobic banker and Stephanie the hero, who were briefly profiled above, their Achilles' heels were nearly their undoing. But having potentially fatal flaws, as they did, does not have to result in career stagnation or termination. In fact, Waldroop and Butler would argue that we all have Achilles' heels of one sort or another. It's just that some of us have learned to manage them successfully, while others of us allow them to hold us down.
Executive coaches can provide their clients with some of the tools that Paul and Stephanie didn't have. Learning to recognize the ways you — and all of us — engage in behaviors that create our own "glass ceilings" will enable us to break through them and achieve the success we deserve.