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There is a lot of road construction going on around where I live. Not only the highways, but many of the sides streets as well. Here’s what I’ve noticed; the cleanup job between shifts isn’t the best that it could be. How do I know this?

My car is just over 1-year old. Within the first week of getting it, it got one rock on the windshield. That chip was taken care of quickly. Nothing else happened until about 1 month ago. On three different roads over a 2-day period, I managed to get…13 more chips in my windshield! One, on a highway going about 60 mph. All of the rest, on a side street going about 30 mph and a pickup truck throwing back the debris from the previous night’s work. Most were small, but of course, the worst one is right in my line of sight and I simply can’t get it cleared up. It’s driving me crazy! But, it’s not big enough to justify buying a new windshield.

Okay, what in the world does chips on a windshield have to do with leadership?

It is this: we all have experienced people on our team that just “chip away” at us. They are doing those things that drive us or our teammates crazy. Although nothing they do is really bad, they just seem to be a drain on everyone else. These people have become the chips in our windshield. We live with them because we don’t believe it’s worth the expense to take care of the solution permanently, at least not until the crack gets big enough to case other problems.

But here’s the thing, when you are not doing anything about the people on your team that are being the chips, you are negatively impacting everyone else. If you dealt with this chip, you’d actually increase the amount of work getting done by everyone else on the team and thereby improving the total output of the team, even if the chip is the “best” worker.

But is getting rid of that chip the best thing to do? Not always. When you get a chip in your windshield, if you deal with it right away, you can avoid the cracks that will come without taking care of it. The same is true of that person who just causes issues. That person needs to be dealt with and often, that can be just a conversation about the impact they are having on the rest of the team. Now, I’m not Pollyanna here; many times one conversation doesn’t do the trick, but you are doing no one a favor if you don’t start there. My recommendation is start with a conversation. If that doesn’t work, move to an action plan and if that doesn’t work, you will need to take more drastic action as in removing that person from the team.

As a leader, you job is to remove obstacles from your team so that they can do their job in the most efficient and best way possible. Making sure they can enjoy their contribution is a big part of that. Chips and cracks in the windshield take away from that enjoyment. Be the leader you’ve been hired to be.

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