339 | 3 Areas That Hinder Leadership Momentum

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Chris LoCurto: You may be stuck in maintenance mode. Here are three things that most hinder your momentum. More on that coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.

Welcome to the show folks. Today we are talking about uh, being in maintenance mode or things that might hinder you. No one likes to be hindered and especially when you’re trying to get somewhere, like there are a thousand examples, right? Like when you’re trying to run to the store really quickly, but it takes like 15 minutes just to get kids’ shoes on in the car. I mean, how is that even possible? Right? Why should it take that long? Or you left in plenty of time. I know everybody’s experienced this, you’ve left plenty of time for your meeting, but traffic hinders everything. Right? And what does it usually, it’s usually not even anything that bad. It’s usually people that are staring at like, like a car stuck on the side of the road and that is it. There’s no big deal. Or you’re trying to grow and be like a healthier person, but some old friends and probably bad influences.

I know nobody has that right?….may hinder your growth. I could go on and on, but we need to realize that there are also a ton of things that can hinder our teams and our business as well. Today we’re going to hit three big ones, three things that hinter momentum in your business. Now I’m saving the third for last because it’s the sleeper that can completely derail you and we’re going to have a pdf of all of these three things to consider and the action items from this episode. You could download those at Chris LoCurto.com/339. Now, before we get to the three things that hinder momentum in business, we’re going to tell you about our two day one on one personal discovery experience. Next level life is our two day personal discovery experience. It’s a one on one personalized event where we guide you through a process to help you discover your root system, to get unstuck in life, and to discover what’s holding you back from freedom and peace.

Imagine this, what if you could wake up every morning with a clear purpose? What would it look like to have healthier relationships with less conflict? Where would you be in a few months, a year, five years if you had clarity, purpose, and peace? Probably a big difference from where you stand today. Now I know it’s possible because I’ve been where you are asking myself, is there more? There is and there is a better way and it starts with next level life. You can go to Chrislocurto.com/Discover to take the next step. Now, if you’re struggling with this contentment, regret, or not feeling good enough, which most you are, if you’re filled with anxiety or your relationships are lacking, don’t keep going through the same motions every single day. Learn how to move past the thing’s robbing you of peace. All right, we are back and we are talking about the three things that most hinder your momentum.

Number one, having indifferent people rather than committed people. Leaders, I’ve got to tell you…and especially business owners, if you don’t understand, when you have people who are indifferent to doing what they’re doing. So in other words, not taking risks, uh, showing up to do a j-o-b. If you don’t understand when and where you have indifferent people, then I can promise you you are missing out on how much work is not getting done. You’re missing out on how much is being held back, how much is not only hindering the position that you’re paying, but others as well. So how do you spot somebody who’s, uh, you know, indifferent compliant applies to many different aspects. So, uh, I’m not talking about a personality style or talking about people who are compliant in their job. So in other words, you know, somebody who’s satisfied with the minimum, you know, they don’t come up with ways to improve or be more excellent.

They don’t think about areas of the business outside of their own. They really just stay focused on the thing that they show up everyday for, right? They’re not looking to make anything outside of their area something that they focus on or help or solve or any of that, uh, folks that are looking only at the short term, not the long term. This is a key indicator of somebody who’s there for a job. If it’s somebody who only looks at the short term of their time with you, that should be a red flag and you should, uh, you should see that, uh, somebody who’s only focused on the short term is probably only gonna be there for the short term. Also, somebody who doesn’t work well on teams or they’re put off by, you know, committed team members. If they see somebody who’s committed to their work and all they have is bad things to say about them, you can spot that person a mile away.

They’re the kind of person who will complain about other people. I will never forget I was a teenager, uh, working at a place and I have had a phenomenal work ethic. Uh, thank you mom, since I was 14 years old, actually since younger than that, uh, since my brother and I were, uh, dropping trees and splitting wood and selling it for money. 12 years old, 13 years old, I’ve always had a phenomenal work ethic. And I remember as a teenager I worked at a company and I was just doing my thing, just busting it. And I literally had a guy, I think it was somewhere around 40 or so, so decades older than me who was complaining and telling me to slow down that I was making him and other people look bad, had no clue that he was trying not to work as hard.

But literally came to me because I’m, I work as unto the Lord. I bust my butt no matter what. Right. And came to me and was, was getting in my face and telling me how I better slow down because you know, I’m making everybody look bad and I’ll never forget it… I didn’t work there long. But I remember that being so shocking and surprising that somebody would actually go through their day trying to do the minimum amount of work. If you see somebody that’s like that, if you experience people on your team that are kind of put off by those that are um, you know, loyal that are committed, then that’s another red flag of spotting somebody who’s indifferent. Committed people, committed people, they’re always looking for ways to make the workplace better. They never stop. It’s always a thing.

Now I’m not saying that they’re just looking for problems and, oh look, this sucks over here. Right? They’re looking for ways to make things better. They’re looking for ways to improve. They’re looking for ways to help other teammates. They’re looking for ways to help clients, you know, is their way to make things better? Also, they seek out other committed team members as partners. There is nothing like somebody who is loyal. There’s nothing like somebody who’s committed who links arms with somebody else. I mean, it is an amazing thing day after day to be able to work with somebody who feels the same about the job that they’re doing, that it’s not just a job, that, that it’s changing lives. That it has a mission behind it, that it has a purpose. Also, somebody who understands the concept of sweat equity, not the dude that was getting up in my face, right?

You know, somebody who understands, um, that we’ve got to solve a problem. We always call that like the ox is in the ditch. You know, there’s certain times where you just put in as much effort as you can. We got to get things done, right. Um, also by not focusing on, uh, on that sweat equity side, the need to have the accomplishment be the worth, the, the absolute goal that sometimes it takes the work to get to that accomplishment. Right? Sometimes we’re looking for the win being when we get it done and that’s great, but we miss out on all the things we’re doing along the way. Uh, also that they are looking for others who can help make the workplace better. So it’s not just them, but they’re looking to see is there anybody else that I can incentivize? Is there anybody else that I can inspire or anybody else that just brings light to situations?

Uh, those are people that they will also pull into, you know, discussions and brainstorming meetings to see if they can’t solve problems. The number two thing that’s hindering your business or your team is not understanding that what got you here won’t get you there. Now, when you’re a business owner, you do everything. You wear, all types of hats, especially those of us that started out as solopreneurs. I have been a solopreneur many times, right? You do everything, you wear many hats, but if you keep doing that, you’re only stifling your momentum and your team’s momentum as well. If you’re the one who keeps doing all of the stuff if you’re the one who still carries the most important roles, if you’re task saturated with all the things that you’ve got to get done, then you are actually hindering your momentum. As you grow your processes must, as I say in events, highlight that circle that star that your processes must grow as well.

If your processes don’t grow, how in the world can you expect the business to grow? I’m not saying it won’t, but I can tell you this. If your business grows past your processes, guess what’s going to happen that’s going to catch up to you and bite you in the butt and then you’re going to spend a whole lot of time trying to fix stuff. So it’s not just true for business owners. Every size and phase of the growth cycle needs change and a new process. The more you grow, you have to constantly be looking at your processes asking the question, is it right? Is it enough? Is it solving the problem? You know, it’s one of the things that we call the task result gap, right? You can actually be getting great results, but you grow, grow, grow, and then all of a sudden there’s this gap between the things you’ve been doing and the result that you’ve been expecting.

We see it a lot with business owners and in businesses when it comes to their clients not getting the expected result, right? You can almost immediately point back to growth and see that we did not solve the problem. We didn’t put the accountability in place. We didn’t grow the process to make sure that we’re still hitting the results that are expected now. It was a Greek philosopher who said, “no man ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” As you grow as an individual the person that I am today compared to the person that I was crud three months ago compared to the person that was six years ago compared to the person I was 30 years ago, completely different, right? You’re growing no matter what you’re changing no matter what, even if you don’t recognize it.

But if you don’t recognize how you’re growing and changing and the way that you’re looking at things differently and the way that you’re handling things differently then what’s going to happen is it’s going to hinder you in this process because you’re going to try and keep doing the same things that you’ve known with a different mindset or maybe even a different momentum. Also relying on what worked in the past won’t get you where you want to go in the future. The more you look to those past skills, the more you look to those past processes, the more you look to those past tasks. Caveat here is maybe the task is the same task for 10 years straight. That’s fine, that’s great. Maybe it’s the same. You’re literally doing the same exact thing.

But I would even there question, should there be growth in that? Should there be change? Should there be adjustments? So as you look at what worked for you, right, that may be your sales process. That may be for some of you, that may be your charm right? That may be that you had a loyal team member who’s no longer with you. You know that’s moved on to something else. Whatever that is, the more you rely on what worked in the past, the more you’re never going to look at other opportunities. You’re not gonna look at other options. Well, Chris, it feels comfortable to do what we did in the past. I completely get it. I completely agree but the problem is is that it’s going to continue to make it more painful as you go forward. If you do not shift, you’re going to have to find some heavy shifts.

Now, before we get into the guiding principles on how to lead up, I want to tell you about something new that we’re doing now according to our yearly surveys. The number one struggle for business leaders for three years running is lack of direction, so we’re doing something new to help leaders solve this. September 19th through the 20th we are hosting aligned discover and develop the right direction for your business. Now this is a hands on workshop style event, so in 36 hours, my leaders and I, we will work with you to align your business with a compelling mission, vision, and strategy. We’re actually going to work through those pieces. You’ll figure out the right direction for your business and develop a great strategy to get there. Now there’s a lot more information and limited spots available, so learn more at ChrisLoCurot.com/aligned again. Now the first two things we’ve talked about may have hit home and there’s work to be done there or maybe you breezed through the first two thinking, eh, those aren’t issues for us.

Now, if you have committed not indifferent people and you’ve updated working processes but you’re not aligned, you’re still staying docked, you’re still being hindered. So number three, lack of alignment. This is a sleeper that you have to watch out for. Lack of alignment can look like your is moving in different directions. Business owners, leaders listen to me. Okay. Every single company that joins us that walks through our processes discovers that they have team members. Even if they only have one department, one division of their company that somewhere on their team, people are moving in different directions. For those of you that have multiple departments guaranteed. I call it the shotgun approach. We see it all the time. Why? Because what are people usually most focused on? Be successful at my job, instead of aligning all team members, all departments, all divisions toward one unified direction.

So if you have team members, even if it’s just two working in different directions, then it’s hindering your ability to go in a unified direction. And the more people you can point at that unified direction, the easier, the more efficient we actually accomplish it, the more we can do with a team that’s moving in a unified direction. Also, you might see that the team is accomplishing tasks that are not helping the business progress or moving forward. So often, especially when we go through like strat plan, what we will tend to find is is that we built areas or we hired people, uh, throughout our business that at the time it made total sense for them to be working on what they’re working on. However, as the business has grown and we’ve become more successful, we stopped kinda looking around the company and asking the question, should we still be doing that?

So it’s very possible that you have team members. You might even have a team that’s not helping the business to move forward. It might be moving in another direction or maybe you’re pulling resources. That’s another big thing is we see a lot of companies that their resources are being solving that we continue to dump those resources in that area. Another thing is doing good things but not the right things. Now this is similar to the task result gap. We talked about in episode 322 so go back and listen if you haven’t heard it, you can have people that are doing really good things. It can be something that we feel good about inside of the business, but the problem is doing good things doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re doing the right things for the business. I’m not talking about taking care of people.

I’m not talking about being altruistic. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying it can look like the things that they’re doing are really good. But unfortunately we’re paying salaries. Uh, we’re getting, you know, we’re letting go of resources to focus on something that’s not moving us forward. Also, not having a roadmap or strategic goals and initiatives to help you get there. People you have to understand, if you want your life to be more successful, I don’t care what it is, you know, next level life we use, the Wheel of Life which I so proudly use Zig Ziglar’s version of that. If you want your marriage to be successful, you need strategic goals. If you want your finances to be successful, you need strategic goals. If you want your business, your career, your team to be successful, why do you not have a solid roadmap pointing you to those strategic goals

And those initiatives that will help you get there? That’s something you must have. So many folks do business as usual, day after day after day, year after year and wonder why they’re not ending up where they want to be. They just keep thinking, if we just increase sales, we’ll get there. If we just increase, hey listen, where is there? Where is there? What’s the strategic goal that you need to be pointing at? Right? Or, or all the goals, right? What are the initiatives that you should be doing right now in the next 90 days? If you don’t have that down, you are hindering your business. Another piece is poor or non-existent decision making processes. So you’ve heard me say many times, you know when I’m talking about StratPlan that we will have companies come in. Now they don’t do this as much now cause they’ve listened to the show and they’ve heard me say this, but we talk about how we can have leaders come in and we’ll have our discussion before we start the event of, Hey, you know, we’re going to help you to see your decision making process.

And every single time they’ll go, oh, we know how we make decisions. And then a day and a half later I ask the question, hey guys, what do you think about your decision making process? And they are stunned, absolutely stunned folks. It’s highly likely you don’t truly understand how you make decisions in business or what the process for making decisions in business is. That is something that you’ve got to get a handle on. That is something you need to get aligned with and understand what great decision making processes look like. You know, what are the bad ones that you have in place? Do you know those? Those are always a stunner as well. Um, probably 20% of the companies that come through discover that fear is a huge decision making process for them. They would have never guessed it. They would’ve never thought it. Um, probably 10, 15% of the companies come through the only decision making processes that everything has to go through the main leader.

They would have never recognized it. They didn’t know it. So you’ve got to get that decision making process in place and understand the bad of the decision making process. Also, a big piece that will hinder you time after time is overwhelmed leaders that are spread too thin, it has become a thing in the last couple of decades. It has become a thing where the goal is to load up leaders as much as you possibly can with accomplishing things by putting so many different initiatives on them. Listen, I’m all about you accomplishing stuff, but you have to understand the job of a leader is to lead people to success. If we overwhelm our leaders and we spread them too thin, then can you possibly be surprised that the team members aren’t being successful?

Is that shocking? That’s something you need to think about. If your team members as a whole are not being successful, all of them, then you have to take a look at your leaders. Are your leaders leading them to success? If not, then it’s highly likely they’re spread too thin or they have the wrong, um, focus and agenda or they’re just completely overwhelmed. Another thing is team members showing up for just a paycheck. I hate it. I hate it. I will root that out fast. I’m the kind of person that if I feel like a team member is here just for paycheck, that they are not behind our mission, that they don’t have a purpose for showing up every day that’s bigger than that paycheck. I’ll go after it. I’ll talk with them, I will literally bring it out into the open and discuss it and I’ll hit them with the things that I’m experiencing or the things that I’m seeing.

But you have to understand, if you don’t actually know it, recognize it. Uh, do something about it. It’s holding you back. It’s hindering your growth. Why? Because a team member who shows up for just a paycheck doing 50% of their potential. So think of you paying twice the amount of money for what they’re actually accomplishing. The last thing is maybe your focus is just on the wrong business model. It is very possible. Uh, so many business owners, so many leaders have become so successful because they learned how to build a widget. And sell a widget. You know, they learned how to be successful at something and then as time changed and business changed and stuff changed and clients changed, they stayed stuck to the wrong model. Or maybe they just started off with the wrong business model and they’ve been struggling ever since. You’ve got to know whether or not your model is correct.

If you are not sure, if you cannot look at your business model with 100% certainty and say, Yep, first off, for me, this is the direction God’s telling me to go in. Now, for those of you that know my buddy, rabbi Daniel Lapin, you’ve, um, if you’ve heard them in the past and stuff, just phenomenal man. And I remember somebody reached out to him and said, you know, my brother-in-law keeps complaining. Uh, he has zero business whatsoever, zero clients whatsoever. But he swears that God is pointing him in this direction. And rabbi, his answer was, God does not give you a direction and then not also give you the ability to be successful. So don’t, don’t, don’t get caught up and stuck in the thought that maybe, nope, God’s calling me to this thing and nothing is working out. Then I would highly question whether that’s actually God, right?

So it’s possible you just built a wrong model. It’s possible that the model you’re in is still looking successful, but underneath you know that you need some better alignment on that, that that’s actually holding you back…getting in the right business model. So this is something that I’ll be talking about at our upcoming aligned event here in Franklin, Tennessee. We’ll be spending a day and a half with leaders and business owners on how to gain clarity, how to get aligned and have a strategic plan of action. And again, you can learn more about Chris LoCurto.com/aligned now creating momentum, your business gains significant momentum as everyone works towards the same end and you’re not stuck in maintenance mode. So look at these three areas in your leadership and business and see if they’re holding you back from having great momentum. Run through the three and see if they surface over the next week as you keep them top of mind. You may be stuck in maintenance mode, but you do not have to stay there. Now you can get the pdf download with the three areas we talked about and the action steps just go to Chris LoCurto.com/339 thank you for joining me today. I hope it has served you well. I encourage you to subscribe, rate, and share the podcast

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