406 | What Good is a KRA?

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

team member, role, leaders, results, tasks, lead, people, business, job, iras, expectations, kpis, leadership, job description, joel, champion, ira, person, problems, team

SPEAKERS

Joel Fortner, Chris LoCurto

 

Chris LoCurto  00:00

On today's show, we're discussing the top tool we use to make our teams successful. Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show, where we discuss leadership and life, and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Hi, folks, welcome to the show. So glad to have you here, as you can hear, there is multiple voices in the room. One of those is on the mic, dropping his great rhymes, I don't know. Welcome back to the show, Joel Fortner.

 

Joel Fortner  00:54

Thank you. Always good to be here.

 

Chris LoCurto  00:56

So today, Joel, our VP of leadership development, is joining me on the show. And the reason why is because we are going to be talking about our number one tool that we use to make our team members successful. And we talk to hundreds of business-not just talk to, we lead hundreds of business owners every year, we talk to thousands. But we lead hundreds of business owners every year, in their business intimately on solving things, making people successful, all that kind of fun stuff. And as leaders and business owners, the thing that we know you want is to see the results from every single position that you hire. I mean, it would be kind of ridiculous if you did not. But until team members understand and take ownership of their roles, the results are going to be sporadic and poor at best. So just for clarification, as we talked through KRA, what that means is Key Result Areas. It's kind of like a strategic objective, what we're looking at is what is the result that we want from the role or the results that we want from the role. And another way, another angle that would describe it would be the Key Responsibility Areas for the team members. So, a KRA is a clarifying document that details the areas of responsibility and results, but we're not talking about a job description. This is not a crazy laid out job description. What we say is, when you look at the role, what are the absolute results that you want coming from this role that you're paying for? This is what we use, we are going to hit all of that information, and talk with Joel through all of this when we come back right after this.

 

Chris LoCurto  02:51

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Chris LoCurto  04:27

Alright, we're back Joelsph, as I call Joel.

 

Joel Fortner  04:30

Hey. Howdy.

 

Chris LoCurto  05:00

Anyways, everything that we teach here intersects with leading people to success. We say all the time, your job as a leader is to lead your team to success, not the other way around. One of the big tools, we use, probably the biggest tool is the KRA, right? It's so important to us because it helps us to point to a whole bunch of responsibility expectation, you know, what happens when we see that things are not getting done, when somebody is not being successful, so why do we do that?

 

Joel Fortner  05:33

Well, a million reasons. But some of the top reasons goes to what's the number one problem that we see in every business and team we work with? It's a lack of high levels of quality communication, and lack of healthy accountability. Because there isn't clarity, with the team member, the team member's not exactly sure, what am I responsible for? Why? Because it hasn't been communicated well. What are the results that my leader wants? Why? Because it hasn't been documented. It hasn't been communicated well. So this goes all the way back to the strategy process, that if you're not operating with strategy, as a leadership team, or as a business owner, it's hard to have great perspective, right? On who do we need? What are the next roles? Well when we get to, what are the next hires that we need on this team to make this mission successful, what are the roles that we need in order to grow the company, we need to determine what are those roles, and then what's the job description, and what's the KRA? If we force ourselves to get to that level of clarity in the hiring process, or in the strategy process, we're off to a great start, because it cascades from there. Now, when we get to putting the job description out there, we get to doing the hiring process with people, we now know what we're looking for. We're not inventing it as we go. We're not operating on just a job description, where it's like, "Hey, here's the tasks of the job. This is the description of the job, what do you think?" "Sounds great." And then we hire someone, but we never hire them and train them and onboard them and set them up for success to accomplish the results that we want. We need that outcome and that clarity for all of it. And without that, we right off the bat, we start experiencing failures and mistakes with brand new team members. And what are the leaders; they're frustrated, we're now wasting money, we're losing time. And it's a, "What's going on? Why isn't this working out?" And all because we don't have this clarifying tool called the KRA.

 

Chris LoCurto  07:42

Right. And what we see so often, and before I go there, we're gonna talk about this in a little bit. But so many folks look at this and they go "Well, isn't it just the same thing as a job description?" No, it is absolutely not. The job description, what we're looking at there is; here's the things you need to do, here's the steps you need to do it. If we need to go to the nth degree, we can do that in there. This is the result we're expecting, so you're setup to win at this. So you you know what success looks like, if you do your job correctly. But it also tells me as the leader, I know what it looks like, and I know what to expect. And if it's not being hit, then I can hit this. You've led people with and without, now you've been leading people with KRA's for many, many years now. But this isn't your first job leading, you've been leading people for a long time before this. So kind of speak to what is that experience of without KRA's? What are like those pain points as a leader? Because a lot of folks don't know that they're having pain points. It's just "normal". Right? And so you've experienced leading people before KRA's, leading people with successful KRA's and what that looks like, what are some of the experiences there?

 

Joel Fortner  09:04

Well, one experience is chaos. Another experience is, "You keep asking me to do things, Joel, but I didn't know that was my job. So I don't know what I'm doing, and you keep expecting things of me. And it's in your mind, and you think we should do it. But you've never communicated that to me."

 

Chris LoCurto  09:27

Or, "You didnt tell me all of that, I've only got this portion."

 

Joel Fortner  09:29

Exactly. I'm only doing some tasks involved. I didn't know that this whole piece was there. So you can see the lack of clarity, expectation gap between the leader and the team member, frustration, morale problems, people feel like a failure. You feel like a failure as a leader, a team member struggling with you, because you're pressing on them trying to squeeze results out of them. And they've never been shown or taught or even told they were supposed to even do those things.

 

Chris LoCurto  09:56

Yeah, as you say that it's it's amazing when you're setting somebody up for success, and you don't just give them the pieces, but you give them what it's supposed to look like after it's put together, you know? Here's the pieces of the puzzle, but here's the box that shows you the picture of the puzzle. It's supposed to look like this when you can give somebody that, "Oh, that's what it's supposed to look like." Then there isn't that, "Well, I didn't know. I didn't understand that that was part of it." Because even if you miss out on some details of the description, we still know it's supposed to look like the picture. And so if it doesn't look like the picture, the answer of "Well, I didn't know that." Actually falls on its face. "Is that getting to this? Are the things you're doing ending up here?" So it also helps in that way of somebody who's going to push responsibility and say, "Well, that's all on you, leader, you didn't do a good enough job." When you have that expectation of well, this is what it's supposed to look like, "Does this look like this?" Then it helps the person to say "No, actually, I guess it doesn't." So what about from a team member aspect?

 

Joel Fortner  11:07

So when team members have this clarity, they know what's expected of them. This is what leads to greater responsibility for the team member, which is what we're looking for as leaders. Without levels of leadership or effective leadership, you have chaos in your organization, you have three different people doing the same work, you have no teamwork, they're wasting time, we're paying multiple people to do the same jobs, or three different reviews on it, there's bad communication, we're wasting resources, there's zero accountability, we're just expecting that people do their jobs, right? And we are missing a huge opportunity. And there's no doubt in this environment that I just painted, the leaders are probably very frustrated, their morale is low, and they're distressed out of their minds. Wow, shouldn't we put a KRA in place based on that? If I can take a simple document and put these in place, holy moly. But we'll get to the important part, because it's not just the document, the more important part is leading out what we're talking about, and what's written. But this is what tons of people experience, but it's about having responsibility for the team member, and them owning their responsibility all the way to the results all the way to the, does the puzzle look like the front of the box in your job? If it doesn't, this is what we call the task result gap. And it's our job as leaders to lead people to close that gap to achieve the result. And now all the tasks are beautifully aligned. All the effort is beautifully aligned with the key results, the key outcomes that we want in any given role.

 

Chris LoCurto  12:50

One of the things that we love to help leaders see is, what happens with a role where there's no accountability to it, and we're also not having any real expectations? We hire somebody, we drop them in a place and this happens all the time, we hire somebody, we put them on a role, they could go for years, and no change happens. They could do the same thing over and over again, we're seeing that there's results, we're seeing that, but since we don't have a target that we're shooting for, since we don't have great expectations of what the role should be, we look up five years later, we've had somebody in the same role. And we actually haven't needed that role for the last two years. There are so many leaders that we see that had they had something in place, they could have actually made adjustments, utilized that person's role, you know, in a different way and gotten a better result, grown the role, shifted the role, whatever. And it would have been such a better outcome. But then they look up and go, Oh my gosh, we've been paying that for that role for a couple of years that we haven't actually needed that, we just thought that we did. The other side of that is the team member who actually gets to a place where there's no excitement left in their role. Now, not everybody is looking for excitment in their role. Some people just want the ability to have the consistency. But some people want growth, right? And so if I'm actually not jumping in and seeing how the roll itself can grow, because I've got all this great information, then I can end up losing good people because we haven't done anything with them. So what is it like when leaders respond when they're not seeing the expectations? You know, the results that they expect?

 

Joel Fortner  14:37

Well, a lot of them are emotional. So usually it's, "I feel out of control. I'm fearful." And so what do I do? I jump in, I take the work back. So six months ago, we decided we're gonna hire this role, and this is what it looks like. Six months later, I'm now taking that entire job and I've got to do it myself, because I've not let it well, and my emotions are getting the best of me. Because I'm anxious, I'm stressed out, we've got to hit this result, shoot, we've already brought on all these clients that we added, or we've added this customer base, or we added this product or service to our business, and the person we hinged it on is failing in their job. Well shoot we've got to deliver now. So what are your choices? You're going to grab it every single time, because it feels like you don't have a choice but you actually do, which we're going to talk more about today.

 

Chris LoCurto  15:34

Oh, yeah. And I think for every leader, and especially every business owner, to understand that this is something that affects not just your team, not just your business, but it affects your marriage. It affects your relationship with your kids, it affects your life. "Chris, how in the world as a do that?" Because whenever those things are falling apart, I must take responsibility and rein everything back in, because I don't have a better way. So I take on, "Well, this person's failing, I need to take that back. Well, this person is not doing this, I need to take that back. Well, you know, my 60 hour week is now an 80 hour week, I've got so much stuff to do. And I've got so many things to accomplish." And you know, tell the spouse and the kids, "Hey, I just got to do this for a time period." Which turns out to be two years. There's so much that it impacts your personal life, when you are not putting something in place to hold a person accountable. Because you don't have the right tool to do so, so it ends up affecting much more than just your business life. Alright. We are going to come back in a moment and we are going to get to your questions about KRA's.

 

Joel Fortner  16:49

Hey, leaders, this is Joel Fortner, VP of leadership development at Chris Locurto's. Company. I have some questions for you. Do you as a leader feel like you are caught up in a crazy cycle of stress and task that never ends week to week? Do you ever have to deal with tough conversations with team members, and you sit at home the next day the night before worried about how's it going to go, what am I going to say, what are they going to say, can I think fast enough on my feet, is it going to be a total failure? Are you experiencing culture problems or that stuff that just breaks down trust and unity on your team? Well, if you can relate to any of this, this is a pretty typical leadership story and situation. Here's the thing though, it doesn't have to be that way. And we can help you solve these things, we can help you become the leader that solves these problems and leads thier team to greater success. I want to introduce you to the Key Leaders Program. This is an ongoing leadership development program that gives you the lesson track, coaching, and accountability you need to become the leader you can become to actually implement what you're actually learning in this program. Things fall apart without great leadership and intentionality. If you want to solve the problems that are holding you back from being a great leader, we can help you with this program. Get in touch with [email protected].

 

Chris LoCurto  18:15

All right, we're back. And we're answering your questions about KRA's, we get a lot of this, we get a lot of folks, especially again. I'm really gonna punch on you business owners, but you leaders do this as well. Listen, there's a ton of stuff out there, you probably don't need to be implementing in your business. Everybody has got their snake oil that they're talking of, "Hey, you need to put this in your business." This is not what we're talking about, this is a tool that will literally change the way you lead your business. But we get a lot of questions that come back on this stuff. And so we want to kind of hit those questions right now. So, Joel, aren't the things on the KRA just more tasks to complete?

 

Joel Fortner  19:07

No, no, they're not. And as much as we get into these questions, I love that we're having the opportunity to talk about these because these questions or objections that people have to, "Should I do a KRA? Do I really need to? Is it that important? I have these myths or misconceptions about them." And we're gonna knock these things down. Because you shared a few minutes ago about how it affects your whole life, I'm sold and I already believe in KRA's, but that's what we're really after here. So, no the things on a KRA are not just more tasks to complete. Tasks belong in a job description or in training, or as part of processes. These are the key results in the key performance indicators that we're aiming for. So when you look at, "These are tasks." Yeah but what results do those lead to? That's what we're looking on a KRA. So we go to a person's role. And take what are the areas of focus, like, you know, take take me, I'm an Next Level Life facilitator, I'm the VP of leadership development. I'm the sales manager here. And I unload the dishwasher every now and then, I have these big bulk areas are my areas of focus, that I need to achieve excellence, own those roles, and achieve certain results in those areas. None of that's on a job description. So I now have this clarity on what am I aiming at, by doing all the stuff that I do task wise, Monday through Friday?

 

Chris LoCurto  20:39

 It makes it really easy, because I have expectations of you, in each one of those areas. You have expectations of your team in each one of their areas. So it makes it easy for us to take a look at what are you doing for the tasks? Align that with that expectation, and say, are we hitting this? If we're not, how do I lead you in the process? Next question, don't KRA's actually destroy teamwork?

 

Joel Fortner  21:05

So Chris, the first time I ever got this question, I immediately understood why people were asking. And I was like, wow, what a powerful objection. Because the answer is, if they're not well lead, they can do that. Because it's a "Well Chris, this is your job, Brian, this is your job. Joel this is your job, and brother you got to make it happen." And now we're breaking things apart. "Well, my KRA is not to do Chris's job, leader why are you pushing on me and holding me accountable to this?" Because the KRA is not being lead well, this points to big time culture problems, that we're not leading things well, we're throwing out our values, of working together as a team, that we're not individual heroes on a team. And so know if they're well lead, and you can see on any given team, you know, take any team here that you've got Brian, Heather, Katie, Steph, Abby, that know each other's roles, guys, this is our mission. This is the direction we're going, this is what our team does. We all work together to accomplish this. These are your areas of responsibility. But we work together as a team. This points back to a leadership struggle more than anything else.

 

Chris LoCurto  22:26

This next question, I love it. Because what we tend to find is nowhere near enough metrics inside of a business, but you could tell this person must have uber amounts of metrics. The question is, why do I need more metrics to keep up with?

 

Joel Fortner  22:47

Well, for one, because we need better communication, and we need better accountability. Why? Because we need to make the team member successful in their role.

 

Chris LoCurto  22:56

Maybe we should, as I'm thinking about this, I wonder how many people are going, "What do they mean by metrics?" We're talking about the measurables of the execution.

 

Joel Fortner  23:06

So to any type of role, I like to look at it as, so a business is one gigantic process. It's a huge system. That has systems and processes that operate within it. So you take any given a role and you look at, you just look at the role. How do you accomplish it? What's the process, end-to-end? What are the measurable points? What are the key performance indicators that matter to you? Not every single tiny little inkling thing, but what are the things that matter to you, that point to success? That's what you're after, not measuring things for the sake of measuring, what we need to measure, because we need to measure this stuff, because it's what early on in the process leads to success late in the process that that team member is executing. So we want to discover those pieces, not because we want to be big brother as a leader, the team member needs to know their KPIs. They need to know their key results. Remember, the context of the tool is always it's about making the team member successful, not the other way around. So when we do the KRA review meeting, we sit down, team member, how do you think it's going with your KRA? Let's start with your KPIs. These I think are doing really well. This one's still a struggle. This one's okay. So hey, great job on what's doing well, let's talk about where you think you're not doing well. Why do you think that's happening? And we start to diagnose the problem. If we don't have the KPIs, can we ever have that conversation? Nope. And everyone asks, how's your job going? And what do people say? "It's good, it's good. I'm doing okay." When in actuality, it's not.

 

Chris LoCurto  24:47

Right. And I think that's such a big indicator for the team member. So, when we say KPIs, Key Performance Indicators, that's what we choose to use as our metrics, our measurements of the role. It's frustrating for a team member, to have a leader come to them and go, "You're not doing a good job." And they're like, "What are you talking about? I'm doing everything you're asking me to do. But I don't know, I think that I'm doing everything. And now you're frustrated with me because I'm not doing what you think I should be doing."

 

Joel Fortner  24:59

It's demoralizing.

 

Chris LoCurto  25:23

It's totally demoralizing. And there have been times in my leadership, where I've seen that happen and go, "Oh, this is my fault. This is my bad. I didn't give them that piece to say, I'm going to measure this. But you need to measure this as well." It is so amazing, when you can sit down with a person, they already know it. When you're going to discuss through their KRA's and their KPIs. They can look at the measurements, they can already see, am I hitting the thing I'm supposed to hit? They're going to go one of two directions. They're either going to take responsibility and go, "I'm not, here's what I need help on." Obviously, that would be the healthy way, the unhealthy way is going to be victim mentality. Here's all the reasons why and all the excuses why I couldn't hit this either way, you have phenomenal teachable moments in there that you can lead the person either way. I love the next one, probably the next couple here, actually, not so much questions, but people that have put in statements here. "I don't know where to start, or what to write, help."

 

Joel Fortner  26:28

So this is one of the main things that holds us back. So many leaders from putting KRA's in place, because once they're sold on, "Okay, I got to do it. It's going to help me so much, it's going to help my team so much." They start staring at a blank KRA template, what in the world do I write? So this is what this points back to, for one, you're not used to thinking this way yet. This is a muscle you have to work, it is not always obvious to get to the key results of a job. Sometimes you have to work at it to come up, "What do I want? What am I really after? Why am I really here? Why did we say we needed this job? What did we discuss back in the hiring process when we said we needed this role? What am I really after at the end of the day?" And so you've got to step through this process. But this is why we coach on this. We coach our clients to actually come up with, this is how to think this through.  So let's just do a little bit of that right now. Take a job description, and look at a bunch of the tasks on any given area focus. Start gaining perspective. Why do we need all that stuff done? Because it leads to this. Okay, why do we need that stuff done? Because it leads to this. Is that what you want? That's what I want. You just landed on the KRA. You're dang close, because you're gaining perspective to get to what you want. Now, here's the powerful part about this. When you do this in the planning process, before you ever advertise a job, look at where you forced your brain. You have greater clarity, now you can hire the right person in the seat because you know who you're after. And this is also how you stop turnover problems that cost you thousands and thousands of dollars and missed opportunities, because we didn't force our brain to get to the result. So that's one simple method of how to actually get to what to write.

 

Chris LoCurto  28:22

And I think we we see that, like you just said, the turnover problem that we see so many times is we did not clearly paint the picture of what the role looks like somebody steps in, and if we're not doing a great job in the interview process, we may really like the person, but since we're not clearly communicating expectations. We like the person, we put them in the role, then we go, "Hey, you're supposed to be doing this." And they're like, "I don't want to do that." And then we're back to you know, having to re-hire for that position. Here's the next one, "But I've already got a champion or star performer."

 

Joel Fortner  28:59

Good try. Good try. Good attempt. Good attempt. Champions still need leadership. I work with so many of our clients, they are champions. These are smart, capable, high performing amazing people, but nobody is perfect. Even champions fail and make mistakes. Even champions are doing their job, and all of a sudden the drift starts is what I like to call it. On Monday, they start altering how they do something a little bit. Wednesday, they alter it a little bit more. A month later, it's altered more. Six months later, it's altered even more. What's going on? Why are we dropping off in this area? Why are customers complaining more? Why are more mistakes happening? "I don't know. It never used to happen this way." Because we did not have the accountability to the results and the KPIs. So in another way, we didn't have parameters. We didn't have boundaries. We didn't have a clear lane to drive down and even champions sometimes can get the car off into the median.

 

Chris LoCurto  30:04

Exactly. And another way of looking at this is, I've never had a champion who wants to stay in the same place. One of the great powerful things when you have a champion or a star performer, is that as you continue to go over this, you see more capacity, you see more growth, you see more, you and I have those have had those conversations for years of what are the opportunities? What's the capacity? And there's never a time over the years that we've had the conversation that you've ever said, "I don't know." It's always a "Well, I've already been thinking about this. While I've already been thinking about this. Well, I've talked to the team about this. Well, here's things that we're looking at." Because when you have those star performers, that capacity is there, because they're continuing to grow, they don't stay the same. They grow, they grow, they grow, the capacity increases. And so now if you're leading them through this process, you're not losing a champion who's going somewhere else looking for more growth, instead, you're on top of it, and you're able to feed that capacity, so that they continue to grow.

 

Joel Fortner  31:14

I think it's a great point you're bringing up because I've been trained to think that way. Because you've led me and trained me to think that way. So because you're leading with this kind of clarity in mind, you actually produce this, because if we don't lead this way, your champions can also may desire more, they want more, but they've not been trained to think in a way as to project and look to the future. So this is another actually, we didn't plan on talking about this. This is another huge side benefit, or not even side benefit benefit of having KRAs is that for champions, the whole process of leading with greater expectations, communication and accountability trains people how to think. And you think at a higher level, guys, isn't that what we all want?

 

Chris LoCurto  32:05

Yeah, we just did the first willpower episode, where we were talking about, you know, there's so much that's going on, when it comes to willpower and self-control. And the prefrontal cortex, you have two major areas, when it comes to your willpower, one area is decision making. The other area is desire and reward. And the amazing thing is, is as you train somebody up to think, be a champion, move in this direction, put good things in place, make good quality decisions, then that part of their brain, not always, but for the most part, they're operating in that area of the brain. When you're not helping them to do that, if they're focusing on just, you know, looking good, and sounding good, and all this stuff, then what happens is they move over into that desire/reward, and if they're not getting the the reward that they want, or the desire that they want, they fall flat. They actually deflate in the process, because they're not getting the things that they desire. With, you know, like you said, this is stuff that we just do here we teach, this is the way to think, this is the way to think, this is the way to think, so that you don't get stuck in that place of going, "I'm not getting the reward I want." Instead you have this process that goes, "Oh, I'm getting more. I'm growing. I'm growing in so many areas of life." And it changes the way that they think. We kind of hit this a little bit, but I really want to hit it again. Isn't the job description good enough?

 

Joel Fortner  33:39

No, because of all the all the things we've talked about for the last ever how long we've been talking, all the reasons we've covered already, are why it's not good enough, they are two separate documents, one describes the job. It's here's the tasks, here's the description of what you're doing, that has nothing to do with clarifying what the key results are. The job description often doesn't have the KPIs. It doesn't have those pieces in it. So we're literally missing half the training of a team member without the IRA.

 

Chris LoCurto  34:12

Right. And another great thing is that when you for many people that don't have just one area, like if you have a sales team member, their area is sales, right? But for a lot of folks, a lot of admin roles, a lot of different, you know, leadership roles. They don't have one specific, and even with a sales team member, there's a whole lot of results that we're looking for out of that team member, right? But some people have completely different areas. And so even telling them how to do "the job", when they have different areas. It doesn't apply to everything, right? So you still have to point them to, here's where we want you to be. This is the vision for you, your role, all of this stuff down the road. "I'm afraid my team members will think I'm putting more on them."

 

Joel Fortner  35:00

Yeah, this is a pretty common thought that people have, is that it feels like more. And usually that's because people don't have KRAs in place, their team members are rocking and rolling in their jobs. And then the leaders like we need to put KRAs in place. "Oh, shoot, aren't the team members gonna think I'm just adding more work to them?" That's not what it is.

 

Chris LoCurto  35:22

Unless you just do a really bad job communicating it.

 

Joel Fortner  35:24

That's the issue. Because it's not about adding tasks. It's about providing the right expectations and clarity to the key results of the tasks. Now, here's where it leads, greater efficiencies, we discovered their tasks that are like, why are we even doing that now? Because if this is the outcome, we shouldn't be doing X, Y, and Z, there's better ways to actually get to that result. That's what we're after.

 

Chris LoCurto  35:47

If you look at it, for you, personally, you know, if you look at your roller, think back to a roll. Every one of us has worked at a place that we're like, the communication here stinks. And I don't feel like I'm set up for success. And it's a dead end job and forget this, I'm going somewhere else. In those moments, if you think of yourself and say, "If I had greater clarity on how to be better at doing what I'm doing right now." So let's just take leaders, right? We say it all the time, it's your job as a leader to make your team successful, not the other way around. And then what we'll have is a lot of leaders say, "But I don't know how to do that." Great, we'll teach you. It's the, "But I don't know how to do that." If there wasn't a, "Great we'll teach you." That followed, then they just keep doing the same thing, not knowing their potential, not knowing how to do it better, not knowing the things they're wasting time on all that kind of stuff. And so if you think about it yourself, leader, what if you had greater clarity on how to do your leadership role, be a business owner better, if you had greater clarity of that, that somebody came in and showed you, how much more would you love that? It's not a "Oh, crud I feel like you're putting more on me." Instead of say, "Oh, praise God. Now I can see the picture on the box a heck of a lot better." Last question, we get- we actually get more than this, but this is the last one we're gonna answer. "I don't know what the key results are in a role."

 

Joel Fortner  37:16

Really, we've covered it already. We've hit the, we've got to go through the process to think about what are the key results in the role. This is again, this is not a simple thing to get to for every single role. All the more reason why we need to spend the time to process through, what's the big picture that I'm looking for in this role? Why do I need it? Why do we do the tasks? Why do we need to pay the money to do these tasks? What am I after? This kind of stuff. What are the problems that led me to actually wanting to create this role in the first place? These kinds of questions help you gain the perspective to get to clarity on the key results in a role.

 

Chris LoCurto  37:56

Yeah, just the most basic, one of the most basic key results that you know, that we have here with Catherine. So Catherine is who sets up all of our events, you and I do Next Level Life facilitating. So we are coming into one very long day and then one normal to shorter day, just kind of depends on how that lays up. Sometimes it could be two very long days. But the goal is, is that you and I are stepping in and having to lead selflessly for two days to focus on helping people get the absolute best result they can. The last thing you need to do is focus on the details. And so one of the tasks or jobs that Catherine has, and she actually has a team member who actually executes a lot of this because she's trained that person to do so, sweet little Abby, as dad's sitting here with a smile. This is my goddaughter Abby, we love you. She's not in the office today. So that was so much information that was unnecessary.

 

Joel Fortner  39:01

Ah, the culture of The Poimen Group.

 

Chris LoCurto  39:05

One of the key result areas that Catherine has is setting the facilitators up for success. And inside of that, we give what that looks like. It's not the details, it's not the, go put these sheets in this room, tape it here, draw the you know, it's the, it's the expectation, this is where we need to be. You need to get the facilitator to this place they should be able to walk in, lead the people and not have to worry about snacks in the rooms, and drinks and breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you know, for the clients and all of these things. All of that is assumed. How she does it, is in a job description. Well, for her she's actually made it even better than her own job description. But those results is something that we can go back to every single time if we ever needed to and go, "Hey, this isn't being done. Why is this not being done? Why did I have to, you know, take care of the client on this thing over here, my job is to do this piece, I can't do that if I have to do this piece over here as well." And by having that result, she knows to hit it every single time because it's the puzzle picture on the outside of the box. And she's able to do it. So it is very difficult. And this is why we've actually put out a download for you guys, we've got a KRA template for you to download. So you can see exactly what this looks like. But we've got something even stronger. And that is the Next Level Leadership Live Event, where we're actually going to be spending the first day is all about KRAs. And we've done this workshop with our clients multiple times. And they love it. We have clients come back to do the same workshop because they have new things they need to work on because it gives them that ability to actually sit down with people to guide them through the process. So we are doing the Next Level Leadership Live Event that's going to be April 28, through the 30th. So if you're not getting the results you want with your team, you need to be at this event. It's very easy to do this, visit chrislocurto.com. And click the banner at the top to secure your seat, or your seats. Think of the leaders that you need to be bringing to this because you have this amazing teaching and workshop time where you sit down and create this with the experts that can actually speak into it. That's just the first day. So folks, here's what I want you to do, I want you to bring to the event, bring your job descriptions, bring the roles that need KRAs, whatever your top ones are, bring all of them, I don't care, bring those pieces of information, you can print it out, you can have it somewhere where you have quick access, I would say print it out, it's probably the best way so you can look at it, because we're going to walk through this and teach you how to do this. But on top of that, bring roles that you're anticipating. Now, here's why this is so incredibly important. It is the best thing when you actually have the expectations of the role before you ever start hiring. This is something that is a must in our business, and has been for gosh, I've done this for a couple decades now. Because it tells you the expectations. And so when you're in the interview process, it helps you to actually look at the person and go, "Now I know what questions to ask. Now I know how to, you know ask the right questions to get to the right responses to see if this is somebody who can actually get to this expectation, not just somebody who tells me that they can do the tasks themselves." So come to the event with job descriptions, roles that you must put this in writing, now that you want to make as successful as possible, but also those roles that you want to have you think you're probably going to hire in the future.

 

Joel Fortner  43:10

And to just add a little bit. We're also covering, hiring in depth in this event. This all works so powerfully together when you bring these rolls and you're learning about improved hiring process, improve leadership of KRAs, guys, this is where successful leaders spend their time, this is the stuff we should be doing, which now we get to Friday and what are we teaching on, leading people to success. And all of what we should be doing as leaders, the mindset to the major areas of focus, teaching people, this is where you should be spending your time to get the greatest movement in your team and in your business.

 

Chris LoCurto  43:49

Yeah, so when you solve these things, when you're doing these things correctly, guess what? It frees you up to do more leading and  allows you to be in a place where you can make people even more successful, which is why come Friday, the third day, we're actually going to be teaching you exactly what to do. So you've got to get to this event.

 

Joel Fortner  44:09

So guys, hopefully by listening to this podcast, number one objective is, you are seeing I need KRAs in my team, and I need to get those in place. If you're ready to move on it, like get to this event where like Chris said, we're gonna spend the entire first day just teaching and working on KRAs, where you're gonna get coached by me, Aaron, we're gonna be walking around assisting, you know, helping you solve that problem when you're looking at that paper thinking, Joel, help me come up with the result, help me process through this to get to it, because you're gonna walk out of there with some completed KRAs or great progress. So you're gonna go do some work on these things while you're there. That's just day one again, let alone the rest of day.

 

Chris LoCurto  44:51

And how to implement them, and how to hold accountable, and how to grow the team members, all that stuff.

 

Joel Fortner  44:57

All the keys to it. So when we did this you know, we did this with a lot of our Mastermind clients. And like I love what Jeffrey said. He says, "We love the KRA retreat, it was a shot in the arm and motivating us to keep following through with the KRAs, and to keep them updated." Joe said, "There's nothing more important than defining the outcomes of each of your team members roles." Matt Stoll, he said, "It was great to be there probably better yet, to have the amazing freedom to bring friends who were needing direction and encouragement and immerse them in this culture." This was all coming out of this kind of work that we're going to do with the event. So get there leaders, invest in yourself that it is key to have positive, healthy influence in your life. Coaches, and mentors help you grow, they help us get stuff done faster. Yeah, I'm a coach. And I may be a little bit biased. But I also look at my own life and see how coaches and mentors are a key part of why my life has been changed so much, especially in the last, I think back all the way to college and amazing things for the last 10 years alone, because of allowing in influence of doing events like this.

 

Chris LoCurto  46:06

Absolutely. And the thing that I shared earlier, the change in your personal life from getting this stuff, right. Is it going to change your business? 100% it will change your business, you will lead differently, people will have greater morale, you will have greater productivity, you will spend less money on people because they're getting the right stuff done, does it change your business? We can't share it enough. Absolutely. But it changes your personal life. Because the more that I can actually get off of me, delegate to you guys, you guys delegate to team members, so on and so forth. And we can focus on the things that allow us to be highly productive for the business. Then the less I'm taking back. The less I'm you know, having to redo, jump in, fix, all of that stuff. So folks you need to be at this event. Bring the leaders or friends like, Matt or other business owners you know that need to get this information, to not only change the business but change the life. Go to chrislocurto.com click on the banner at the top. Get your tickets. Join us April 28 through the 30th here in Tennessee. We look forward to seeing you there. As always, we hope this has helped you today. Take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.

Next Level Leadership Live Event:

https://store.chrislocurto.com/next-level-leadership-live-event/

KRA template download:

https://chrislocurto.com/kra/

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