415 | Three Things Every Leader Must Do Before 2022 – Part 2

 SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, leaders, business, accountability, grow, duplicate, team, lead, leadership, tasks, coach, question, teach, pour, business owners, influence, life, successful, talking, helping

SPEAKERS

Joel Fortner, Chris LoCurto

Chris LoCurto  00:00

The other two of three things that you need to do before 2022, that is coming up next.

Chris LoCurto  00:16

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. Hope you're having a fabulous day where you are, we are today. So, last episode I told you that there are three things you need to do by 2022. And you do need to do these things. But I spent a lot of time on number one, this was considerably more than I thought it was a very long episode, but very powerful stuff, very important things that you need to be doing. I'll just kind of recap, the major focus, you know, we hear words like, "strategic planning", "mission", "vision", stuff like that. And again, I have said for a long time, when you look back to the 90s in business, words like that, core values, stuff like that just got beat the daylights out of, and overused by people who were just trying to use them as buzzwords. And unfortunately, a lot of the power from things like, strategic planning was yanked out. And so people haven't known, people haven't been taught how to do that. And so if you go back to the first episode, which I believe was 409, The Three Things Every Leader Must Do Before 2022, we lay out a whole lot of things you need to do this year, you need to get done. Things like taking an accurate survey of where your business is. And I explained how to do that, things you're looking for, all that kind of fun stuff. I talked about making the necessary shifts, things that you can do before you get to 2022, also talked a lot about failure. And things that you need to be doing and learning and growing from, so that you set yourself up for 2022. So that was one point. That was just one of the three things. So today we are talking about the other two. And the first place I want to start is I want to start with duplicating yourself. This is incredibly important for you to do. It is when you take a look at how you're going to grow your business, you rarely just hire people who do completely different stuff from you. So usually there is a large aspect of duplicating you, or processes, or people, that is going to be the fundamental foundational piece of growing your business. We're going to talk about that when we come back right after this.

Joel Fortner  03:00

Hey, it's Joel Fortner here. I'm the Vice President of leadership development on Chris's team, and I oversee our Next Level Mastermind business coaching program. Most business owners and leaders lack a clear path to succeed in business. They question whether they're making the right decisions, if they're focusing on the right things to really grow their business. If this is you, you need a coach in your life. Coaches help you make better decisions, navigate uncertainty, lead more effectively, and grow your business without sacrificing your life and your family. In their first year, our clients typically see an average of 67% increase in gross revenue, and an average of 138% increase in net profit, and regained hours of time. Our clients stay in the program for over three and a half years simply because of the results they get. So if you're ready to run your business at the next level, and see the growth you've been wanting, then visit chrislocurto.com/mastermind. Again, chrislocurto.com/mastermind, today.

Chris LoCurto  04:02

All right, we are talking about duplicating yourself. And before we do this, the first thing we have to hit, my sub bullet points of things that I want you to know and do is you've got to get the right tools in place. You've got to make sure that you're getting the right skills in place. I'm talking about things like, you hear me say it all the time, you've got to get KRA's in place if you're gonna hold people accountable. If you want to make sure- and you know, a lot of times KRA's are not an easy thing to understand. Most people make a juiced-up job description and believe that they've made a KRA, it happens all the time. All the time. Just had a fantastic group in here with us doing a Stratplan. And that was one of the things that came up, is that the KRA is so important for us to hold people accountable. I feel like there's a Seinfeld episode right there. If you've ever seen the episode where he puts in the reservation. And then they don't have the actual car when he gets there, he's like, "Anybody can take a reservation, but it really takes somebody to hold a reservation." Thank you, Brian, I wish you guys could see that. Here's the deal. Anybody can put somebody in place, give them tasks to do, give them a job description to do. But the problem is, is when we try to hold them accountable to an expectation that we have not laid out clearly. Now, this may not make a lot of sense, if you've never really dug into understanding what KRA's are all about, what we're talking about is the expected intended result of the job descriptions, right? So, to get as basic as I possibly can, if I run a bakery, and I bring somebody in, and I give them a job description of making bread, but I do not give them an expected intended result of this beautiful, crusty, round looking, you know, maybe square, rectangle, I don't know, if I don't give the intended result that the bread looks this way, taste this way, has this type of density. But I've given them all the steps on how to make bread, then I can't really hold them accountable to the results of the bread. I know that sounds silly. But here's what the mistake that people make all the time. And I'm not just talking about a few people. This happens all the time. That's why we do so much work on teaching leaders how to create phenomenal KRA's. So here's the deal. A lot of folks will pull together the specifics of the tasks and consider that to be the KRA. Then when they go to hold them accountable, "Hey, your bread doesn't look like it's supposed to." "Well, I went through all the stuff." "Well, let's pull up your KRA." And when it shows that it's all job description, then guess what happens? "But I did all of those things." "Yeah, but it doesn't look the way it's supposed to." "But I did all those things." "Yeah, but it doesn't look the way it's supposed to." This is an insanely basic version of what happens inside of business, all the time. As I'm saying this, take a look around your team, and think of how many times you've gone, "I can't get my team to do the thing I want, even though I've given them a colossal list of things to do." This is what we call the task result gap. The problem is, we are giving tasks, we are expecting results. Instead of creating the expected results so that they can see what you are expecting the outcome of all those tasks to look like. If you've not done this-and again, I know this isn't, I'm giving you enough to have the idea of what it should look like. It's a lot of information. It's a lot to do. But when you have a phenomenal job description, and you have phenomenal KRA's, then comes the next most important thing; accountability.

Chris LoCurto  08:28

If I have given you a great KRA, here's the job description. Here's what I want you to do. Here's what I want that thing to look like when it's done. This crusty loaf of bread, beautiful, smells amazing, tastes great, great density, all of these things. If I have done that, I've given you all that information, then guess what I get to do? I get to sit down with you with the result of what you've done with the KRA's and go, "Hey, how well are we hitting this?" Now, as I talk about accountability, I'm gonna take a little sidestep here. Because accountability is a word that we use, a term that we use, which a lot of us come from, we may come from a bad religious background, or stuff where you're beat over the head and you know with the Bible and told all the things you've done wrong, while somebody is you know, holding their closet door back with their foot, you know, hiding all the things that they've done wrong. And this is considered to be accountability. This is not accountability. That is not quality accountability. So I know a lot of you when I say that term accountability, you shiver inside you shutter. You know, you have bad memories. That's not what I'm talking about. We are taking back this word. We're taking back this process. What is quality accountability? Quality accountability is helping somebody to see how they can do better, how they can grow, mistakes that are happening, being able to show them all the expectations, all of this stuff is great accountability. Being able to push on somebody when they're struggling, like, you know, maybe somebody, it feels like they're gonna fail in an area. And you help them to see that the fear is unfounded or, you know, help them to see their strengths and talents and gifts lie in there. Whatever it is, good quality accountability sets a person up for success, not tears them down and tells them that they're a horrible person. So there's a really good article in fortune.com, which is called, The Extraordinary Depressing Power of Failing Upwards, where they mentioned this about accountability. "Accountability in many companies, this word has become an excuse for managers to be harsh and demanding with coworkers. Accountability is about helping other people succeed. If you hold people accountable by mentoring them, and coaching them, you'll come across as a leader, and not as a taskmaster." Guys, we preach that around here. With our next level mastermind program, we talk about, you know, to the public, we say, "This is a mastermind program." When you're in we say, "Hey, this is an accountability program." We want to help people be successful, we don't want just good ideas. We don't want to just pass around ideas. We want to help people who may be struggling, we want to help people do better, we want to help people be more successful. We want to help people. And that's the process. If you're going to be a part of this, you're not taking, you're getting, you're receiving, but you're also helping people. Why? Because there's only so many of us that actually have been in a leadership role or in a business ownership role, right? And you need to be around other people that are experiencing that, that know that, they know what it's like to walk in your shoes. So holding people accountable as a leader is one of the most powerful tools that you have. Now, you've heard me say before, the number one issue inside every business, is a lack of high levels of quality communication. Number two, is a lack of quality accountability. Every single time. Every time, every time. So it's valuable. If you're going to duplicate yourself on a process, do not set it up for failure by not having quality communication by not having quality accountability. So KRA's is a huge part of that. We also use Asana as a project software for us here. And there's no sponsorship here for Asana. It's just something that we use, it's a fantastic tool, you've got to put these things in place. Next thing is is don't go it alone. Just one of you is too few for the road ahead, I promise. So leaders and business owners, I want you to hear me. Many people, and I was this guy way back in the day as well. Many leaders and many business owners get this spot in their head that they're going to just do it their way. Why? Because they usually don't have a group of quality leaders or quality business owners around them, that they can talk to, that they can bounce things off of, that understand what they've experienced, right? So most leaders, they don't have duplication as a goal. They stay isolated, they stay overwhelmed. This is a colossal mistake, trust me. If you don't believe me get with any leader who has at least a little bit of experience under their belt and ask them, "What's it like having been isolated for many years and then shifting, and making sure that you're surrounding yourself with quality people?" What you'll find is, every time they'll go, "That isolation thing, that 'I'm going to do it myself' thing, that's a colossal waste of time man." If you want to go, you know, sell your oats, feel free to do so. But understand it's actually going to come back and kick you in the teeth.

Chris LoCurto  14:09

You can't do it yourself. Besides that, you shouldn't try and do it yourself. Your worth isn't in you accomplishing something on your own. What it will do, is it will create this isolation. It's going to create this overwhelm, where you don't have the right tools in place. You don't have the right people in place. You keep trying to accomplish it on your own, and you get really, really tired of how much effort it's taking to try and make this thing work. To try and grow this thing, to try and expand this thing, right? So, get to a place where you recognize your own frustration in that center. Right? Get frustrated with trying to do everything by yourself. Get frustrated with trying to do it alone. Get frustrated with not putting quality people in your life, quality people on your team, get frustrated with that so that you can say, "Forget this. My job is to make other people successful." So the next piece of that don't go it alone is, who are you pouring into? If you don't have somebody that you're pouring in-now, a lot of folks, you might hire people that do tasks. That's fantastic. That's great. Every single company needs that. But here's my question. Are you growing protegees? Are you growing people who can take on things at a higher level? If you're not, why not? Now, some of you may be out there going, "Chris, I'm too small. I don't have the money to hire anybody yet. But I'm working towards it." I get that I understand. For those of you that are wanting to grow and scale your business, understand it starts by scaling people. By scaling quality. By pouring into people, by influencing people to be better versions of themselves, right? So for me, one of the things I have done for a very long time, after I got out of this concept of being isolated and overwhelming the daylights out of myself, which was early 20s. When I was at E-Trade, I realized, man, I can't do this myself. What I started doing is recognizing gifts and talents in people and asking myself, "How do I make them better? How do I grow that? How do I grow the thing I'm trying to accomplish?" So many folks don't want to pour into other people, because they believe that they're going to get all this great credit, that they're going to impress the world, that everybody's gonna turn around and go, "Wow, look at you. You're So Amazing. You did that by yourself." And let's say that that actually happened, which it doesn't. But let's say that it actually did, how long would it last for? Five minutes, maybe? That people applaud you because you accomplished something, then what? Then what do you do? Folks, if you're looking for your worth to be in your accomplishments, because other people are going to surely praise you for it, you're wasting your time. Instead, take a really hard look at the long term. What happens if I make people better, stronger, great? If I help them to be successful, what does that do for me? It causes me by default to be successful. What happens to my business? It causes my business by default, to grow, to scale to expand. So, get to that place where you recognize it's not enough just to have people doing tasks for you. It's not enough just to have a warm body in a seat. Who are you going to pour into? Let's start really stretching those leadership wings, right? Let's start practicing influence. Practice how you're going to help somebody become stronger and better. And yes, I know. Sometimes you pour out, pour out, pour out, and it doesn't affect right? Some people just don't want to grow and to learn and maybe rise up into a leadership role, I get that. Ask yourself the question: What level of influence can I have on this person, today? What level of influence can I have on this person in their role? Take a hard look at that. Next piece about duplicating yourself is, you need a leadership team.

Chris LoCurto  18:39

Now, what does that mean? If you are going to scale and have team members, you're going to get to a place where you cannot lead them all. So some of you out there have large teams, or large groups of team members. And you're still letting them all. Listen, you have to be smart on what you can actually lead and what your leaders can actually lead. So for me, I think at absolute maximum, eight different types of roles is enough for a person to lead. I don't even like to get that high. Right? As a leader as a business owner, I don't want eight team leads, right? I've got leaders that I'm leading, those leaders are leading team members, and you know, so on and so on. Here's the key. The more you stack under you, especially when they are different roles, the more it's going to tax you on having to be all over all eight or nine or ten different roles and the different situations inside of those roles. It's too much. So here's what I say, less than eight. As a leader leading leaders definitely be under eight. Now, here's the caveat. If you're somebody who leads the same exact role, you know, if you've got people selling the same exact product over and over again, same way, same style, all that, no more than 16. Okay, because it's easier to lead people who are doing exactly the same thing. And even inside of there, I would probably put a couple of captains in place that help out to answer questions and things. I'm talking about different roles, right? You leading either people, you know, team members, or leading leaders. For me, I do not lead a group of people without having leaders, I want to constantly raise up people who can lead people in certain areas, think of divisions, you know, think of different areas of your business. Why is that so important? Because at some point, especially in my role, think about what I'm spending time doing, I just finished four and a half days on Stratplan, I am locked down, I am not speaking to my team, I'm not guiding and directing. They might get five minutes from me, you know, before the clients get here, something like that. I'm not going through emails, I'm not answering things, I have a team who solving problems. Well, for me, I do that 10 to 12 times a year. So if you think about it, 40, 50, 60 days a year, I'm locked down just for Stratplan. Well, quite often, I'm doing two days on a one-on-one Next Level Life. That's two whole days. If I do another 40, 50, 60 days worth of that a year, I'm up to 100, 120 days a year. That's not including retreats. That's not including live events. That's not including other things that I do. That's not including the time that it takes to do these shows right here. So when you look at the actual amount of time I have left in my week, it's considerably less. If I am responsible for making the whole team successful, I will fail. There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I will fail. Because there are certain things I have to do. Now am I task saturated? Nope. I make absolutely sure that I'm not task saturated. I make absolutely sure my leaders are not task saturated. Right? So, how do I do that? While there's a great lesson we teach called, Killing the Leadership Crazy Cicle, powerful, you should try this. So what do we do? I make sure that I'm spending a lot of time pouring into my team leads and my team, especially during staff meetings, I'm always teaching in staff meetings or we have devotionals as well. And then I have leadership team meetings, and we have a marketing meeting. We have a podcast meaning we have different ways that I'm teaching, leading, guiding, and directing. But I do have one large leadership team meeting where I'm spending time leading my team, guiding them, directing them, answering questions, usually it's less answering questions and me pushing on them to come up with the answer, teaching them how to-all that kind of fun stuff. That allows me to duplicate me, that allows me to go on and focus on important things for the company that I'm responsible for. Right? You know, one of the things I have to do for this company is teach. I have to teach our clients, our followers, do this show, all the things that helps us to pay them, our team, right? They expect that I do my part, they're doing theirs. So I highly suggest that as you grow, if you have not done this yet, that you are taking a hard look at what does it look like to lead leaders? You don't have to be just the business owner to do this. If you have a big enough team, then you might start asking the questions; What does it look like for me to create leaders below me? What if I lead those leaders? Is there enough people for me to put a leader in place or two, and  start training them to do what I do so I can duplicate myself in them? Alright, that's the second point. We're gonna get to the third point when we come back right after this.

Joel Fortner  24:20

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 tasks 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 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 their 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 Joel at chrislocurto.com.

Chris LoCurto  25:46

Okay, we are back and we are talking about the third point, and that is get the right influence. So as we talked about in point number two, you need to be influencing. A huge mistake people make, especially when they become leaders, is they do think that they're going to do it all on their own. They do think that they don't want to ask for help. They don't want to add for ask for guidance. Folks. If you're going to be a successful leader, you cannot be the lid to your team. You must constantly be growing, you have to constantly be poured into. Do I think you should read books absolutely. Do I think books are going to change your leadership and grow you in everything? No, I do not. I think you need considerably more than that. You need people who can speak into your decision making processes. You need people who can help you create good decision making processes. You need people who have been where you are. You need people who can speak into this, you need to find those people. I know it's quite difficult. I know you all have great information and advice from your cousin Larry, you know, some of you, your spouse has never worked in this role. But man, they've got all kinds of ideas of things that you need to do. Your brother or sister has all that, you know, your parents have great information. And when you look around, none of them have been in the leadership role that you're in. For business owners, you look around, there's very few people who've been in the role that you're in, I get that. You've got to find a successful coach. Now, I am somebody who does this for a living. We do this for a living. I have coaches, I have coaches in all areas of my life. I have coaches even in my hobbies. Because why? I want to be better. I know what happens when I can take somebody who's done what I'm trying to accomplish, and can quickly show me how to do it better and faster. Do it with more efficacy, right? I'm looking for that. So my suggestion is, when it comes to your business and listen, do it outside. When I raced, I raced Formula cars, there are certain places and certain times that I bring on a coach, I want to know how do you do this track? I'll never forget when I went to Daytona for the very first time, and raced Daytona. I'm a road racer. So we race on road courses. I got on this big oval. And I didn't know what the heck I was doing. So before I even got there, I hired a coach to come down who raced there for 30 years to tell me exactly what to do. In one day of going out practicing on that track. I increased my time, five seconds, which if you know anything about racing, that's pretty darn fantastic. So, find those people. I have a spiritual coach in my life, a mentor, Tom Bradford was on the show not too long ago. This is somebody that I spend time with, talking to, asking questions, growing with, you know, just learning more. And you know, making sure that I am not staying with only my thoughts on what I think is right, but growing beyond this, teach me more, show me more. So when it comes to business, you need some coaches, you need some people, where? Leadership. Have to ask yourself this very important question: What am I doing intentionally to make me way better at making my team successful? If your answer is, "Well I read a book." Well, that's great. That's gonna give you great information, hopefully, if the book is worth anything, but here's the deal, who's helping you on your decision making process? Who's helping you? Who do you have to talk to, that is able to speak into how you're making decisions, why you're making decisions the way you are, pushing on you when you need to be making decisions? You need somebody who can speak into your leadership. You need somebody for those of you that are business owners. Who is helping you to rip the business apart, and find the things that are holding you back? So many business owners are bent on trying to find that magic pill, right? If I just buy the magic pill, I will blow up the business with great sales. Folks. One of the things I ask all the time when it comes to Stratplan, if we doubled our sales tomorrow, what would happen? Every time people actually stop and think about it, the answer is the same, we would self-implode, we couldn't handle it. Right. That's why we do what we do. There are things that are holding you back from being successful, finding the money actually is not that difficult. Being able to know all the things that are holding you back and see it and then putting a plan together, that's crazy powerful. Who is guiding you in your field? Are there specific thought leaders that can coach you, train you, guide you, in your field and help you to see the things that you need to know or maybe even the things that are coming down the pike. You know, maybe they're able to see trends and things that are going on that you need to be aware of that's going to help you to make better decisions. So, how are you growing and becoming aware of your own blind spots? What are you doing? If you're helping your team to discover their blind spots, it's a great thing if you're helping to influence your team. But the question is, what are you doing about it for you? And for those of you that are fear based on this, "Well, I'm afraid if I did that, then my team will think that I didn't know what I was doing." Leaders, let me say this, your team already knows your flaws. They know your failures, they know your flaws, they're not surprised. They can see that just like you could with all of your leaders in your past, right, don't think that your team is different. And you've done a great job of hiding your flaws from them, right? You can see their flaws, guess what, they can see yours as well. Don't hold back on growing you because you're afraid of what people will think. Get people in your life that will help you to be incredibly aware of your blind spots, and be able to actually speak into what you should do to solve those things. Last piece of this getting the right influence, is you have to ask yourself, are you being the right kind of influence for those that are under you? You need to be the right kind of influence. So here's a question for you: Where are your people? Where are they right now? Where are they if you were to grade them on success? What grade would you give them? Which ones are doing great, which ones are failing? Which ones are just middle of the road? Where are you, if you take a look across your whole team? If you don't have A plus around your team, if not everybody gets this A plus or just an A, even an A minus, I don't care. If you don't have a good grade on each of your team members, then I want you to ask yourself a question: Why? What don't you know, that can help them to become better? If there are areas that you're struggling with, "I don't know how to make them successful. I don't know how to make them better. I don't know how to grow them. I don't know how to lead them to success." One of the biggest things that people are fearful of when they look at killing the leadership crazy cycle. The answer is the same. They go, "Well, I don't know what to do afterwards." That's, that's okay. We'll teach you that part. You have to ask yourself the question if your team is not full of A player's, why not? And how much of that is because you're struggling on being the right influence to them? Take a look around your team ask this question: Have any of them lost hope? Have any of them lost sight of the goal? Are any of them just showing up for a paycheck? If so, why? If they are, why are you allowing it?

Chris LoCurto  34:09

So if you're going to be the right influence for somebody, then here's what I want you to do. I want you to go back and listen to Episode 404, replacing the negative influences, right? Here's why this is so important. You've got to have positive influences in your life, if you're going to be a positive influence for somebody else. On top of that, you need to go listen to that episode. There's a whole lot of stuff you got to cut out of your life that is causing you to be negative. That is influencing you in a negative way. It could be your social media. It could be the news. It could be just negative people. If you're not being that right influencer for other people, ask yourself why. The overwhelming majority of the time the answer is, "Because I don't know how to be. And I don't have anybody teaching me how." Those are powerful things. But another thing that will keep you from being the right kind of influencer is if you've got negative influence coming your direction, if so, we've got to do something about this and you can, you absolutely can fix this. Alright, folks, so before 2022 gets here, there's three major things I want you to do. I want you to plan strategically. Go back and listen to the episode before this, 409 I believe, I want you to plan strategically for what 2022 is going to look like, what are the things that you're going to do, what are the necessary shifts that you're going to do, where are you currently, you know, how are you going to pivot if you need to? Next thing I want you to do, I want you to duplicate yourself. But before you do this, put the right tools in place, get your KRA's in place, get your accountability in place, do the things that you need to do, make sure that you're building up your team, growing your team so that you can duplicate yourself. And the third thing I want you to do is make sure you're getting the right influence in your life. Look around, start going after solid coaches and leaders that can help you to make right decisions, not somebody who just teaches you something, or gives you a pat on the back and tells you how great you are. But somebody who knows how to take a look at what you're doing and say, "Here's some areas I think that might be blind spots. Here's some things you can do differently. Here's some things holding you back. Here's what I can guarantee you, if you will do all of these things, then 2022 compared to not doing these things, will be a fabulous year. do the right things to make your year successful. Amazingly, you will see the impacts not only for you personally, not only in your business, not only in your team, but your family, your personal life as well. It's amazing how much it will affect your personal life in a positive way. Well, folks, 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.

Podcasts referenced:

https://chrislocurto.com/409-three-things-every-leader-must-do-before-2022-part-1/

https://chrislocurto.com/404-replacing-the-negative-influences-in-your-life-with-the-right-ones/

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