546 | Transitioning from a Small Business Leader into a Chief Behavior Leader

Chris LoCurto 0:00
On today's episode, your new job chief behavior officer, Oh, please don't, don't click off. Just follow the show that is 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, I hope you're having an exciting day, a fantastic day, and an amazing day, wherever you are. Today, we're talking about something and I hope I didn't lose most of you with that front bumper. But we're talking about a new career path for you, which is called chief behavior officer, and what it means to you as a leader or an owner to actually have that role. Now, listen, I don't want you to think I'm not changing your job. I'm enhancing it. Let's say it that way. And I know a lot of you out there are like, You have got to be kidding me Did he just say chief behavior, I don't run a daycare, I don't want to run a daycare, I don't ever want to run daycare, I don't want to handle have to worry about running people's, you know, behavior and being responsible for their behavior all the time I, I pay them a paycheck. Now, this is the thing that I hear all the time, and I get it. I used to feel this way, early on as well. But so many entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders are like I pay you a paycheck, have the right behavior. That should be the indicator that you should have good behavior at work. Yes, I get it, I get it, I get it.

So if we can move past those aspects, I think that if you just follow me, this is going to make a heck of a lot more sense. What we're talking about, essentially, is defining and shaping your culture. Now for me, I believe culture comes down to two things, actions and attitudes. I mean, for me, is it I don't care if it's a culture inside of your business or a culture inside of a country, I believe it comes down to actions and attitudes, right? What you do, and what your attitude is about it. So if we're going to put together a great culture, if we're gonna say, you know, I'm not even gonna go into the country stuff, because right now, like, that's just too in flight. But if we're going to have great actions inside of our company, or in our family, then we've got to define what that looks like. And if we're going to have great behaviors or attitudes, then we have to define what that looks like as well. The key is, that it is amazing when you start to define and shape your culture, how much power there is, in a shared culture. What am I talking about? One folk folks follow the same culture, they have the same attitudes, have the same behaviors, and they are all looking to move in the same direction when they all want to feel good about what they do. When you know, when you have all these folks operating in the same type of culture, there is power. Now, I can quickly contrast that, and it will probably make a heck of a lot more sense to you. Look at how bad how little power there is, in a crappy culture. Look at how little power there is, when you have gossip, when you have backstabbing, when you have people who don't even want to be there when you have to, you know, try and force people to get their jobs done in a day because they're doing the bare minimum just to get a paycheck.

So if you look at it through that lens, think of the opposite. Think of the culture where people love showing up every day. Right? It doesn't mean that that's not the kind of culture that doesn't have problems. It doesn't have issues. Our team loves showing up every day. We have problems. We have issues, we make mistakes, we screw things up. But my gosh, we move a lot. We make a lot happen. We help people. We help people to change their own lives. We help people to change their businesses. We get people great information, and a great education. Our people love doing what we do. That's important to understand. It doesn't mean that a great culture is void of issues. I don't know of a single culture that is void of issues. But I can tell you, a culture of people moving in the same direction. A culture of people with great attitudes, a culture of people who know what their actions are supposed to be. That's powerful. That is powerful. That It's the kind of culture that has close team relationships. You know, it's interesting. One of the biggest issues I see with leadership teams, this is the leadership team, folks. And this is tons of them. I always love it when you know, I do a show people listen to that guy know, you're talking about me, I literally did not have you in mind. This happens with a lot of people. It happens so often it's so common. One of the biggest issues we see with leadership teams, lack of trust. Now, let me kind of explain that for a second. Because immediately you're going oh, well, we trust our team, you do with certain things. Every strap plan that we talked through trust as a leadership team, when it's the one it's the first strap plan, many companies come back for multiple strap plans. But on the first strap plan, when we're talking through trust, what we discover is everybody thinks, oh, yeah, we trust each other really well. And then when we dig into what is your level of trust, it's surfacey. Well, I trust that they're good people that they've got my back that they would tell me if my car alarms going off, you know, it's not really deep stuff. When we press on, are you able to be vulnerable? Do you trust the people around this table with your vulnerability? That's when we start to see a little bit of backpedaling. That's when we see people go, Oh, gosh, I never thought about that. Why not? Why haven't you thought about being vulnerable? Oh, my gosh, I'm incredibly vulnerable with my team. I'm incredibly vulnerable with my leadership team. They're incredibly vulnerable with me. Why haven't you thought about that? Because that's not what we're taught. That's not what we're trained. You don't be vulnerable with, with people like that, Chris, you don't be vulnerable with you don't let people in you don't let them get that close to you. Why not? Do you know how much I don't know? Please, I am not telling you to go air out your dirty laundry, don't go air out your dirty laundry to everybody. And that becomes your your vulnerability. What I'm saying is, is when you trust somebody, it changes the level of communication you have with that person. When I know and one of the things that we talked about all the time, we you know, we will we will find out a screw up that's happened something a failure that's happened somewhere and ask, Hey, did you bring that to the leadership team? Well, no. Why not? Well, I just thought I'd handle it myself. Why? Well, to be honest, I didn't want to look stupid. Okay, I get that. But did you ever think that this is a team that you could tax the collective intelligence that you could get input that you could your failure might be teaching them? How not to make the same failure? Well, no, I never thought about that. Of course not. And that happens over and over and over and over again. Why? Because that's not our concern. If we truly trusted people greatly, and we knew that we could trust them, then we could share our failures. And not only gain insight from what they see but also help them not to make the same failure. Now, there's a lot of work that has to go into this, I understand, you know, this is something that's it's a deep conversation that we have. But I want you to just kind of understand that if your team feels like they can trust each other, then that means that they can work closer together. They can have deeper conversations about things. They can not try and hide failure. They can focus on, you know, how do we make failure a great teacher? And how do we focus on being successful? There's so much power in a team that is moving in the same direction. There's so much power and a team that has great behaviors, and great attitudes. And on top of that, you'll be amazed at how much each team member at that point wants to see each other, be successful. They want to see each other succeed. They want to share quality stuff. You know, here's how I did this thing over here. Hey, I see that you're working on that. Let me help you to see some of the pitfalls that I've seen before. It's amazing how much people become more concerned with the success of others. And folks, when you do that, when you help them to get to that place when you as a chief behavior officer, do things well do this correctly. You will be just blown away by the positive outcomes. You will be absolutely blown away by the results that you start seeing in your teams, and your team members, with your clients with projects, you will be absolutely blown away at the rate of speed, things get done. What I mean by that

a positive culture a positive environment, folks with good behaviors, folks with good attitudes, folks making the right actions, get stuff done. When you are thinking about it when you are in a positive mindset, how much faster do you move? How much more clarity Do you have? How much more excitement do you have to accomplish things when you are in a negative environment, I know a lot of you out there right now, listen, I know if you were in that crappy culture, and you are busting it because you're putting food on the table, and it's very difficult, I get it, stick with it for I'm not saying stick with the culture. Stick with it until you know stay in prayer focus on God that He opens doors, and then when it's the right time move to something else. If it's just super toxic, then you very well may have to just get out of there, right? But don't cut off your nose to spite your face. Keep putting food on the table pray for the right options and be looking for the right options, right? Because man, Nobody enjoys being in a toxic environment. Nobody finds that beneficial. Well, the toxic person does. But a positive person hates that culture and doesn't want to be part of it. They're looking for a great culture. They're looking to be part of something better and bigger.

So put food on the table. That's important, but be looking. But most importantly be in prayer, right? Sorry for a little sidetrack. I'm not sorry, some of you needed to hear that. Right. Don't stay in a toxic environment, prayer, be diligent, be looking, you know, somebody out there is going to want you. But stay strong and stay. Stay excellent in the environment that you're in. You will be amazed if you keep doing your work as unto the Lord, do your work for God, not that toxic environment, you'll be amazed at how somebody is going to notice you. And somebody is going to want you to come be a part of the team. Alright, sidetrack, but glad I talked about that. We're talking about the positive outcomes, the results that you're going to experience in your business, the speed at which things are gonna get done. When you are guiding people to the right attitudes and the right behaviors. When you teach your leaders to be behavior officers, then it's amazing what's going to happen inside of your business. And again, you've heard me say this before, the size of our team, compared to how much we get done is stunning. Why? Because we don't deal with a lot of the crap. We do the things we teach. We do the things we teach. We have great team members, we have great attitudes, and we accomplish a lot. All right.

}So what does it look like to you know, shape your future as a CBO? And again, yes, I'm saying this somewhat tongue in cheek, we're not changing your actual title to CBO, to Chief behavior officer. But this needs to be something that is constantly top of mind, you need to take on this role as an attitude change for you. Right, you need to prepare yourself for being this person, you need to prepare your leaders for being these people. And guess where it starts with you. It starts inside. It starts by managing and improving your own behavior. Folks, I gotta tell you, I have been in a very, very heavy, stressful time over the last year, we have got a lot of things going on. And we've got some negative crap going on as well. That is just evil people being evil people that we have to deal with. And we're having to deal with it. And we're staying focused on God, and we're staying focused on being positive. But I will tell you, there are some times I don't feel so positive. There are times I'm just like, Jesus, I'm ready for this to be done. Right. And it wears on me, and I feel it. But I have had to check myself and make sure that I'm managing my own behavior. I've had to check myself and make sure that I'm not coming off as somebody who is struggling through negative crap, right? We all have it. We all have stuff that we have to deal with or we have seasons of it right now. This is a season. Now hopefully it's almost over for this aspect. But yeah, it is, it's not easy. So what do I have to do? The first thing I have to do is stay focused on being grateful. I will tell you if you're going to become a chief behavior officer or a behavior leader, behavior officer, or lower level leader who's going to continue to do the same thing because all leaders should be doing this doesn't matter what level you're at. Then focus on how grateful you are. If you are a believer, are you constantly thanking God for all of the amazing things in your life? Chris, you just talked about, you know, you got a bunch of negative stressful stuff going on? Yep. But I have a bajillion more positive, God-blessed things that are happening in my life. Even in some of the negative stuff that's happening. God has shown me ways of focusing on it that blesses him and becomes a blessing for me. It's amazing how, without going into the details of what's going on, I will tell you that God revealed something to me. I pray the Lord's Prayer. You know, most people pray, Lord, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We switch it to what the word means sin. You know, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. I've always thought about that and go, is there anybody else I've not thought about who has not forgiven? Is there anybody that I've not, you know, and sometimes you got to work on it over and over and over again? One day, in the midst of what was going on, I felt like God revealed. Shared with me, hey, somebody's sitting against you right now. And I want those two people actually, I want Oh, my gosh, I had not thought about that. I felt like God was saying, you keep praying that prayer. The sins happening currently, you know, it just blew me away. It blew me away because I always thought of that aspect of prayer as forgiving people who have sinned against me in the past. Here, I currently have two people who are doing it. And God is saying to me, are you forgiving them right now in the midst? Wow. Let me tell you, it's incredibly difficult to forgive somebody who's currently sinning against you. It's, it's tough. It's tough to you know, spend time praying for somebody who is meaning evil for you. Who is doing, you know, crap. And I will tell you, if that's something, praise God, I sat down with my wife. And I was like, Honey, this is something we haven't even thought about. We need to be praying, specifically for these people with what they're going through right now. And guess what, in something super negative God revealed to us that is, it's difficult, we have to pray it all the time. We pray a lot. We pray a lot because we're still in the midst of this junk. And we prayed a lot. But it has changed our lives. It's allowed us to remove stress during a stressful time. It's allowed us to remove a load off of our backs during a stressful time. And the greatest thing is it really helps you to recognize what Yeshua did for you on that cross. What he did for your sins. So if I want God to forgive me of my sins, and I continue to sin throughout this life, unfortunately, trying hard not to. Everybody is stupid. If I want him to forgive me, then by gosh, I need to turn around and look at those who are struggling with sin as well. Even though this one's specifically trying to hurt people, and forgive them. Forgive them for what they're doing. Wow. Do you want to talk about being grateful? That is a blessing of God. That's a blessing of God. So what am I saying here? Start with you. Check your own behavior. How are you acting? If you're just being you know, hard, harsh, being a jerk or being short, not caring, not loving, then you cannot turn around and expect people Well, to be loving, caring, you can't be all upset about people because they don't act the way you want them to. And yet, neither do you start with you start with gratitude, specifically to God.

Start with being grateful. And, folks, please, I'm not talking about being super grateful for all the stuff you own. Yes, yes, some of those things are blessings. Sure. I'm talking about the more important things in life, what he's done for you, what he continues to do for you. The amazing people that he has put in your life, the challenges, the challenging people that he's put in your life to grow you closer to Him, to make you more Christ-like, right? Make sure that you're being grateful. The second thing is to learn personality styles. You can't lead people to better behaviors if you don't understand their personality style. If you do not know how to lean in somebody's direction, I don't want you to become somebody else's personality style. I want you to understand what motivates them, what causes them to have deeper conversations with you what causes them to change their behavior. What excites them, what causes them to feel that they belong, that they're part of something if you don't know how to lean in somebody's direction, how to lead that behavior, that that personality style into the right behavior, it's just not going to work. You can try it is funny sometimes to see one personality art I'm gonna I'm gonna I don't beat up on the eyes on the show a lot. But I'm gonna do it right now. Hi, eyes. If I talk about a high C who doesn't like people, high C, there are times when High C don't like people, and they don't want people around. They want to be by themselves. Or they just want to be with one other person. Every super high. I go, That's so mean, I can't believe you would say that. And the seas are all going no, it's not. It's exactly how we feel. But a high who doesn't understand the high seas personality style, and I'm talking about high, you know, your way up there. 90s plus 80s. Plus, if you don't understand the personality style then it sounds mean to say that there are times that they don't like people. But it only sounds mean to the high i It doesn't sound mean to the high C because the high C agrees with it. I know that I teach this stuff, I have to teach the high seas, that a high eye needs at least a minute's worth of just personal chatter before you get into the deep stuff. Can you just ask them how their weekend was? You know, how are things with their mom? How's their dog that was, you know, at the vets the other day, understanding how to talk to people and understanding how to lean in their direction is a big massive piece of helping you to guide and direct their behavior. guide them to the right behaviors to the right actions and to the right attitudes.

So you've got to learn personality styles. Another thing you've got to do is man, you've got to learn how to lead people. Well. I saw this meme, meme, I guess cartoon I don't know. And it's just fabulous. I'm probably just gonna send it my team had them sending out send it out socially, but it's a farmer on a cart. It's just a little drawing. You know, it's not a great illustration. It's a farmer on a cart. It's got one horse in the cart stuck in the mud. And so what does he do? He goes and gets two more horses and pulls the cart out of the mud. And oh my gosh, I wish I could remember exactly what it said. Oh, yeah, that's right. It said it was the obvious solution. Add two more horses and pull the card out of the mud. Then it had a picture of the corporate solution. So the obvious solution was one horse can't get you out of the mud at two horses. Just what the corporate solution was. Add three more people to the cart with webs. So you still got the one horse out front. Now you have four people in the cart with whips. And it's still not coming out of the mud. Listen, you've got to learn to lead people. You've got to learn that leadership is not about a title. It's about helping people to get to a destination that they wouldn't normally get to. It's about making people successful, doing what they do. It's about learning to encourage it's about learning to inspire. It's about learning to have the answers even if you don't have all the answers. It's about learning how to get people to the answers. Even if you're not The one who can get the answer. help people learn how to lead people to be successful in whatever it is that you want them to do. If you can do that, then you can have an influence on their behavior on their actions. Okay, so what does this role look like to you? Well, first off, you're gonna have to take into account your personality style, right?

So if you're the high AI, you are excited about this, you will love this concept. You want to be able to go help people have better attitudes, you want to help shape people's behavior, right? So chief behavior officer looks really good, too, right? But what if you're not the high, right? And what if you don't recognize your strengths and weaknesses in your personnel, because a high I might rub the high seas the wrong way, the high D is the wrong way, you know, you have to understand what your strengths and weaknesses and your personality style is. If you're a high s, then you're not going to do this thing until it feels like it's absolutely perfect. It's the right time, and everybody's going to be okay. If you're a high D, you're just gonna come in and tell people they need to change your attitudes. Right? If you're high C, you just don't want to do this. So the thing we have to take into account is what is your personality style? And what do we need to change, adjust, and bring out of your specific personality style to lean in the direction of being in this role? What does that look like? You know, if you don't like people, then how do we change that? I don't, what do we do about that right? Now, if you're not the owner, and you're somebody who just doesn't like people, then maybe you don't belong in this role, right? If you're not in leadership, then you don't belong in this role. But if you are the business owner, if you are a leader, guess what? Suck it up, buttercup, you got to make adjustments, you're in a different place. You have a different responsibility. The people on your team are your responsibility.

So suck it up, and learn how to make adjustments to your personality style, so that you can care about other people as much if not more than yourself. Right? So that's a big thing. What is your personality style? How does it work? What are the strengths and being a CBO? And what are the weaknesses? Right? What does it look like personality style-wise? What do you need to change? What do you need to adjust? What do you need to add? What do you need to spend time talking with people that you can trust and be vulnerable with? And ask them to guide you on adjustments that you need to make. Right? So I would say, the roll, you have to know you first start there? No, you make adjustments to what's not working, you know, make it change your attitudes and your actions to be the things that you need to set that cultural example. But also ask yourself the question, what aspects of communication? What are you struggling with? What's good? What's bad? You know, if you're doing a great job communicating? Are you getting all the right information out there? Do you care about what people hear? Do you care about them getting the right result? Or do you know what it means to set an expectation and help somebody to get to that expectation? Look at all the different skill sets that you need to help somebody with their actions and attitudes. It's not just something you don't get to just sit down and tell them, hey, I need you to go do this and be this, and then expect that it happens. If you can't model that through your own skill sets, then how are they going to learn? So vulnerability is going to be a big piece? How can you be vulnerable and help other people see what it looks like to change your attitude? I had to have the conversation with my leaders one day, I didn't have to I just chose to one day, I was just like, hey, listen, I don't know how I'm coming off. But I've had you know, it's been a stressful week. And I don't know if I'm being negative, but I just want you guys to punch me in the throat if I am, you know, I want to make sure that I'm not coming off as you know, somebody who's just being negative. And they're like, No, I hadn't thought about it. But I'm glad you mentioned it. And so I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing something that was causing them to go cheese for the love Chris, we know what stuff but Shut up already. Right? So you may have to really check yourself. Do you have aspects of your personality style that is not going to lean in the direction of helping somebody else have an attitude change a behavior change? Right? So start there, start looking at your skill sets, looking at the things that you're going to do to help others looking at your behavior. What does it look like? What's your personality style? How's that going to influence people or affect people in a negative way? all those aspects,

then what does it look like to transition some of this role into your role? I thought you said, I wasn't going to change my role. No, you're going to enhance your role with this. So it's going to become something that's important to you to focus a set amount of time, every day, every week, helping people, guiding people, directing people, focusing on setting the right culture, focusing on setting the right actions and attitudes. First thing you need to do is take a really hard look at your workload. If you're stuck in the leadership, Crazy Cycle, the single workout, right, you've got to start looking at what are things that you can delegate properly to other leaders, or other people, things that you can get off your plate that are just things you shouldn't be doing anyways, that gives you back some time to get out there and lead your team to success. lead your people in successful culture, successful core values, right? Successful attitudes and actions, right? So you're gonna have to start looking at where am I not able to spend time leading people. Now, with that being said, I also have to think about this caveat. This should not be the bulk of your job. So if you just heard me say, I get to wipe my plate clean and just go talk to people all day long. That's not what I'm saying. You still got to do the most important roles of your specific role, right? As a leader, but we're stepping up the amount of lead in, you're doing, we're stepping up the amount of time you're spending leading your team are stepping up the the direction you're going with your leadership of helping people to have the right behaviors, right. So what we're saying is, is that, take a hard look at your your day, take a hard look at your workload, and ask yourself the question, what needs to come off? What's holding me back from leading people? Well? And if the first thought is, oh, geez, I don't want to give anything up. Because I don't know how to lead people? Well, well, we've got a problem. You don't get to think that way. We have to start with the first part. What do I need to change about me? What do I need to just about me? What do I need to know about my personality style? What do I need to know about my skills? And then you know, my traits and my skill sets, then what do I need to do to get myself into a place that I can lead people well, right in this area? So start the first part, then let's start getting things off of your plate. If you are slammed, if you don't have more room to go lead people into this, then some stuff got to come off your plate, right? We want to get some of those tests out, the important stuff has to stay there. This is important too. But I'm saying you're the heavier aspects of your role need to stay on your plate, but there's a bunch of small stuff that you probably are doing that you don't need to do, let's get those things delegated properly off your plate, so you could spend more time leading the team. Now, I will tell you, that some of the big challenges that you are going to face as a CBO are going to be communication issues. Let me just say gaps, communication gaps, will you hear me talking about it all the time number one issue in every company is is lack of high levels of quality communication. So you're going to have to learn how to fill those gaps. What does it look like to create quality communication, if you're gonna go out there, and you're gonna help people with their actions and their attitudes, you can't do it by having bad communication.

So the first thing you're gonna have to do, let me just say things to watch out for the main challenges that you're probably going to experience put it that way, is watch out for those communication gaps. It can be severely confusing for somebody when a leader comes in and tries to guide and direct them and stuff, but doesn't really paint a full picture and doesn't really get them all the information that they need. So if you want me to change my actions and attitudes, but I'm not really sure what the heck you're talking about, well, then I'm confused now. Now the communication is actually worse. So if you want to guide me to a better behavior, and better attitude, then make sure I completely understand. Make sure you're filling those communication gaps. Make sure you're helping me to get to clarity. Another thing is accountability. If you are going to help people to have better actions and attitudes, you have to hold them accountable. You have to hold your leaders accountable. You have to hold you accountable. Right. What is the accountability piece that needs to be put in place to make sure that we're moving in this direction? We're saying this as a cultural change. ain't right. Now, if you didn't pick up on that, let me say, this is a cultural change. If we're going to change culture in a direction like this, then what's the accountability piece that goes with it? How do we make sure that people are doing it? Doing it well, doing it consistently? Is this going to affect any other accountability pieces? Right? If I'm asking my leaders to spend more time leading people on this, and I'm making sure that the rest of their role is covered, whatever it is, I want you to be looking through the accountability piece. Third thing, oh, boy, there's probably a decent number of you out there that may have some team members that when you start moving in this direction, they think you're a lunatic. You might have some team members that think, you know, Frank's gonna be over this in 20 seconds, Sally is going to stop doing this any minute. Now, listen, this is they must have heard some, some guy on some show somewhere talking about this, and they're trying to implement it, they'll be out when this doesn't work out for them. When this fails quickly, they'll be over it and everything will get back to normal. It is very possible that what you will find is gossip. As you're working on this, it is entirely possible that you will find some people who don't need to be in your business anymore. I'm not talking about large numbers. But you might find a person or two, that as you move in the direction of better actions, better attitudes, behavior changes, greater accountability, greater communication, you may find some people who don't want it, that they can't handle that's not why they're there, they're very happy that you haven't been holding them accountable up until this point, that you haven't been focused on their behavior up until this point.

So you need to be watching cultural aspects of gossip. You need to be watching people to see if they're receiving this the right way, what if they're receiving it the wrong way. If you go out there and just, you know, tell somebody that they need to change their behavior, then they may be receiving from you that their behavior sucked before this point. And maybe losing worth like crazy, because it appears as though you're coming out to tell them that they're the problem. Instead of recognizing that you're coming out to change the culture that you set, or that you've been leading, right? So watch that watch the cultural aspects, watch the gossip, watch how people respond. Another challenge that you may face is leading people to meet expectations and key results. So if this is not done, well, then what you can do, some people can go over the top on this, and then all of a sudden, you lose the urgency to get the job done. And people just feel like all they need to do is sit around and have a good attitude, and have fun and be positive and sing Kumbaya and throw their feet up on the desk. That's not what we're talking about. So you need to make sure that the behavior change you're looking to make is also very focused on the key results that you're expecting to get accomplished. Right, if you expect them to do something, how do we do it with better attitudes? How do we do it with a better culture? How do we do it with behavior that's different towards our team members, or people that we're working with? Or our clients or our vendors? What does all that look like, while accomplishing the expected results?

So, you know, it's sometimes you have to understand that when somebody sees, oh, my gosh, you just want us to be happy and joyous? Well, for me to do that I need to do less work. That's not what we're talking about what does it take to change behaviors towards the work that you're doing? What does it take to be more positive about the outcomes? And sometimes that answer is, again, like I just talked about, you're gonna you may find some folks that just aren't going to cut it. They don't have that attitude. They don't have the right behavior. And so for some people, you may also find that it's very difficult for them to be positive because of Jerry over here that they work with right or Susan over here that they're spending time with you or maybe they've got somebody who's super gossipy and it's just negative or somebody who's always you know, negative about everything, nothing works. Nothing's good. Nothing's happening. Nothing's okay.

So part of this may be that you're gonna have a difficult time leading people to expectations while you're helping them to change their behaviors because it doesn't fit what they're experiencing on a daily basis. So let's make sure that you're paying attention to not just trying to change their behavior, but understanding why their behavior may not be the best in the first place. What could be causing this? What are they experiencing? You'll spend time looking at that and seeing, if can you help them. Or the things that you can do? Are there people that need to be, you know, have more accountability applied to them, or the people that need some consequences? You know, whatever it is, and again, I'm not just saying that it's going to be the negative stuff. What I'm saying is to watch out for all of these challenges, communication issues, accountability concerns, cultural issues, and people not hitting the expectations, watch out for those to make sure that they don't go in the worst direction, they should be moving in a better direction. Okay, lastly, we need to take a hard look at the toxic practices, if you will, the toxic aspects of the culture. So here's what I want you to do, I want you to really start paying attention writing down discussing with leadership, the toxicity that you see the negativity that you see, you know, people who are not treating people, well, people are not following the core values of the company, people are not following the the already defined culture, if you already have things in place that people are supposed to be doing, and they're not following it, then I need you to start writing that down, you need you to start writing that down, start paying attention to what you're seeing, know how to go out and identify those things. For some people, it's almost like if I start to pay attention to that and write those things down, Chris, then I know I've got to do something with it. Well, that's exactly what I'm gonna say next. So you're gonna have to fix those aspects, you're gonna have to fix the toxicity that you're experiencing inside of your business. You can't change people's behaviors and their attitudes, if they're working in a toxic environment, or they're working around toxic people.

So some of the challenges that you're going to face are, you know like I already talked about, some folks don't want this. This may be scary to you. I look, this is something I can only say to you that you just need to trust me on this. There are a lot of leaders that I have helped over the decades, that fear losing that toxic person. That fear that once they lose this toxic person that this person has their hands in so many things this person knows all the important details, this person is working with the most important class, there's always a reason I shouldn't say always there, sometimes people are, are able to kick out toxic people pretty quickly. Because they don't want to change. But there tends to be let me set that where there tends to be a reason or reasons that leaders don't want to face a toxic person. Because they're afraid that the importance of this person or the importance of what they do is so big, it's so outstanding, you know, that can't let them go because I can't let them go. Because, you know, they affect so much of our revenue, I can't let them go because they're the only ones who are the only person who knows how to do these. There are all these things that crop up and a leader's mind. Of all the leaders that I have helped over the decades my team has helped over the decades. I will tell you this, I don't know a single leader who regrets walking through a proper process. Walking through a proper point, let me be very clear, walking through a proper accountability process. And a toxic team member left who seemed super vital. I don't know of a single leader that has ever said, Oh my gosh, I really regret that. Oh my gosh, that tanked our business. Oh my gosh, we lost so much momentum. Not one. Now, is that a difficult process? Is it rough? Sure. Is it something that's not fun? Absolutely. not going to sugarcoat it. It's tough. But the thing that is tougher is how much it's affecting your current culture. By leaving a toxic person in place. Hear me? Hear me. If you don't believe me, go ask team members. If you have a toxic person and you know it, I guarantee you your team knows it. If you ask them, how difficult is it to work with this person, you're gonna get some surprising answers may not be so surprising, but you're gonna get some answers that you may have been avoiding. So there are things that you need to do, you need to start paying attention to the toxicity, you need to start paying attention to the people who aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing, you need to pay attention to the processes that are not being followed, you need to pay attention to the accountability aspects that are not being followed. You need to pay attention to leadership who was not holding people accountable. These are things you need to do, the more you put and solve these aspects, the more you put accountability in, the more you do it with a great heart and, you know, a great desire to change people's attitudes, great behaviors, you're going to start to see other stuff boil to the surface, the more you do this, other things are going to start to jump out as they do pay attention, these are the things that you're going to have to fix. These are the things you're going to have to change.

So as you see, you know, you're starting to help somebody with something and something jumps to the surface, solve it, fix it, put together a strategy to fix it, do whatever it takes, get new tools to fix it. whatever you can to solve the toxicity right to solve the things that are keeping the the new behaviors from taking place, or making it difficult for the new behaviors that you've put in place. So some of these things may be difficult, some of them may not be some of them might be super easy. What you may just discover is that a reason why a lot of the attitudes are the way they are is that you make work too hard for your team, you haven't solved things for them, you haven't gotten them the right tools to do the job well, or the expectations on them or are not in line with what you're paying them to do, how to know. There are all different kinds of things, you may just find some stuff that's not that crazy, or terribly difficult. And you may find some things that are tough either way, solve them. Don't just try working on behavior, and then bad stuff crops up and you go see, Chris was wrong. This doesn't work. Folks, if Chris is wrong, how come Chris's team will have shown up every day, has great attitudes. Does a great job. Right? So you're not hearing me say this is going to happen overnight, you're not hearing me say this is going to be easy. But I will tell you this a result of becoming a CBO. Chief behavioral officer, I can't believe I keep saying this, What's cracking me up, but you understand exactly what I'm talking about a result or the benefits, the impacts in your your workplace are going to be stunning. Think of the first thing we're talking about changing culture. For the love cultures, the number three issue we see inside of every business, and what are we talking about in this whole show, making it better actions and attitudes, culture comes down to actions and attitudes and we're talking about making those better, which means in turn, we are directly saying your culture will be better. That's what needs to happen. A great benefit, a great impact on your company is a better cultural, whose economic effect, not just the team, it's gonna affect your clients, it's gonna affect your vendors. Right? It's going to be great because

your team is going to want to work with other team members more, they're gonna want to do things together, they're going to take more ownership, it's going to change your finances. Again, I can't stress this enough. The Point Main team, our team is not as big as it would be if it was some other company because of this stuff. So guess what, we have more money that we can do more stuff with. We can move more things around with we can hire more people, it affects your finances. What happens when you have clients? So folks, those of you that have ever worked with our team, you're still here for a reason. You must have experienced the team who treated you well. Right, they must have taken care of you. Otherwise, you don't want to be around a team like that. You don't want to be with people who treat you badly or have bad attitudes or your every time you talk to them. They're just negative, right? So it's going to change your finances. It's going to change your clientele. It's going to change your customer service. On top of all of this, I know a lot of you struggle with millennials in your workplace. On top of all of this, I can promise you that it will have an impact on the engaged judgment of the millennials in your workplace, especially if they're remote, right? But all in all, it doesn't matter what age you have working for you, this will affect everybody. So with all of this being said, let me once again speak to the importance, the importance of personality styles with communication, especially if you're going to change your culture folks, a few if your team isn't working through personality styles. If you have not taken your team through the video, and I'm talking about DISC personality styles, you got to do it, you just have to do it, it will make your job 1000 times easier, and you will make it so much better. So make sure that you're going to get the DISC products. It will help your teamwork it will help you understand teams, it will help your teams understand each other. It will change a lot of the relationships if they're strained. People will work on setting up other people for success. It is fabulous. So go to Chris LoCurto.com/store. For more details. That's Chris LoCurto.com/store. Folks, that is all for today's episode, we hope you found the discussion valuable, folks, we want you to stay tuned as we go through more discussions like this to help you become a much stronger leader, a much stronger business owner, all of you folks that are out there, there are not leaders. Hopefully, you're taking this information and making your roles better for parents. Hopefully, you're taking this information and making your parenting better. Now we would love to hear from you. I'm telling you, this is what we really do want to hear from this is our heart. We want to hear your stories. We want to hear your experiences we want we want to hear your insights, so please feel free to share them with us at podcast at Chris LoCurto.com Super easy. Just send us even if it's just a comment, but we would love to hear stories, insights, anything [email protected] Well, folks, that's all the time we have for today. I hope this information has helped. As always, take this information, change leadership, change your business, change your life, and join us on the next